MEISTER, ALOIS. - German Catholic historian, b. 7 Dec. 1866 in Frankfurt am Main, d. 28 Jan. 1925 in Münster. He studied at the University of Strasbourg and was a pupil of Scheffer-Boichorst.
In 1892 he was a paid fellow at the Roman Historical Institute of the Görres-Gesellschaft, devoting himself particularly to the nunciature of Cologne in the years from 1584 to 1590, a subject on which in 1895 he published a volume in collaboration with S. Ehsses. Having obtained his habilitation at Bonn in 1894, he was from 1899 onward professor of history at the University of Münster. In 1906 he founded and edited a series of manuals introductory to the study of German medieval and modern history, which was very successful: in it he himself published two volumes, one on the foundations of historical method (Grundzüge der historischen Methode, 1906), the other on the history of the German constitution of the Middle Ages (Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters, 1907). He took an interest in ciphers in the history of diplomacy. Among his writings are remembered: Die Hohenstaufen im Elsass (1890); Der Strassburger Kapitelstreit (1899); Die Fragmente der Libri VIII miraculorum des Cäsarius von Heisterbach (1901); Die Anfänge der modernen diplomatischen Geheimschrift (1902); Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der päpstlichen Kurie (1906); Friedrich der Grosse und das preussische Westfalen (1912); Frankreich und das Saargebiet (1922).
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Silvio Furlani