17 Facts About Wolf Liebeschuetz

John Hugo Wolfgang Gideon Liebeschuetz was a German-born British historian who specialized in late antiquity.

John Hugo Wolfgang Gideon Liebeschuetz was born in Hamburg on 22 June 1927, the son of historian Hans Liebeschuetz and physician Rahel Plaut.

Wolf Liebeschuetz's father was a prominent medievalist who taught at the University of Hamburg.

The Wolf Liebeschuetz family was Jewish, and were subjected to increasing persecution following the seizure of power by the Nazis.

Wolf Liebeschuetz's father was twice arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after the Kristallnacht of November 1938.

The emigration of Hans Wolf Liebeschuetz was sponsored by the Warburg Institute, with whom the family had long been closely associated.

Hans Wolf Liebeschuetz taught Latin at a number of schools and after the war he became a lecturer at the University of Liverpool.

Wolf Liebeschuetz gained his Higher School Certificate at Whitgift School, Croydon in 1944.

Wolf Liebeschuetz performed National Service in the Canal Zone in Egypt, as a sergeant in the Royal Army Educational Corps.

Wolf Liebeschuetz retired in 1992, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy the same year.

The Wolf Liebeschuetz's research centred on late antiquity, particularly the nature of Roman cities and Roman religion during this time.

Wolf Liebeschuetz argued that Roman religion remained strong well into late antiquity.

Wolf Liebeschuetz further argued that parts of the Getica of Jordanes, such as the account of a Gothic migration from Scandinavia towards the Black Sea, are derived from genuinely Gothic oral traditions.

Wolf Liebeschuetz maintained that the early Germanic peoples shared closely related language, culture and identity, and considered that the concept of Germanic peoples remains indispensable for scholarship.

Wolf Liebeschuetz felt that many members of this project denied the impact or even existence of Germanic peoples, and sought to blacklist the traditional idea that the Roman Empire had declined.

Wolf Liebeschuetz argued that these scholars were practising an ideologically dogmatic and flawed form of scholarship, and manipulating history to promote multiculturalism and European federalism.

Wolf Liebeschuetz married Margaret Taylor in 1955, with whom he had three daughters and one son and five grandchildren.