Ruedi Hagen Keller (born 2 May 1937, in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) is a German historian specializing in the history of the early and high Middle Ages. He works mainly on the Ottonian period, the Italian communes, and the culture of writing in the Middle Ages. Keller taught as Professor of Medieval History at the University of Münster from 1982 until his retirement in 2002. His collaboration with his colleague Gerd Althoff was particularly fruitful. With their work, Keller and Althoff made a decisive contribution to Münster's reputation in international medieval studies. Keller's research has had a considerable influence on German and international medieval studies since the 1980s and has led to a reassessment of early and high medieval kingship.
Life
Origin and early years Hagen Keller was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, in May 1937, the son of Rudolf Keller, an independent businessman, and his wife Ruth, who was born in Frankenbach. He has four siblings, including volcanologist Jörg Keller. Italy held a special attraction for the whole family. The family first travelled to Italy in 1952 to Lake Maggiore. Starting in the 1950s, the father established business relations with Italy. He imported Italian woodworking machinery. Keller's younger brothers continued the business. Keller's younger sister worked as an au pair, teaching German to the children of an Italian family. Jörg Keller studied for a time in Catania and later worked as a volcanologist in Italy.Intervista a Hagen Keller / Interview mit Hagen Keller, a cura di Paola Guglielmotti, Giovanni Isabella, Tiziana Lazzari, Gian Maria Varanini. In: Reti Medievali Rivista. Vol. 9, 2008, p. 10 (online).
After the bombing of Freiburg in 1944, the family lived in Pfullendorf, north of Lake Constance. They returned to Freiburg in 1950. During his school years, Hagen Keller was intensely interested in astronomy. From childhood on, he was less interested in historical novels or biographies; his historical curiosity was stimulated more by monuments and concrete objects. The starting point for his historical awareness was the direct experience of his childhood, the Second World War and National Socialism.Intervista a Hagen Keller / Interview mit Hagen Keller, a cura di Paola Guglielmotti, Giovanni Isabella, Tiziana Lazzari, Gian Maria Varanini. In: Reti Medievali Rivista. Volume. 9, 2008, p. 3 ff. (online).
Keller graduated from the Kepler Gymnasium in Freiburg in 1956. Inspired by his high school math and physics classes, he initially planned to study those subjects. However, he abandoned this plan shortly before the semester began. Keller decided to become a teacher. From the summer semester of 1956 to the summer semester of 1962, he studied history, Latin philology, science policy, German studies, philosophy, and physical education at the universities of Freiburg and Kiel. In his first semester, he completed the Medieval Proseminar with Manfred Hellmann. His interest in the Middle Ages was awakened during his third semester in the summer of 1957 by Hans Blumenberg's Kiel lecture on the philosophy of the 14th and 15th centuries. After his return to Freiburg, Keller concentrated on this period with Gerd Tellenbach.Hagen Keller: Überwindung und Gegenwart des „Mittelalters“ in der europäischen Moderne. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien 37, 2003, p. 477–496, here: p. 487 (retrieved via De Gruyter Online). Cf. also the Curriculum Vitae: Intervista a Hagen Keller / Interview mit Hagen Keller, a cura di Paola Guglielmotti, Giovanni Isabella, Tiziana Lazzari, Gian Maria Varanini. In: Reti Medievali Rivista. Volume. 9, 2008, p. 1 ff. (online).
Academic career From the beginning of 1959, Keller belonged to the "Freiburg working group" for medieval personal research, a group of young researchers led by Gerd Tellenbach.Karl Schmid: ‚Der Freiburger Arbeitskreis‘. Gerd Tellenbach zum 70. Geburtstag. In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins. Volume. 122, 1974, p. 331–347. There he met Karl Schmid, Joachim Wollasch, Eduard Hlawitschka, Hansmartin Schwarzmaier and Wilhelm Kurze. The professional exchange with Karl Schmid had a particularly lasting influence on him. As a student of Tellenbach, Keller initially dealt with basic questions of the Alemannic-Franconian history of the early Middle Ages. In 1962, he completed his doctorate under Tellenbach on the subject of Einsiedeln Monastery in Ottonian Swabia.
In 1962/63, Keller was a research assistant to Tellenbach at the Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Freiburg, and from 1963 to 1969 he was a research assistant at the German Historical Institute in Rome. It was during his stay in Rome that Keller determined that the social structure of medieval Italy would be one of the focal points of his future work. Keller also spent the first years of his marriage to Hanni Kahlert, whom he married in 1964, in Italy.
From 1969 to 1972, Keller again worked as a research assistant at the History Department of the University of Freiburg. There, in 1972, he earned his habilitation with a dissertation entitled Seniors and Vassals, Capitans and Valvassors. Studies on the ruling class in the Lombard cities of the 9th-12th centuries with special reference to Milan, the teaching qualification for Medieval and Modern History. The habilitation thesis was substantially revised and expanded for printing.Hagen Keller: Adelsherrschaft und städtische Gesellschaft in Oberitalien. 9. bis 12. Jahrhundert. Tübingen 1979, Preface XI f. In July 1972 he gave his inaugural lecture in Freiburg on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in the area between Lake Geneva and the High Rhine.Hagen Keller: Spätantike und Frühmittelalter im Gebiet zwischen Genfer See und Hochrhein. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien. Volume. 7, 1973, p. 1–26 (online).
