František Graus

František Graus ( born December 14, 1921 in Brno, † May 1, 1989 in Basel) was a Czechoslovakian historian.

Life

Because of his Jewish ancestry, he was deported in November 1941 in the Theresienstadt ghetto, from there in the fall of 1944 to Auschwitz. In Theresienstadt he was with his girlfriend at the relatively large underground communist cell. He worked here in the so-called Talmud hundred that had to catalog the confiscated Hebrew books from Jewish libraries.

After the war he studied history at the University of Prague, and in 1948 received his doctorate and his habilitation in 1951. From 1953 to 1969 he was Professor of Medieval History at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. After the Prague Spring in 1969 he emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Konstanz and then from 1970 to 1972 as Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Giessen. From 1972 to 1989 he was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Basel.

Gray has made substantive studies on questions of historical tradition education in addition to important research and stimulating social and structural -historical monographs, summarized in the magisterial work The living past. Tradition in the Middle Ages and in the ideas of the Middle Ages (Cologne / Vienna 1975). Another research focus of Graus was the story of the Jews and other marginalized groups in the Middle Ages. From 1953 to 1969 Gray editor of Československý časopis was historický. Gray was also a member of the Constance Working Group for medieval history.

Honors

Writings (selection )

• People, rulers and saints in the kingdom of the Merovingians. Studies of Merovingian hagiography, Prague 1965.
• Structure and history: three popular revolts in medieval Prague. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1971 ( lectures and research. Sonderbd. 7).
• The living past: tradition in the Middle Ages and in the ideas of the Middle Ages. Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna, 1975, ISBN 3-412-11875-3.
• The nations forming the Western Slavs in the Middle Ages. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1980, ISBN 3-7995-6103- X.
• Pest - Geissler - Jews murders. The 14th century as a time of crisis. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35622-6. ( Review ).
• Selected Essays 1959-1989. Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7995-6655-4.