An Interview with Herwig Wolfram

AN INTERVIEW WITH HERWIG WOLFRAM by John Eldevik and Christoph Sonnlechner In October 2002, Herwig Wolfram retired as Director of the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung (Institute for Austrian Historical Research) and professor of Medieval History and Historical Auxiliary Sciences at the University of Vienna. The directorship of the Institute, founded in 1854, is the most prestigious appointment in the Austrian historical academy and has traditionally been held by an eminent medievalist . Former directors have included luminaries such as Theodor Sickel (1826–1908), a pioneer in the critical study of medieval royal charters, and the late Heinrich Fichtenau (1912–2000), who made pathbreaking contributions to medieval studies with his work on diplomatics , intellectual and cultural history.1 Wolfram succeeded Fichtenau as director of the Institute in 1983. Today the Institute continues to train students in a special degree program focusing on Austrian and European history, auxiliary sciences, and archival administration. It serves as the institutional home of the Diplomata regum et imperatorum section of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica where charters of emperor Henry VI (1147–1150) are currently being prepared for publication. The Institute hosts as well teams of researchers editing the register of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) and new volumes of the Regesta Imperii , a complete inventory of the official documents issued by the German and Austrian emperors. Most anglophone medievalists know Wolfram best through his History of the Goths, and also The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples , which challenged traditional ideas about the ”barbarian invasions” and the “decline and fall” of the Roman Empire using the concept of ethnogenesis, the study of changing structures of group identity and self-perception over time as people move in and out of different political and social environments.2 But early medievalists and specialists in 1 On the history of the institute, particularly prior to the second World War, cf. Alfons Lhotsky, “Geschichte des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 1854–1954, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungs-Band 17 (Vienna 1954). More recently, see Wolfram’s own remarks in “Das Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforchung,” in Annali dell’Istituto Italo-Germanico in Trento 20 (1994) 293–04. 2 The History of the Goths, trans. Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley and Los Angeles JOHN ELDEVIK AND CHRISTOPH SONNLECHNER 188 German regional studies also know Wolfram’s extensive work on medieval Bavaria, particularly the early history of Salzburg.3 There is as well as his series of landmark studies in diplomatics, Intitulatio, examining how concepts of rulership and authority are reflected in the way kings and the nobility described themselves in their official documents.4 More recently, Wolfram has overseen his most ambitious project to date, the editing and publication of a multi-volume history of Austria from pre-historic times to the present (currently comprising eleven volumes with several more in preparation), for which he himself contributed one volume spanning the late Roman and early medieval periods.5 In 2000, H. G. Beck Verlag published his latest monograph, a study of the reign of the first Salian emperor, Conrad II.6 In 1968–1969, Wolfram came to Los Angeles for a year as a visiting professor in the History department at UCLA. At the time, UCLA boasted one of the most dynamic communities of medieval scholars anywhere in the world, including the founding director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Lynn White, jr., Byzantinist Milton Anastos, intellectual historian Amos Funkenstein, the Slavicist Heinrik Birnbaum, and two fellow-Austrians, the orientalist Gustave von Grunebaum, and historian Gerhard Ladner. He has returned frequently since then as a visitor and guest lecturer. Professor-emeritus Wolfram now divides his time between Salzburg and Vienna and continues to research and write while carrying on duties as a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and board member of 1988); The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1997); While most closely associated today with Wolfram and some of his students, the idea of “ethnogenesis,” and the historical, rather than biological, contingency of ethnicity was first developed and applied by the German historian Reinhard Wenskus in the context of his seminal work on early medieval Germanic...