Wilhelm Levison
Born27 May 1876
Düsseldorf, Germany
Died17 January 1947(1947-01-17) (aged 70)
Durham, England
Occupation(s)Writer, medievalist

Wilhelm Levison (27 May 1876 – 17 January 1947) was a German medievalist.

He was well known as a contributor to Monumenta Germaniae Historica, especially for the vitae from the Merovingian era.[1] He also edited Wilhelm Wattenbach's Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter.[2] In 1935 he was forced to retire from his professorship at Bonn University because of the Nuremberg Laws. He fled Nazi Germany with his wife, Elsa, in the spring of 1939, taking a position at Durham University. Like many Jewish refugees, he was interned as an "enemy alien" by the British government from June 21, 1940 until September 2, 1940.[3] He delivered the Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford in 1943,[4] and they were published as England and the Continent in the Eighth Century.[5] He died during the preparation of Aus Rheinischer und Fränkischer Frühzeit (1948).[6]

Reputation and influence

Conrad Leyser described Levison as "one of the giants of twentieth-century historical scholarship, his England and the Continent in the Eighth century one of its canonical texts";[7] Nicholas Howe, in 2004, called that book of "enduring" importance.[8] Five conferences have been held in commemoration of his work, and the lectures given at the 2007 meeting at Durham University were published in 2010.[7] Theodor Schieffer dedicated his Winfried - Bonifatius und die christliche Grundlegung Europas to Levison, who had been his doctoral advisor.[9]

References

  1. ^ Spiritual Kinship as Social Practice by Bernhard Jussen
  2. ^ Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter ZVAB.com
  3. ^ UK, World War II Alien Internees, 1939-1945
  4. ^ The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History edited by W. D. Rubinstein, Michael A. Jolles
  5. ^ Levison, Wilhelm (1946). England and the Continent in the Eighth Century: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford in the Hilary Term 1943. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198212324.
  6. ^ Aus rheinischer und fränkischer Frühzeit OCLC WorldCat
  7. ^ a b Leyser, Conrad (2010). "Introduction: England and the Continent". In Rollason, David; Leyser, Conrad; Williams, Hannah (eds.). England and the Continent in the Tenth Century:Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876-1947). Brepols. p. 1. ISBN 9782503532080.
  8. ^ Howe, Nicholas (2004). "Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 34 (1): 147–72. doi:10.1215/10829636-34-1-147. S2CID 170978121.
  9. ^ Schieffer, Theodor (1972). Winfried - Bonifatius und die christliche Grundlegung Europas. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ISBN 9783534060658.

External links

Authority control databases
Categories