(* 23. May 1942 in Hamburg, † 18. January 2026 in Heidelberg)
Last week, the well-known German medieval historian Johannes Fried passed away in Heidelberg at the age of 83. Here is not the place for a comprehensive appraisal of his extensive œuvre or a presentation of the many-sided impulses that he gave to medieval studies. Let us here merely hold in thankful memory his achievements for the MGH.
Johannes Fried, a favourite student of Peter Classen (1924-1980), was elected as a personal member of the MGH central board of directors in 1989 on the express wish of president Horst Fuhrmann, and remained an active member to the end of his life. From 2009 to 2014, he was also the official representative of the Mainz Akademie der Wissenschaften in the central board of directors. He conscientiously attended all regular and extraordinary sittings of the board until 2019, when the trip to Munich became too onerous for him.
In 1983, Johannes Fried published a posthumous collection of studies by his academic mentor, Peter Classen, in the MGH series „Schriften“. In 1996, he contributed to a colloquium on the 70th birthday of Horst Fuhrmann, with whom he was closely linked through the curatorium of the Historisches Kolleg, on one of his favourite subjects, the second falconry book De arte venandi cum avibus by emperor Frederick II. As Rudolf Schieffer succeeded to Horst Fuhrmann as the president of the MGH in 1994, he chose Johannes Fried as his co-editor-in-chief of the institute journal Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, explaining his decision on the grounds that Fried had different interests and a different view of the Middle Ages than he himself, which could only be of advantage to the journal. Together, in a spirit of harmony and mutual respect, Fried and Schieffer presided over the publication of the Deutsches Archiv for 18 years. I had the honour of experiencing this collaboration in the first six years of my work as editor there.
Johannes Fried firmly supported Prof. Benjamin Kedar, Jerusalem, in the creation of the new MGH series „Hebräische Texte aus dem mittelalterlichen Deutschland“, jointly published by the MGH and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2000.
In 2021, Johannes Fried gave his consent to the digital publication of the correspondence of the Jewish scholar Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963) by the MGH, a project that he had initiated in the year 2000 together with Ulrich Raulff and Ernst Osterkamp. His interest in Kantorowicz, himself a former medieval history professor at the University of Frankfurt, is an indication of Fried’s broad intellectual scope. Handing over the project to the Monumenta, Fried found it important to recognise the contribution of his former co-workers at the Frankfurt university. This too was a characteristic trait of Johannes Fried. In the central board of directors, he was one of the members who always took young colleagues seriously, valued their work, and treated them as equals, which was at that time certainly no matter of course. He had a good sense of humour, ardently voiced his point of view in discussions, and was always ready to puzzle over difficult source passages.
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica will honour and treasure his memory.
Martina Hartmann