Wikipedia

Wolf Liebeschuetz

John Hugo Wolfgang Gideon LiebeschuetzFBA(22 June 1927 - 11 July 2022[1]) was a German-born British historian who specialized inlate antiquity.

Wolf Liebeschuetz
Born(1927-06-22)22 June 1927
Hamburg,Germany
Died(2022-07-12)12 July 2022
NationalityBritish
Spouse
Margaret Taylor
​
(m.1955)​
Children4
Academic background
Alma mater
Doctoral advisorArnaldo Momigliano
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
Sub-disciplineLate Antiquity
Institutions

Early life

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John Hugo Wolfgang Gideon Liebeschuetz was born inHamburgon 22 June 1927, the son of historianHans Liebeschuetzand physicianRahel Plaut.[2][3]His father was a prominentmedievalistwho taught at theUniversity of Hamburg.The family had been wealthy, having inherited a large fortune from Wolf's great-grandfather Brach, who amassed wealth trading in Texas and Mexico though much was lost in the German inflation.[4]The Liebeschuetz family was Jewish, and were subjected to increasing persecution following the seizure of power by theNazis.[5]As a young boy, Liebeschuetz was expelled from junior school because he was Jewish, and was subsequently taught at a very small all-Jewish school.[6]Although his family was able to escape, his teacher was eventually murdered in theHolocaust.[6]His father was twice arrested by theGestapoand imprisoned in theSachsenhausen concentration campafter theKristallnachtof November 1938. The four children had received English lessons since 1934 and were sent toEnglandon 12 December. The parents and two grandmothers followed soon after.[5]The emigration of Hans Liebeschuetz was sponsored by theWarburg Institute,with whom the family had long been closely associated.[7]

After arriving in England, the Liebeschuetz family eventually settled in Epsom. Hans Liebeschuetz taught Latin at a number of schools and after the war he became a lecturer at theUniversity of Liverpool.After his retirement he played an important role in founding theLeo Baeck InstituteinLondon.[5]

Education

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Liebeschuetz gained hisHigher School CertificateatWhitgift School,Croydon in 1944. He initially intended to studymedicine.He performedNational Servicein theCanal Zonein Egypt, as a sergeant in theRoyal Army Educational Corps.Liebeschuetz studied Ancient and Medieval History atUniversity College London,where his teachers includedA. H. M. JonesandJohn Morris.After graduating in 1951, Liebeschuetz took a one-year postgraduate certificate in education atWestminster College London.He later studied for his Ph.D. at University College London. His supervisor wasArnaldo Momigliano,and Liebeschuetz was able to consultT. B. L. WebsterandRobert Browning.[5]

Career

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After gaining his doctorate, Liebeschuetz worked from 1958 to 1963 as a teacher mainly at Heanor Grammar School,Derbyshire.In 1963, he was appointed Assistant Lecturer at the Classics Department at theUniversity of Leicester,which was then under the leadership of ProfessorAbraham Wasserstein.[7]In 1972, he published the monographAntioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire.[8]

In 1979, he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies at theUniversity of Nottingham.[5]This position had previously been held byE. A. Thompson.[9]1979 was also the year of the publishing of his monographContinuity and Change in Roman Religion,which examined howRoman religionworked and how it was abandoned.[9]In the early 1990s Liebeschuetz became increasingly interested in the role of "barbarians"in thefall of the Western Roman Empire.HisBarbarians and Bishops(1990) is concerned with this topic.[10]

Retirement

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Liebeschuetz retired in 1992, and was elected aFellow of the British Academythe same year. In 1993 he was made a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Arts,and a Member of theInstitute for Advanced StudyinPrinceton,New Jersey.[5]

Research

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The Liebeschuetz's research centred onlate antiquity,particularly the nature ofRoman citiesand Roman religion during this time.[5]He argued that Roman religion remained strong well into late antiquity.[8]

In the later part of his career, Liebeschuetz examined the role of "barbarians" in the fall of the Western Roman Empire.[10]Discussing theethnogenesismodel developed byHerwig Wolframof theVienna School of History,Liebeschuetz argued that theVisigothsemerged as a people under the leadership ofAlaric Iand his successors.[11]He further argued that parts of theGeticaofJordanes,such as the account of a Gothic migration fromScandinaviatowards theBlack Sea,are derived from genuinely Gothic oral traditions.[12]Liebeschuetz maintained that the earlyGermanic peoplesshared closely related language, culture and identity, and considered that the concept of Germanic peoples remains indispensable for scholarship.[13]In the 1990s Liebeschuetz was a participant in theTransformation of the Roman Worldproject, which was sponsored by theEuropean Science Foundation.[11]He felt that many members of this project denied the impact or even existence of Germanic peoples, and also sought to blacklist the traditional idea that the Roman Empire had declined.[14]Liebeschuetz argued that these scholars were practising an ideologically dogmatic and flawed form of scholarship, and manipulating history to promotemulticulturalismandEuropean federalism.[15]

Personal life

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Liebeschuetz married Margaret Taylor in 1955, with whom he had three daughters and one son and five grandchildren.[5]

Selected bibliography

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Citations

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  1. ^"LISTSERV 16.5 - CLASSICISTS Archives".
  2. ^Fischer-Radizi 2019,pp. 56–58.
  3. ^Kaiser 2021,pp. 173–188.
  4. ^Liebeschuetz 2015,pp. XI.
  5. ^abcdefghDrinkwater 2007,pp. 1–3.
  6. ^abLiebeschuetz 2015,pp. IX–X.
  7. ^abLiebeschuetz 2015,pp. XII–XIV.
  8. ^abLiebeschuetz 2015,p. XIX.
  9. ^abLiebeschuetz 2015,pp. XII–XIX.
  10. ^abLiebeschuetz 2015,pp. XX–XXI.
  11. ^abLiebeschuetz 2015,p. XXI.
  12. ^Liebeschuetz 2015,p. XXI, 106.
  13. ^Liebeschuetz 2015,pp. XXV, 85–100. "Germanic tribes... did indeed possess both core traditions and a sense of shared identity, and... these had evolved well before their entry into the Roman world... Caesar and Tacitus certainly thought that the people they called Germans shared elements of a common culture. Tacitus certainly knew that they shared a language... [E]ven if the different gentes did not share a sense of German identity, they did share a language, or at least spoke closely related dialects... That is why the concept of ‘Germanic’ remains useful, even indispensable..."
  14. ^Liebeschuetz 2015,p. XXIII.
  15. ^Liebeschuetz 2015,pp. XXI, 99–100.
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Sources

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