Walter Pohl | |
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 Pohl in 2021 | |
| Born | 27 September 1953 Vienna, Austria |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Doctoral advisor | Herwig Wolfram |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Medieval History |
| School or tradition | Vienna School |
| Institutions |
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| Main interests | Late Antiquity |
Walter Pohl (born 27 December 1953) is an Austrian historian who is Professor of Auxiliary Sciences of History and Medieval History at the University of Vienna. He is a leading member of the Vienna School of History.
Walter Pohl was born in Vienna,Austria,on 27 December 1953. He received his PhD at the University of Vienna in 1984 under the supervision of Herwig Wolfram with a thesis on the Pannonian Avars. He received his habilitation in medieval history at the University of Vienna in 1989. [1]
Pohl is a leading member of the European Science Foundation and the recipient of a large number of grants from the European Research Council. He was a key member of the Transformation of the Roman World project. In 2004,Pohl was elected Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies and Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2013,Pohl was elected a Member of Academia Europaea. [1]
Together with Wolfram,Pohl is a leading member of the Vienna School of History. However,he has a "much more fluid" approach on the issues[ which? ] than Wolfram or the latter's mentor Reinhard Wenskus. Pohl's theories are "profoundly influenced" by sociology,the philosophy of language and critical theory. [2]
Pohl is well known for his theories about the Germanic peoples. He regards the category 'Germanic' as a primarily linguistic one,and doubts whether ethnicity is useful as a concept in analyzing the early Germanic peoples. [3] [4] Pohl treats the Germani strictly as a Roman construct existing from the 1st century BC to the 6th century AD. [4] He does not consider language and culture as defining the Germani,and instead stresses fluidity,flexibility and ambiguity. [5] He partly follows the ancient,contemporary,definitions of the Germani which did not include the Goths,Vandals and Merovingian Franks. [5] [6]
Pohl's work has faced some opposition. Wolf Liebeschuetz called his work "extraordinarily one-sided" and a form of ideological "dogmatism" evincing "a closed mind",which he believed to be a reaction to Nazi racism. [7] Liebeschuetz agrees with Pohl's view that the early Germanic peoples did not form a racial unit,but he opposed the increasingly popular idea among modern scholars such as Pohl that the early Germanic peoples had no single shared set of institutions or values of their own,because this idea conflicts with Liebeschuetz's belief that these peoples should be considered a single entity that made a major contribution to the emergence of Medieval Europe. [8] [4] John F. Drinkwater has suggested that Pohl's theories on Germanic peoples are motivated by a desire to accelerate European integration. [5]
On the other hand,members of the Toronto School of History,led by Walter Goffart,have accused Pohl of not going far enough in his denials of the existence of a single continuous Germanic ethnicity in late antiquity. They charge Pohl and his colleagues at Vienna with perpetuating older German nationalist scholarship in an improved form. According to them,some of Pohl's theories on Germanic peoples are still ultimately derived from nineteenth-century germanische Altertumskunde,via scholars such as Otto Höfler,and have not changed significantly since Reinhard Wenskus. [9] These charges have been denied by Pohl,who argues that ethnogenesis theory "has come a long way" since Wenskus,and that his own critique of Wenskus is in fact parallel to the critiques which are,in his view wrongly against him. [10] As evidence of how far the Vienna ethnogenesis paradigm has changed,he wrote: [11]
Works in English translation. For a complete list see publications Archived 26 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine .
The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who once occupied Northwestern and Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and early medieval Germanic languages and are thus equated at least approximately with Germanic-speaking peoples, although different academic disciplines have their own definitions of what makes someone or something "Germanic". The Romans named the area belonging to North-Central Europe in which Germanic peoples lived Germania, stretching east to west between the Vistula and Rhine rivers and north to south from southern Scandinavia to the upper Danube. In discussions of the Roman period, the Germanic peoples are sometimes referred to as Germani or ancient Germans, although many scholars consider the second term problematic since it suggests identity with present-day Germans. The very concept of "Germanic peoples" has become the subject of controversy among contemporary scholars. Some scholars call for its total abandonment as a modern construct since lumping "Germanic peoples" together implies a common group identity for which there is little evidence. Other scholars have defended the term's continued use and argue that a common Germanic language allows one to speak of "Germanic peoples", regardless of whether these ancient and medieval peoples saw themselves as having a common identity. While several historians and archaeologists continue to use the term "Germanic peoples" to refer to historical people groups from the 1st to 4th centuries CE, the term is no longer used by most historians and archaeologists for the period around the Fall of the Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages.
The Goths were Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe.
The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman kingdoms.
