Wattenbach, Wilhelm

Wattenbach, Wilhelm

 

Born Sept. 22, 1819, in Rantzau, in Holstein; died Sept. 20, 1897, in Frankfurt am Main. German historian, source researcher, and paleographer.

Wattenbach was a professor at the university in Heidelburg (from 1862) and then in Berlin (1872). He was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences (from 1881). In 1843 he began to participate in putting out the multivolume edition of medieval sources Monumenta. Germaniae historica, and heading the project between 1886 and 1888. His principal work, Historical Sources for Germany in the Middle Ages up to the Middle of the 13th Century, is still the main textbook on sources on Germany for this period.

WORKS

Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur Mitte desXIII Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1858. [Newly revised and sup- plemented editions: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: Vorzeit und Karolinger, fascicles 1-4. Weimar, 1950-63. (Jointly with W. Levison.) Also, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: Deutsche Kaiserzeit, fascicles 1-4. Edited by E. Holtzmann. Tübingen, 1948.]