Wittgenstein Award Laureate
Wittgenstein Award Laureate 2004 Univ. Prof. Dr. Walter Pohl
Early Mediaeval History and Culture
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Research into the Middle Ages
Details Institut für Mittelalterforschung 
Univ.Prof.Dr. Walter Pohl Institut für Mittelalterforschung
Wittgenstein Projekt 2005 - 2009
”This is a page from one of the most interesting manuscripts of Lombard law, almost exactly 1000 years old. Working with medieval manuscripts gives me a fascinating sense of the profoundity of the past.”
THE ROOTS OF EUROPEAN IDENTITIES
”There was probably never a nation that referred to itself as Germans.” This sentence may cause younger readers to laugh, while most others will simply be surprised. But Walter Pohl has good reasons for his supposition. For the past twenty years he has been studying the beginnings of national identity in peoples of the early middle ages and has helped to found his own ”Vienna School” of historical research.
His work was recognized in 2004 with the award of the Wittgenstein Prize, which has enabled his team systematically to deepen their knowledge. The work starts with seemingly banal questions. As the summary of the Wittgenstein project asks, ”Why does someone consider himself or herself to be a Bavarian or a German, an Englishman or a Briton, an Italian or a Padanian?” Looking back over 1500 years may shed light on the problem and may even – this is one of the hopes of the project leader – contribute to an understanding of present and future ethnic conflicts.
As Pohl says, ”the Prize permitted a quantum leap in the quality of our research. After a year we’re already beginning to see how diversely European identities developed at the start of the middle ages.” It’s true that the old clichés – barbarism, relapse, rough times – are true but at the same time this was the period when the nations we know today arose, however with the exception of the Germans, who seem to represent rather the perception of others than their own assignment. ”It was by no means obvious that the ethnic groups should be legitimatized by political rule and should produce, e.g, a King of the Swedes or the Hungarians. Just think of the developments in the Arabic region, in Byzantine or in India, where matters took a very different course.”
The second important development for the project was the formation of the Christian identities in the middle ages (the plural form is used deliberately: there were many different draft versions of Christian existence). The general religious nature would be expected to be inconsistent with particular ethnic feelings, ”but Christianity was also connected with the crystallization of ethnic states, as no kingdom could arise without a clerical basis”. There is enough support for this interpretation even in the Bible.
What Walter Pohl has said so far only represents a fraction of what is going on as a result of studies of sources relating to this early period of history. The Wittgenstein money is paving the way. It is ”dry money”, very dry, i.e. it benefits everybody except the actual recipient of the Prize (not taking research trips and purchases for the institute into account). But this makes sense, as ”it helps young people to work without worrying about where to find money – it’s a roundabout way of supporting young scientists”.
In particular in the humanities and social sciences Pohl feels scientists have the responsibility to give their co-workers the chance to make a name for themselves via their own publications, ”so that they’re not dumped at the end of the project without having anything to show”. At the same time, however, the signature of the prizewinner should be clear. Getting the balance right involves a tightrope walk at a time when Pohl has ”less time than ever before”. It is possible in many other countries to devote part of research grants to funding teaching replacements to take over lecture duties, thus freeing the recipients of the awards to carry out their own research. But not in Austria. Nevertheless, another positive feature of the Wittgenstein Prize is that recipients do not constantly have to worry about finding third-party funding. And prizewinners have closer contacts to colleagues in other disciplines. ”I am also getting to know the other prizewinners – Renée Schroeder has formed a club – and they are very interesting people!”