Germania, also called Magna Germania, Germania Libera, or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a historical region in north-central Europe during the Roman era, which was associated by Roman authors with the Germanic people. The region stretched roughly from the Middle and Lower Rhine in the west to the Vistula in the east. It also extended at some point as far south as the Upper and Middle Danube and Pannonia, and to the known parts of southern Scandinavia in the north. Archaeologically, these people correspond roughly to the Roman Iron Age of those regions. While dominated by Germanic people, Magna Germania was also inhabited by a few other Indo-European people.
Ethnogenesis is the formation and development of an ethnic group. This can originate by group self-identification or by outside identification.
Otto Eduard Gotfried Ernst Höfler was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. A student of Rudolf Much, Höfler was Professor and Chair of German Language and Old German Literature at the University of Vienna. Höfler was also a Nazi from 1922 and a member of the SS Ahnenerbe before the Second World War. Höfler was a close friend of Georges Dumézil and Stig Wikander, with whom he worked closely on developing studies on Indo-European society. He tutored a significant number of future prominent scholars at Vienna, and was the author of works on early Germanic culture. Julia Zernack refers to him as the "perhaps most famous and probably most controversial representative" of the "Vienna School" of Germanic studies founded by Much.
Peter John Heather is a British historian of late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Heather is Chair of the Medieval History Department and Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He specialises in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Goths, on which he for decades has been considered the world's leading authority.
Walter Andre Goffart is a German-born American historian who specializes in Late Antiquity and the European Middle Ages. He taught for many years in the history department and Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto (1960–1999), and is currently a senior research scholar at Yale University. He is the author of monographs on a ninth-century forgery, late Roman taxation, four "barbarian" historians, and historical atlases.
Michael Kulikowski is an American historian. He is a professor of history and classics and the head of the history department at Pennsylvania State University. Kulikowski specializes in the history of the western Mediterranean world of late antiquity. He is sometimes associated with the Toronto School of History and was a student of Walter Goffart.
Rudolf Much was an Austrian philologist and historian who specialized in Germanic studies. Much was Professor and Chair of Germanic Linguistic History and Germanic Antiquity at the University of Vienna, during which he tutored generations of students and published a number of influential works, some of which have remained standard works up to the present day.
Herwig Wolfram is an Austrian historian who is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna and the former Director of the Institute of Austrian Historical Research. He is a leading member of the Vienna School of History, and internationally known for his authoritative works on the history of Austria, the Goths, and relationships between the Germanic peoples and the Roman Empire.
Germanic law is a scholarly term used to describe a series of commonalities between the various law codes of the early Germanic peoples. These were compared with statements in Tacitus and Caesar as well as with high and late medieval law codes from Germany and Scandinavia. Until the 1950s, these commonalities were held to be the result of a distinct Germanic legal culture. Scholarship since then has questioned this premise and argued that many "Germanic" features instead derive from provincial Roman law. Although most scholars no longer hold that Germanic law was a distinct legal system, some still argue for the retention of the term and for the potential that some aspects of the Leges in particular derive from a Germanic culture. Scholarly consensus as of 2023 is that Germanic law is best understood in opposition to Roman law, in that it was not "learned" and incorporated regional pecularities.
Guy Halsall is an English historian and academic, specialising in Early Medieval Europe. He is currently based at the University of York, and has published a number of books, essays, and articles on the subject of early medieval history and archaeology. Halsall's current research focuses on western Europe in the important period of change around AD 600 and on the application of continental philosophy to history. He taught at the University of Newcastle and Birkbeck, University of London, before moving to the University of York.
The barbarian kingdoms were states founded by various non-Roman, primarily Germanic, peoples in Western Europe and North Africa following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. The barbarian kingdoms were the principal governments in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The time of the barbarian kingdoms is considered to have come to an end with Charlemagne's coronation as emperor in 800.
Early Germanic culture was the culture of the early Germanic peoples. Largely derived from a synthesis of Proto-Indo-European and indigenous Northern European elements, the Germanic culture started to exist in the Jastorf culture that developed out of the Nordic Bronze Age. It came under significant external influence during the Migration Period, particularly from ancient Rome.
John Hugo Wolfgang Gideon Liebeschuetz was a German-born British historian who specialized in late antiquity.
The Vienna School of History is an influential school of historical thinking based at the University of Vienna. It is closely associated with Reinhard Wenskus, Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl. Partly drawing upon ideas from sociology and critical theory, scholars of the Vienna School have utilized the concept of ethnogenesis to reassess the notion of ethnicity as it applies to historical groups of peoples such as the Germanic tribes. Focusing on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Vienna School has a large publishing output, and has had a major influence on the modern analysis of barbarian identity.
Dieter Timpe was a German historian best known for his theories on Arminius and the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Roland Steinacher is an Austrian historian who is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Innsbruck.
Reinhard Wenskus was a German historian who was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Göttingen. His theories on the identity of Germanic peoples have had a major influence on contemporary research by historians of late antiquity.
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