Matthias M. Tischler

Matthias Martin Tischler (born in Münchberg, Bavaria, March 18, 1968) is a German palaeographer, philologist and historian, stemming from a multinational and -confessional family with Austrian, Bohemian, French and Ungarian origins. After his great-uncle, the Austrian musicologist and composer Hans Tischler (Vienna, January 18, 1915 – Bloomington, Ind., November 18, 2010), he is the family’s second member with strong interests in the culture of the Middle Ages.

Academic Studies and Professional Career

Tischler has studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich Classical Philology and Medieval Latin, Medieval and Modern History, Applied Historical Sciences and Romance Philology (1989–1995). After his Heidelberg PhD in 1998 (director: Walter Berschin) he was a Post-graduate fellowship holder at the Institut Historique Allemand in Paris (1998–1999) and in the University of Bamberg (1999–2001), and a Scientific assistant, Collaborator and Lecturer at the Hugo von Sankt Viktor-Institut in Frankfurt/M. and the University of Frankfurt/M. (2001–2009). In Frankfurt/M. he then studied Islam and Christian-Muslim encounters (2003–2005) with Christian Troll. After his Dresden habilitation in 2009 (director: Gert Melville) he was a Senior assistant professor of Medieval and Transcultural History at the University of Dresden up to 2012. Since 2013 he is a Research professor for Transcultural Medieval History at the Institut d’Estudis Medievals (IEM) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). In the academic year 2014/2015 he has been a visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris.

PhD and Thesis of Habilitation

Tischler has written his PhD on the production, transmission, reception and edition of Einhart’s Vita Karoli in the Middle Ages and Modern Times. His thesis of habilitation deals with the biblical legacy of the Augustinian abbey of St. Victor in Paris, a centre of scholastic learning with Europe-wide attraction and radiance between the 12th to the 15th centuries.

Research Fields and Publications

Tischler has published in different languages (German, English, French, Italian and Spanish) on the dissemination and use of Ostrogothic, Visigothic and Carolingian biographical, historiographical, juridical and philosophical texts and their effects on political identity building, on the role of the Jews’, Christians’ and Muslims’ sacred and polemical texts from comparative intra- and transcultural standpoints and on central aspects of the intellectual history of individual scholars and religious orders in the Early and Central Middle Ages. His more recent focus lies here on the interrelationship between the medieval edition of biblical manuscripts and historiographical writing in transcultural societies. Tischler's central research interests are the further development of codicological, palaeographical and philological studies within transcultural history, following methodologically his academic grandfather Bernhard Bischoff and his academic father Walter Berschin, the establishment of codicologically and philologically grounded Transcultural Medieval Studies on the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean World and beyond, and the development of a new master narrative on counteracting collective religious memories in the Middle Ages on the basis of Jan Assmann's and Aleida Assmann's concept of cultural memory and Johannes Fried's model of "historische Memorik".

New Projects

Tischler is currently writing a comprehensive monograph on the more or less unknown transfer of early scholastic learning from Northern France to the North-Eastern peripheries of the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries and the first part of a trilogy of the history of Christian-Muslim encounters and entanglements in the medieval Iberian Peninsula between the 8th and 15th centuries. In March 2014 he has been installed as the official editor of the new critical edition of Einhart’s Vita Karoli, which will be published by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich. From May 2015 onwards he is co-directing the FWF-project "Bible and Historiography in Transcultural Iberian Societies, 8th to 12th Centuries" at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

Scientific Activities

Tischler is the founder and editor-in-chief of the new Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies (JTMS), published by de Gruyter (Berlin - Munich - Boston) from 2014 onwards. He is furthermore co-editor of Medievalia. Revista d’Estudis Medievals, UAB, of Bibliotheca Philosophorum Medii Aevi Cataloniae, published by Obrador edèndum (Santa Coloma de Queralt), and of Rarissima Mediaevalia. Opera Latina, published by Aschendorff (Munster/W.).

Main Publications

Einharts Vita Karoli. Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption (MGH. Schriften 48, I–II), Hanover 2001 [ISBN 3-7752-5448-X].
Die Christus- und Engelweihe im Mittelalter. Texte, Bilder und Studien zu einem ekklesiologischen Erzählmotiv (Erudiri Sapientia. Studien zum Mittelalter und zu seiner Rezeptionsgeschichte 5), Berlin 2005 [ISBN 3-05-004075-0].
(together with Alexander Fidora), Christlicher Norden – Muslimischer Süden. Ansprüche und Wirklichkeiten von Christen, Juden und Muslimen auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (Erudiri Sapientia. Studien zum Mittelalter und zu seiner Rezeptionsgeschichte 7), Munster/W. 2011 [ISBN 978-3-402-10427-9].
(together with Michael Borgolte), Transkulturelle Verflechtungen im mittelalterlichen Jahrtausend. Europa, Ostasien, Afrika, Darmstadt 2012 [ISBN 978-3-534-24487-4].
Die Bibel in Saint-Victor zu Paris. Das Buch der Bücher als Gradmesser für wissenschaftliche, soziale und ordensgeschichtliche Umbrüche im europäischen Hoch- und Spätmittelalter (Corpus Victorinum. Instrumenta 6), Munster/W. 2014 [ISBN 978-3-402-10433-0].

External links