(*17 August 1934, † 5 January 2025)
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica mourn the death of Prof. Dr František Šmahel, who died on January 5 2025 at the age of 90. With his profound knowledge of the source materials and his openness for new approaches and interdisciplinary studies, he was a defining figure of Czech medieval studies in the 20th and 21st centuries and a path blazer who inspired and encouraged following generations of scholars. František Šmahel’s highly unusual biography was shaped by the momentous events of the 20th century. Born in Kamnitz (Trhová Kamenice) in 1934, he worked for a short time as a miner in Ostrava before studying history in Prague, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1963. Thereafter, he worked as director of the civic museum in Litvínov and as a researcher at the Prague Academy of Sciences. His scholarly career was abruptly interrupted by the violent suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, whereafter he earned his living as a tram driver until 1979.
In 1980, Šmahel seized the chance to return to historical studies working at the Hussite Museum Tábor. This turned out to be a formative occupation. His monumental history of the Hussite revolution in four volumes, published by the MGH in 2002, is generally acclaimed as a masterpiece and standard treatment of the subject. Taking up a professorship at the Charles University Prague in 1995, he was an untiring advocate of new European perspectives on Bohemian history. His narrative of the last journey of Emperor Charles IV to Paris to meet his nephew, the French king Charles V, in 1377/78 is a captivating and gripping study of international dimensions (published in 2006 in Czech, 2014 in English translation). In 1998, Šmahel founded the Prague Centre for Medieval Studies, a forum for new, interdisciplinary Czech medieval studies. The list of his fundamental publications includes a major editorial achievement in the edition of the Basel Compactata, published 2019 by the MGH.
František Šmahel was an untiringly productive historian. In his home country, his name is inseparably bound with the history of the Middle Ages. He was also internationally highly respected, being elected as a corresponding member of the British Academy in 1997, of the central board of directors of the MGH in 2003, and of the Medieval Academy of America in 2007. His death is a great loss to us all and we will dearly miss him as a scholar and inspiring teacher, but more still as a warm-hearted and humorous personality.
Prof. Dr Eva Schlotheuber