Eugen Ewig

That same year, he wrote his first major scientific essay, "The Election of Elector Josef Clemens of Cologne as Prince-Bishop of Liège, 1694".

Eugen Ewig (May 18, 1913 – March 1, 2006) was a German historian who researched the history of the early Middle Ages.

He taught as a professor of history at the University of Mainz and the University of Bonn.

In the second half of the 20th century, he was considered the foremost expert on the Merovingian dynasty.

Since he was considered one of the few German medievalists after World War II who had not been influenced by Nazi ideology, he served as a mediator for the reconciliation process between Germany and France.

Eugen Ewig was born in a Catholic home in Bonn, Germany, on May 18, 1913.

From 1919 to 1931, he attended the Beethoven High School in Bonn.

His school years included events such as the occupation of the Rhineland, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression.

Among his teachers were the philosopher Hermann Platz, who taught him French.

It is widely believed that Ewig's later interest in Middle Francia and the Rhineland was due to Platz's influence.

He was the son of Fritz Ewig, a merchant who died in 1924, and his wife Eugenie Ewig.

In 1931, Ewig passed the university entrance exam.

After taking a summer course in Dijon, a stay in Paris significantly changed his attitude towards the country of France: "My world view, which had been shaped by the youth movement, was not completely displaced, but it was considerably corrected and put into perspective by the experience of the French metropolis."

After that day, Ewig considered himself a Francophile.

In Bonn, Ewig studied history, German, romance studies (French), and philosophy from 1931 to 1937.

Among his fellow students were future historians Paul Egon Hübinger and Theodor Schieffer.

Ewig was active in the Kartellverband, a German students union.

During the first half of his undergraduate years, he majored in history and German studies.

While he was initially taught primarily by Wilhelm Levison, he would later be taught by Ernst Robert Curtius.

Curtius shaped Ewig's image of France and encouraged his research in that area.

After Wilhelm Levison was forced out of the university in 1935 because of his Jewish origins, historian Max Braubach took over as Ewig's dissertation supervisor.

Like many of his fellow students, Ewig maintained contact with Levison, who had emigrated to England.

After receiving his doctorate, friends of Ewig helped him spend three months in Paris.

Upon his return, Ewig worked as an assistant lecturer at the Historical Seminar in Bonn for two years.

Ewig received his doctorate in 1936.

His thesis was on the theology of Denis the Carthusian, a late medieval theologian and mystic.

Ewig took Denis' work, which in total comprises 41 volumes, and classified it in terms of intellectual history.

It went against the prevailing spirit of the times.

He wrote "Lightless and dim is the present, if one measures it by the standards of the past," which illustrates a pessimistic conservatism and is at odds with the ideology of strength that was being pushed by the Nazi Party.

In January 1938, he passed the state teaching examination and became qualified to teach history, German, and French.

Due to the ever-dangerous political situation, however, he chose not to become a teacher.

Instead, he worked as a bookkeeper for the University of Bonn's History Department.

During the Nazi era, political attitudes played a major role in the career opportunities of young scientists.

Ewig, as a student of Levison, as a political liberal, and as a Catholic with no ties to the Nazi Party, had no chance of becoming an academic.

Following in the footsteps of Schieffer and Hübinger, other students of Levison, Ewig applied to the Institute for Archival Science and Advanced Training in History in Berlin.

He was concerned that his activities as a member of the Catholic Youth League appeared suspicious to Nazi investigators.

After a year of waiting, he was accepted to the Institute and began his archival training in April 1939.

In 1940, Ewig completed his archival training.

It was published in the Annals of the Historical Society for the Lower Rhine, a journal which would later be banned by the Nazis in 1944.

In 1958, Ewig founded the German Historical Research Center in Paris, which became the German Historical Institute Paris in 1964.