FOUNDING DIRECTOR

Heiko A. Oberman (1930-2001) Ph.D. University of Utrecht, Netherlands, 1957 Author of Luther: Man Between God and the Devil and winner of the 1996 A. H. Heineken Prize for History

Heiko Augustinus Oberman was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and received his university training at the University of Utrecht and Oxford University, earning his doctorate in 1957. Following professorships at Harvard University (1958-1966, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History) and the University of Tübingen, Germany (1966-1984, Director of the Institut für Spätmittelalter und Reformation), he founded the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at The University of Arizona in 1989. Over the years Professor Oberman served as guest professor at Brandeis University, the University of Zürich, Stanford University, the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and All Souls College (Oxford).

Professor Oberman was awarded the 1996 A. H. Heineken Prize for History by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the highest recognition a historian can achieve. The committee lauded him as a "true pioneer in the field of Historical Science, particularly due to the new light he has shed on the study of the history of the Middle Ages and Modern Age. Oberman has moved beyond traditional boundaries by linking eras, subdisciplines, and national research methods."

Author and/or editor of 30 books and some hundred articles, he is particularly known for his prize-winning study The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Harvard University Press, 1963) and for his Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (English version, Yale University Press, 1990), for which he received the German Historischer Sachbuchpreis for "the most significant history book during the decade 1975-1985."

In October 2000, the Division celebrated Professor Oberman's seventieth birthday and over 40 years of his work in the field of Reformation history with an international symposium held in Tucson. At that time, Professor Oberman and his family conditionally bequeathed his personal research library to The University of Arizona. A Festschrift entitled Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History (Brill, 2000) was presented to Professor Oberman for his many contributions to the field. A volume of the work presented at the symposium was published by Brill Academic Publishers in 2002, entitled The Work of Heiko A. Oberman: Papers From a Symposium on His Seventieth Birthday.

It is well known that Professor Oberman was proudest of the Five Star Faculty Award presented to him by The University of Arizona in 1989 acknowledging his "excellence and notable teaching abilities." In the early days of the Division, he began the hallmark tradition of holding Thursday-evening seminars at his home where discussions ran long into the night. Seminars often feature national and international guests who respond on a personal level to the revealing question, "What makes you tick as an historian?"

A campaign is under way to endow the Heiko A. Oberman Chair in Late Medieval and Reformation History in the Division, which will symbolize his educational values and secure their pursuit at a superior level for years to come. When this chair is endowed, the Oberman Research Library will be transferred to The University of Arizona Libraries.

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