WERMINGHOFF, ALBERT. - Historian and jurist, b. 3 Aug. 1869 at Wiesbaden, d. 2 Feb. 1923 at Halle.
A pupil of Scheffer-Boichorst in Berlin, from his very first work (his dissertation on the distraints of the imperial cities of the middle and lower Rhine in the 13th and 14th centuries) he was chiefly interested in the juridical-institutional aspects of medieval history. In 1896 he began his collaboration with the MGH and edited, with exemplary diligence, the edition of the Concilia aevi Karolini (1904-1908). In the meantime he had obtained his habilitation in medieval history at the University of Greifswald and in 1907 had been appointed full professor at Königsberg. The study of medieval ecclesiastical law naturally led him to the drafting of the Geschichte der deutschen Kirchenverfassung im Mittelalter (Hannover 1905; 2nd ed. under the title Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen Kirche im Mittelalter, Leipzig 1913), still today a fundamental work on the subject. At the same time he directed, together with Stutz, the canonistic section of the Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Called to the University of Halle in 1913, he devoted himself in the last years of his life to studies on the German Quattrocento. His Ludwig Eyb der Ältere (1919) is precisely a notable contribution to the history of humanism in Germany. In 1921 the University of Leipzig called him to join its academic body, but a serious liver disease, which prevented him from teaching, led him to his death. 4
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Silvio Furlani