FUNK, PHILIPP. — Historian, b. 26 June 1884 at Wasseralfingen (Württemberg), d. 14 January 1937 at Freiburg im Breisgau. He entered the seminary at Rottenburg but did not pursue an ecclesiastical career. After leaving the seminary, drawn by reformist ideas, he was attracted to Modernism and in 1910 assumed the direction of the official organ of the German Modernists.
As a historian he first distinguished himself in 1909 with a study on Cardinal James of Vitry (Jakob von Vitry, Leben und Werke, Leipzig 1909). Professor at Braunsberg in 1927, he succeeded H. Finke two years later in the chair of medieval history at Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1929 he directed the Historisches Jahrbuch.
BIBL.: W. Kosch, Das katholische Deutschland, 1, August 1933, cols. 898-99; J. Spörl, P. F. zum Gedächtnis, in Historisches Jahrbuch, 57 (1937), pp. 1-15.