Walter Ullmann, FBA

Walter Ullmann FBA was born on November 29, 1910, in Pulkau, Austria and died January 18, 1983, Cambridge, UK. He was an Austrian-Jewish scholar, who settled in the United Kingdom after leaving Austria in the late 1930s. He was a recognized authority on medieval political thought, and in particular legal theory, an area in which he published prolifically.

Ullmann was the son of a doctor he attended the classical languages school in Horn and studied law at Vienna and Innsbruck. Having a non-Aryan grandfather made it dangerous for him to remain in Austria, so he left for England in 1939 and took up a position a Catholic boarding school in Leicestershire.

In 1940 he enlisted, and served in the engineering corps for three years before withdrawing due to ill health.

After the war he had positions at the University of Leeds, and then from 1949 at the University of Cambridge. He became Professor of Medieval History, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1972.

Notable people who studied under Ullman include Janet Nelson.

Ullmann principally concerned himself with the history of thought in the mediaeval period and the history of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. His most successful book was The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, which deals with the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical power in medieval times. Innsbruck University awarded him an honorary doctorate in political science.

Works: The Medieval Idea of Law as Represented by Lucas de Penna: A Study in Fourteenth-Century Legal Scholarship. (1946) introduction by Harold Dexter Hazeltine Medieval Papalism. The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (1949) 1948 Maitland Lectures The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages: A study in the ideological relation of clerical to lay power (1955) The Medieval Papacy, St Thomas and Beyond (1960) The Aquinas Society of London, Aquinas Paper No. 35: Liber Regie Capelle: A Manuscript in the Bibliotheca Publica, Evora (1961) A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages (1965). Republished as Medieval Political Thought (1972) The Relevance of Medieval Ecclesiastical History: An Inaugural Lecture ( (1966) The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages (1966) Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (1966). Traducción española: Principios de Gobierno y Política en la Edad Media. Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1971. Traducción de Graciela Soriano. Depósito Legal: M. 5.727-1971. Conclusiones fundamentales del estudio de Walter Ullmann The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (1969) The Birkbeck Lectures 1968-9 A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (1972) Origins of the Great Schism: A Study in fourteenth-century Ecclesiastical History (1972) The Future of Medieval History: An Inaugural Lecture.(1973) Law and Politics in the Middle Ages. An Introduction to the Sources of Medieval Political Ideas (1975) The Church and the Law in the Earlier Middle Ages: Selected Essays (1975) Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism (1977) Law and Jurisdiction in the Middle Ages (1988)

Literature Raoul C. Van Caenegem, Legal historians I have known: a personal memoir, in: Rechtsgeschichte, Zeitschrift des Max-Planck Instituts für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, 2010, S.252-299. References[edit]

"Walter Ullmann Is Dead at 72; Was Scholar on Middle Ages". New York Times. 1983-01-22.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ullmann

Trinity College Chapel - Memorial 1910-83. Walter UllmannLawyer and Professor of Medieval History.

Ullmann was born in Lower Austria, and at the age of four accompanied his parents as they served at the Serbian front. He studied in Vienna and Innsbruck, and began to practise as a criminal lawyer until he was forced to escape to Britain in 1938, as a result of his vigorous prosecution of Nazi criminals, and of the discovery of Jewish blood in his ancestry.

He was welcomed to Cambridge, thanks to a Cambridge committee for the support of refugee scholars, and found rich material for his studies in the Wren Library. He taught at Ratcliffe College in Leicestershire before briefly taking up a lecturership at the University of Leeds, and subsequently at Cambridge. He published the first of his many books in 1946.

Ullmann became a recognised authority on medieval political thought, and in particular legal theory. He was awarded a readership in 1957, the degree of LittD in 1958, a fellowship of Trinity in 1959, an ad hominem chair in 1966, fellowship of the British Academy in 1968, and the chair of medieval history in 1972.

Memorial inscription WALTER ULLMANN

Avstria relicta vtrivsqve ivris iam peritvs hvc exvl venit hic libenter mansit ivsqve romanvm qvo ipse tamqvam ecclesia vixit ad totvm medivm aevvm et praecipve longas inter caesarem et papam rixas illvstrandvm felicissime addvxit. Fidei propositiqve tenax a discipvlis maxime dilectvs vniversitatis professor insignis sociis collegii socivs gratissimvs. Obiit a.s. mcmlxxxiii aetatis svae lxxiii.

Translation: When Walter Ullmann came here as a refugee from Austria and willingly stayed, he was already qualified in civil and canon law; like the Church itself, he lived by Roman law, and brilliantly deployed it so as to illuminate the whole of the Middle Ages, and especially the Investiture Dispute. Steadfast in faith and purpose, he was greatly loved by his pupils; as Professor in the University he was widely appreciated and as Fellow of the College very dear to his colleagues. He died in 1983 at the age of seventy-two.

The Brass memorial is located on the north wall of the Ante-Chapel. Inscription text by Tony Weir.

http://trinitycollegechapel.com/about/memorials/brasses/ullmann/

Ullmann brass