Godefroid Kurth

Life

Godefroid Kurth was born on 11 May 1847 in Arlon, the capital of the Belgian province of Luxembourg. His father, a former soldier from Cologne who was naturalised as a Belgian in 1842, became a police commissioner in Arlon, but died 1850. The family spoke Luxembourgish at home and he learned French in primary school. He was educated at the Athénée royal d'Arlon and the Liège Normal school, where he completed his studies in 1869. That same year he was appointed French master at the Athénée royal de Liège.

In 1873 Kurth became the first person to be awarded the "special doctorate in historical sciences", for a dissertation on Cato the Elder. The same year, he became chair of Medieval History and Belgian History at the University of Liège. One of his students, Henri Pirenne, became a noted historian. Halkin considered them the founders of the scientific method of history in Belgium. Kurth modelled his pedagogy on that instituted by the German historian Leopold von Ranke at the University of Berlin. On 7 May 1894 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. He was a member of the committee that organised the Exposition de l'art ancien au Pays de Liége for the 1905 International exposition in Liège.

In 1906 Kurth was promoted to emeritus status and left the university to take up the position of director of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome. In 1908 a Festschrift was published in his honour, Mélanges Godefriod Kurth (Université de Liége, 1908). Léon Halkin said of him, "Godefroid Kurth [was] the last of the romantic historians and the first of the 'technical' historians in Belgium".

In Liège, Kurth encountered difficulties because of his strongly held Catholic views, which were considered ultramontane by his contemporaries. He was an active member of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1873 he was elected president of the Cercle catholique de l'Est, one of the predecessor bodies to the Catholic Party, which Kurth played a role in founding. He was also a pioneer of Christian democracy, helping organise the Social Congresses held in Liège in 1886, 1887 and 1890 that gave shape to Catholic social teaching. His study of the medieval guild system brought an increased appreciation of the principles of charity. brotherhood and justice. Published in 1886, Les Origines de la civilisation moderne brought him an international reputation but was controversial in drawing a direct connection between the "civilizing principle" of Christianity and the development of modern civilization.

Kurth, who had strong links with the German Centre Party and with German colleagues, was repulsed by the German invasion of Belgium and the accompanying atrocities. Over the summer and autumn of 1915 he gathered testimony of the atrocities, including the killings at Aarschot, but was placed in detention by the Germans in an unheated location. He contracted pneumonia, and died at Asse on 4 January 1916. He was provisionally buried in Asse, and later exhumed and reburied in Arlon. There are streets named after him in both Arlon and Liège.

His work on the atrocities was published posthumously as Le Guet-apens prussien en Belgique ("The Prussian Ambush in Belgium"). Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier wrote in the preface that Kurth, whose family origins were German, was "overwhelmed by the invasion, its iniquity, its atrocities, its sham".

Honours and awards

Works

Godefroid Kurth wrote over 500 books and journal articles, including contributions to the Catholic Encyclopedia. His "style is consciously literary, lively, and flamboyant; ...However, Kurth's version of history is also notably technical; it is founded on rigorous principles of historical criticism, extensive mastery of philology and profound knowledge of the sources and other works." His Clovis (1895), Notger de Liège (1905), and La cité de Liège au Moyen-âge (1909-1910) remain indispensable reference works.