Gerd Tellenbach
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Gerd Tellenbach (17 September 1903 – 12 June 1999) was a German
historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
and scholar of
medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...
social and religious history, particularly of the
Papacy The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
and German church during the
Investiture Controversy The Investiture Controversy, also called Investiture Contest (German: ''Investiturstreit''; ), was a conflict between the Church and the state in medieval Europe over the ability to choose and install bishops (investiture) and abbots of monast ...
and reform movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Tellenbach also made groundbreaking contributions to the study of the medieval nobility and helped establish a new field of research dedicated to mapping social networks and familial ties among medieval elites (Personenforschung). After studying history at the universities of
Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...
and
Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
, he taught in
Gießen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...
,
Münster Münster (; nds, Mönster) is an independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a state distr ...
, and finally the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, where he served as Rektor (chancellor) in 1949–1950 and again in 1957–1958. From 1962 to 1971, he was director of the German Historical Institute in Rome, a state-sponsored research center dedicated to German-Italian studies and the history of the Papacy in the Middle Ages.


Scholarly influence

Given his extraordinarily long and productive career, Tellenbach ranks as one of the most influential German historians of the twentieth century. At Freiburg, as well as during his tenure as director of the German Historical Institute in Rome, he trained and served as a mentor to a large number of students of medieval history who went on to receive important academic chairs throughout Germany. His most famous student was Karl Schmid (1923–1993), who further developed Tellenbach's research on medieval noble families and pioneered important new techniques in
prosopography Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line an ...
and source criticism using monastic necrologies and memorial books. Tellenbach's intellectual formation before
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, and his scholarly maturation following the catastrophe of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, also lent his scholarship a unique perspective. Tellenbach's research in church history, as well as in political and social history, broke with long-standing nationalistic and highly confessional and politicized accounts and instead stressed long-term structural changes as well as intellectual and cultural forces in society. His conception of the Investiture Controversy as an epochal clash of opposing ideologies about "right order in the world," (hierocratic vs. monarchic) was certainly formed as a young scholar witnessing the vicious political conflicts that engulfed the universities in the 1930s and 1940s. Throughout his career, and particularly in his publicly visible role as university Rektor, he remained a thoughtful and forceful advocate of academic and intellectual freedom as critical components of liberal democracy. His brother, Reinhard Tellenbach, a very successful surgeon in Munich, has created a wonderful exhibition about his brothers' life and work. He lives in Munich with his wife and their three children Christina, Stefan and Anna.


Selected works

*''Libertas. Kirche und Weltordnung im Zeitalter des Investiturstreits'' (Stuttgart, 1936); English trans.: ''Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Controversy'' (Oxford, 1938) *"Vom karolingischen Reichsadel zum deutschen Reichsfürstenstand," in ''Adel und Bauer im deutschen Staat des Mittelalters'', ed. Theodor Mayer (Leipzig, 1943) *"Zur Erforschung des hochmittelalterlichen Adels (IX-XII Jh.), in ''XIIme Congres internationale des sciences historiques. Rapports I'' (Vienna, 1965) *''Die Westliche Kirche vom 10. bis frühen 12. Jahrhundert'' (Göttingen, 1988); English trans.: ''The church in western Europe from the tenth to the early twelfth century'' (Cambridge, 1993)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tellenbach, Gerd 1903 births 1999 deaths German medievalists German historians of religion University of Freiburg alumni Academic staff of the University of Münster Writers from Berlin 20th-century German historians German male non-fiction writers Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy