Peter Herde

Peter Herde (Born 5 February 1933) is a German historian.

His research activities range from fundamental work on papal diplomatics of the Middle Ages to the history of the country up to the Second World War.

Herd was born in 1933 in Racibórz, Upper Silesia.

He was the son of deputy headmaster Reinhard Herde and Hildegard Herde.

He spent his childhood and the first years of his youth in Ratibor.

Since autumn 1943 he attended the Realgymnasium Ratibor.

The family fled from the Red Army at the end of January 1945 and found their new home in Arnsberg.

In Neheim-Hüsten he passed his Abitur in 1953.

In the summer semester of 1953 he began studying physics and mathematics at the University of Heidelberg.

Fritz Ernst aroused Herde's interest in history through his lectures.

In 1954 Herde went to the University of Munich to study history, German and English literature.

Through Friedrich Baethgen, Herde turned to the history of the pope and the empire of the late Middle Ages.

Bernhard Bischoff gave him an understanding of palaeography, the history of Medieval Latin literature and Manuscript Studies.

In 1958, under the supervision of Peter Acht, he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in Munich with the thesis Contributions to papal chancery and documents in the 13th century.

The dissertation became a standard in the history of the papal chancellery and diplomacy.

From 1960 to 1962 he worked at the German Historical Institute in Rome.

The director Walther Holtzmann exerted a great influence on him.

In Rome he established friendly relations with Hermann Goldbrunner, Dieter Girgensohn, Norbert Kamp, Arnold Esch, Rudolf Hiestand and Rupert Hacker.

His habilitation dealt with the Formularium audientie litterarum contradictarum.

His Munich dissertation, first published in 1961, also received great international acclaim.

After his habilitation in 1965 – also with Peter Acht – he worked as a lecturer in Munich.

The work appeared in 1967 in a second, considerably extended edition.

One year after his doctorate, Herde's first scientific essay Gestaltung und Krisis christlich-jüdischen Verhältnisses in Regensburg am Ende des Mittelalters was published.

The essay was a result of his work on the edition of the documents and records on the history of the Jews in Regensburg.

The work was published in 1967 in a second improved and extended edition and became a standard work of papal diplomacy of the 13th century.

With the edition and investigation of the formula books of the Audientia litterarum contradictarum he published a two-volume and almost 1400-page Munich habilitation thesis.

The work was methodologically innovative, since Herde linked questions of document science and canonism.

Herde conducted research on late medieval papal documents, on the history of Italy, especially Florence in the Renaissance and the history of Sicily.

About Charles I of Anjou Herde published an extensive article in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.

Already in 1968, at the age of 35, he was appointed full professor for middle and modern history at the University of Frankfurt.

He took up the position the following year.

From 4 June 1976, he taught as a full professor of history, in particular medieval history, regional history and historical ancillary sciences, at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

This study on the first Angevinen on the Sicilian throne resulted in a biography in 1979.

In 2001 he was retired.

His farewell lecture, in which he took a critical look at recent developments in German higher education, was held on 16 June 2001 at a symposium in the Museumszentrum Lorsch.

Herde works in the field of medieval and modern history, especially on the history of the empire and the papacy of the later Middle Ages, on the social and intellectual history of Italian humanism and on the intellectual history of the Risorgimento.

His further research interests include the auxiliary sciences of history, the Bavarian Landesgeschichte and the history of the Second World War.

Through Peter Acht he began to deal with the papal documents of the 13th century.

In Würzburg, Herde dealt intensively with Franconian history and the history of the empire and pope in the 13th century.

But Herde also devoted himself to problems of the 19th century.