Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Kantorowicz

Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz (May 3 1895 - September 9 1963) was a German-Jewish historian of medieval political and intellectual history, known for his 1927 book "Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite" on Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and in particular "The King's Two Bodies" (1957).

Kantorowicz was born in Posen (now Poznań, Poland) to a wealthy, assimilated German-Jewish family and as a young man was groomed to take over the family business (primarily liquor distilleries). After four years' service in the Army in World War I, he decided not to return to the business world, but went instead to study philosophy at the University of Berlin, at one point also joining a right-wing militia that helped put down the Spartacist uprising. The following year, he moved to the prestigious University of Heidelberg to study history with Karl Hampe and Friedrich Baethgen, two noted medievalists. While in Heidelberg, Kantorowicz became involved with the so-called Georgekreis, a group of artists and intellectuals devoted to the German poet and aesthete Stefan George and who shared an interest in art, literature and Romantic mysticism.

His association with the elitist and culturally conservative Georgekreis inspired Kantorowicz's unorthodox, aesthetic-cultural biography of the great Holy Roman emperor Frederick II. Instead of offering a more typical treatment of laws, institutions and important political achievements, the book took a decidedly poetic turn, portraying Frederick as an idealized spiritual, as much as political, leader of the German nation. The work elicited a combination of bewilderment and criticism from the mainstream historical academy. Reviewers complained that it was literary mythmaking and not a work of serious historical scholarship. As a result, Kantorowicz published a hefty companion volume ("Ergänzungsband") in 1931 which contained detailed historical documentation for the biography.

Despite the furor over the Frederick book, Kantorowicz received an appointment to an academic chair at the University of Frankfurt. In 1933, Kantorowicz had to resign his university position due to Nazi racial policies. Upon leaving, he took up a teaching position for a short time at Oxford before moving to the University of California, Berkeley in 1939. After a controversy prompted by his reaction to McCarthyism (he refused to take a loyalty oath required of all UC employees), he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Not long after arriving in Princeton, he published his masterpiece, "The King's Two Bodies", which explored, in the words of the volume's subtitle, "medieval political theology." In particular, the book traced the ways theologians, historians and canonists in the Middle Ages and early modern period understood the office and person of the king, as well as the idea of the kingdom, in corporeal and organological terms. The figure of the European monarch was a unique product of religious and legal traditions that eventually produced the notion of a "king" as simultaneously a person and an embodiment of the community of the realm. The book remains a classic in the field.

Kantorowicz was the subject of a controversial biographical sketch in the book "Inventing the Middle Ages" (1991) by the late American medievalist, Norman F. Cantor. Cantor, who knew Kantorowicz at Princeton, suggested that, but for his Jewish heritage, Kantorowicz (at least as a young scholar in the 1920s and 1930s) could be considered a Nazi in terms of his intellectual temperament and cultural values. Cantor compared Kantorowicz with another contemporary German medievalist, Percy Ernst Schramm, who worked on similar topics and was a member of the Nazi Party. Kantorowicz's defenders (particularly his student Robert L. Benson) responded that although as a younger man Kantorowicz embraced the Romantic ultranationalism of the Georgekreis, he had only disdain for Nazism and was a vocal critic of Hitler's regime.

References

*Alain Boureau, "Kantorowicz: Stories of a Historian" (1990, English translation 2001)
* Norman F. Cantor, "The Nazi Twins: Percy Ernst Schramm and Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz," in "Inventing the Middle Ages" (New York, 1991), pp. 79-117.
* "Medieval Scholarship Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline: History Volume 1", ed. Helen Damico & Joseph B Zavadil (New York, 1995), biographical essays for "Ernst H. Kantorowicz" by Robert E. Lerner and "Percy Ernst Schramm" by Janos Bak, both of whom respond to allegations in Cantor's book.
* "Defending Kantorowicz," Letter to the New York Review of Books by Robert L. Benson, Ralph E. Giesey and Margaret Sevcenko, Aug. 13, 1992. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2828]

External links

* [http://www.historicum.net/themen/klassiker-der-geschichtswissenschaft/20-jahrhundert/art/Kantorowicz_Er/html/artikel/2245/ca/2d2877a002/ short biography and quotes from Ernst Kantorowicz]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Ernst Kantorowicz — Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz (* 3. Mai 1895 in Posen; † 9. September 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey) war ein deutscher Historiker und Mediävist. Zunächst dem George Kreis zugehörig, von dessen Vorstellungen sein bedeutendes Jugendwerk Kaiser… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Ernst Kantorowicz — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Kantorowicz. Ernst Kantorowicz Naissance 3 mai 1895 Posen, aujourd hui Poznań Décès 9 septembre 1963 …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz — (* 3. Mai 1895 in Posen; † 9. September 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey) war ein deutsch jüdischer Historiker und Mediävist. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Leben 2 Forschung …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Kantorowicz — ist der Familienname folgender Personen: Adolph Kantorowicz (1836–1906), deutscher Eisenwarenhändler und Landtagsabgeordneter in Posen Alfred Kantorowicz (Zahnmediziner) (1880–1962), deutscher Zahnmediziner, Bruder von Hermann Kantorowicz Alfred… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • KANTOROWICZ (E. H.) — KANTOROWICZ ERNST H. (1895 1963) Auteur, tout d’abord, d’une monumentale biographie de Frédéric II Hohenstaufen (Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite , 1927, suivi d’un volume de notes en 1931), ouvrage qui ne fut publié en français qu’en 1987 (L’Empereur …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Kantorowicz — Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom. Patronymie Ernst Kantorowicz (1895 1963) est un historien allemand. Hermann Kantorowicz (1877 1940) est un juriste allemand. Serge Kantorowicz (1942 ) est …   Wikipédia en Français

  • KANTOROWICZ, ERNST HARTWIG — (1895–1963), German medieval historian. Born and educated in Prussia, he joined the army in World War I and was wounded at Verdun. At Heidelberg, Kantorowicz carried out research in ancient and then in medieval history and produced his first and… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Kantorowicz —   [ vɪtʃ],    1) Alfred, Publizist, Literarhistoriker und Schriftsteller, * Berlin 12. 8. 1899, ✝ Hamburg 27. 3. 1979. Kantorowicz, der sich 1931 der KPD anschloss, emigrierte 1933 nach Frankreich und kämpfte 1936 38 als Offizier der… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Kantorowicz — is a surname and may refer to:* Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, historian * Hermann Kantorowicz, jurist and civil lawyer …   Wikipedia

  • Ernst Fuchs (Jurist) — Ernst Fuchs (* 15. Oktober 1859 in Weingarten bei Karlsruhe; † 10. April 1929 in Karlsruhe) war ein deutscher Rechtsanwalt und Freirechtler. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Leben 2 Freirechtsbewegung 3 Familie …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”