JANSSEN, JOHANNES. – Historian, born on 10 April 1829 at Xanten, died on 24 December 1891 at Frankfurt am Main. He pursued his studies at the Universities of Louvain and Bonn; then in Berlin he attended the lectures of Wattenbach and K. Ritter, working passionately in the libraries during his free hours.
Ordained a priest in 1860, the following year he published a pamphlet, Frankreichs Rheingelüste und deutschfeindliche Politik in früheren Jahrhunderten (Freiburg im Breisgau 1861), which at first sight seems dictated by a merely nationalistic spirit, but in reality expresses rather the regret of a Catholic concerning the pro-Protestant policy of the kings of France, who, aiming to strengthen the individual states of Germany in order to weaken imperial authority, secured the triumph of Lutheranism over Catholicism. A rigorous guardian of historical truth, J. then subjected Schiller’s so-called historical works (The Defection of the Netherlands and The Thirty Years’ War) to careful criticism and, in his Schiller als Historiker (ibid. 1863), relegated them to the realm of fiction, destroying the myth of Schiller as a historian. After various other publications, among which the edition of the imperial correspondence of Frankfurt from 1373 to 1519 (Frankfurts Reichskorrespondenz, 2 vols., ibid. 1863–72) and the biography of his teacher and friend Boehmer (J. Fr. Boehmers Leben, Briefe und kleinere Schriften, ibid. 1868) deserve particular mention, he began the monumental Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. In this work J. demolished the historiographical legend of the decline of Catholic Germany toward the end of the Middle Ages, from which it was supposedly raised to new splendor by Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Published in 8 vols. (ibid. 1876–94), the last two of which were published posthumously under the care of L. Pastor, the History of the German People marked an epoch and acquired very wide recognition, as demonstrated by the editions subsequently produced. Pastor himself updated its content by lovingly reworking it (ibid. 1913–24). J. replied twice to the criticisms of his opponents (An meine Kritiker, ibid. 1884; Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, ibid. 1883). Born in the era of the Kulturkampf, J.’s opus magnum, composed according to the most rigorous historiographical principles then prevailing, marked a vigorous revival in German Catholic historiography.