Hans Hirsch

Hans Hirsch (27 December 1878 – 20 August 1940) was an Austrian academic who worked between 1903 and 1914 on the vast "Monumenta Germaniae Historica" sources project, and subsequently became a full-time professional historian. He accepted an ordinary (full) professorship in history at the German University (as it became known after 1918) in Prague as the war ended, transferring in 1926 to the University of Vienna. The focus of his research and teaching was on medieval history. In parallel he built for himself a reputation as a specialist on the (recently "discovered" - or, at least, reclassified by the media) "Sudeten Germans", which marked him out as a more than averagely politicised historian. His application for party membership was still outstanding at the time of his death, however. Johann "Hans" Hirsch was born at Zwettl, a small but ancient town in Lower Austria that had grown up around a Cictercian monastery in the hill country of the "Böhmerwald" ("Bohemian Woods") to the north-west of Vienna. An obituary published in 1942 refers to his having lost his father early, while another source gives his father's occupation as that of a cattle dealer and the year of his father's death as 1909. He remained close to his mother, who lived on till 1939, virtually throughout his life. He evidently received a sound grounding in history and "Love of country" during his school-days, which included a period of study at the Monastery School attached to "Zwettl Abbey". He completed his schooling in 1897 at the "Gymnasium" (secondary school) in Wiener Neustadt, a short distance to the south of the Austrian capital, and close to Austria's traditional frontier with the Kingdom of Hungary. Later that same year he enrolled at the University of Vienna to study history and art history. Between 1899 and 1901 he studied for a teaching qualification at the university's "Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung", where he was influenced, in particular, by Engelbert Mühlbacher. Student contemporaries included Wilhelm Bauer and Heinrich Srbik.