After another stay at the German Historical Institute in Rome from 1972 to 1973, Keller worked as a university lecturer in Freiburg. In 1976 he was appointed associate professor. In 1978 he received a C3 professorship for Medieval History at the University of Freiburg. In 1979/80 he was Dean of the Philosophical Faculty IV and spokesman of the Joint Committee of the Philosophical Faculties of the University of Freiburg. From 1980 to 1982, Keller was head of the Department of Regional History in the Department of History.
In 1982 he succeeded Karl Hauck at the University of Münster, where he was full professor of medieval history and co-director of the Institute for Early Medieval Studies until his retirement in 2002. He gave his inaugural lecture in June 1983 on population growth and social organization in the European High Middle Ages using the example of Upper Italian agrarian society in the 12th and 13th centuries.Hagen Keller: Veränderungen des bäuerlichen Wirtschaftens und Lebens in Oberitalien während des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. Bevölkerungswachstum und Gesellschaftsorganisation im europäischen Hochmittelalter. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien. Vol. 25, 1991, p. 340-372 (accessed via De Gruyter Online). In Münster, Keller was one of the founders and for many years the spokesman of the special research area "Carriers, Fields, Forms of Pragmatic Writing" and of the graduate program "Written Culture and Society in the Middle Ages. Keller was instrumental in making Münster a centre of international medieval studies.
As an academic teacher, he supervised 25 dissertations and five habilitations. His academic students include Franz-Josef Arlinghaus, Marita Blattmann, Christoph Dartmann, Jenny Rahel Oesterle, Hedwig Röckelein, Thomas Scharff, and Petra Schulte. He was succeeded in Münster by Martin Kintzinger. Keller gave his farewell lecture in Münster in July 2002 on the overcoming and presence of the "Middle Ages" in European modernity.Hagen Keller: Überwindung und Gegenwart des „Mittelalters“ in der europäischen Moderne. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien. Vol. 37, 2003, p. 477-496 (accessed via De Gruyter Online). In it, he tried to define the current position of the Middle Ages. Since the 15th century, there has been a widespread social desire to distance oneself from the Middle Ages. Reform, revolution, rationality, and technical inventions, including their economic and military uses, had formed the guiding principles and the framework of life with which people wanted to distinguish themselves from the Middle Ages. In the last three decades, however, historians have increasingly relativized the epochal boundary around 1500. The scholarly discussion of epochal boundaries and epochal designations illustrates a new way of thinking about the relationship between the present and our long past.Hagen Keller: Überwindung und Gegenwart des „Mittelalters“ in der europäischen Moderne. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien. Vol. 37, 2003, p. 477-496, here: p. 480 (accessed via De Gruyter Online). In the face of an increasingly unclear awareness of the epoch, Keller locates the task and topicality of medieval studies in the self-assurance of man, for which knowledge of the past is necessary.Hagen Keller: Überwindung und Gegenwart des „Mittelalters“ in der europäischen Moderne. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien. Vol. 37, 2003, pp. 477-496, here: p. 487 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
Keller was co-editor of Propylaea History of Germany from 1982 to 1995 and co-editor of the series Münster Historical Research since 1991. From 1988 to 2011 he was editor of Early Medieval Studies.Christel Meier: 50 Jahre Frühmittelalterliche Studien. In: Frühmittelalterliche Studien, Vol. 50, 2016, pp. 1-13, here: p. 12 f. He has been a member of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg since 1980, of the Konstanz Working Group for Medieval History since 1989, and of the Historical Commission for Westphalia since 1990. Keller has been a visiting professor at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici in Naples (1979), at the University of Florence (1997), and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (2001). In 2002 he was elected to the British Academy and in the same year he became a member of the Royal Historical Society in London.
The 36th volume of Early Medieval Studies was dedicated to him. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2007, a conference was held in his honour in Münster,Cf. Jenny Oesterle: Tagungsbericht: Zwischen Pragmatik und Performanz – Dimensionen mittelalterlicher Schriftkultur, 02.05.2007 – 04.05.2007 Münster. In: H-Soz-Kult, June 3, 2007 (online). the results of which were published in 2011 in the anthology Between Pragmatics and Performance. Dimensions of Medieval Written Culture. In May 2017, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, a colloquium was held at the Department of History of the University of Münster. The focus was on current perspectives on the history of politics in the Middle Ages.Aktuelle Perspektiven einer Geschichte des Politischen im Mittelalter. Ein Kolloquium anlässlich des 80sten Geburtstags von Hagen Keller, 5. Mai 2017 Münster. In: H-Soz-Kult, April 18, 2017, (online).
Work