Stefan Weinfurter (* June 24, 1945 in Prachatice, Czechoslovakia; † August 27, 2018 in Mainz) was a German historian who researched the history of the Early and High Middle Ages.
Weinfurter held chairs in medieval history at the universities of Eichstätt (1982-1987), Mainz (1987-1994), Munich (1994-1999) and Heidelberg (1999-2013). His books, for example on the two holy emperors of the Middle Ages, Charlemagne and Henry II, on the empire in the Middle Ages or on Emperor Henry IV's road to Canossa, have been widely read. He introduced the concept of "configurations of order", which describes the coexistence and opposition of medieval orders, into the medievalist discussion. From the 1990s on, he and Bernd Schneidmüller played a leading role in almost all major medieval exhibitions in Germany. As editor of the scholarly volumes accompanying the Rhineland-Palatinate state exhibition "Das Reich der Salier 1024-1125" in Speyer in 1992 and through numerous other publications, Weinfurter proved himself to be one of the best experts on the era of the Salian emperors.
Life
Early years
Stefan Weinfurter was born in 1945 in Prachatitz, South Bohemia, to Julius Weinfurter, a teacher, and his wife Renata, née Lumbe Edle von Mallonitz (1922-2008), who came from a family of lawyers. His maternal ancestor Josef Thaddeus Lumbe von Mallonitz was ennobled in 1867. Weinfurter's father was drafted into military service during World War II and became an American prisoner. He died on May 8, 1945, the day of the German Instrument of Surrender, in the Prisoner of War camp Büderich. After being expelled from Czechoslovakia in February 1946, Weinfurter grew up with his mother in Hechendorf am Pilsensee, then in Munich and Geretsried from 1958. His Bohemian origins and family reintegration left a lasting impression on Weinfurter.
He graduated from the high school Karlsgymnasium in Munich in July 1966. Stefan Weinfurter then studied physics at the Technical University of Munich for one semester in 1966/67. He then began studying history, German language and literature, and education at the University of Munich in the summer semester of 1967, graduating in the summer semester of 1971. He took the proseminar in medieval history with Johannes Spörl, with whom he became a student assistant following the proseminar paper on Charles IV. In 1970 Weinfurter passed the state examination in Munich. From the winter semester of 1971/72 to the winter semester of 1972/73, he studied history and German at the University of Cologne. In 1971/72 he became an assistant to Odilo Engels. Weinfurter received his doctorate from the latter in the summer semester of 1973 with a thesis on the Salzburg bishopric reform and episcopal politics in the 12th century. From 1973 to 1974 he worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne, and from 1974 to 1981 as an academic councilor or senior councilor. Weinfurter abandoned the originally planned habilitation project on the history of the Duchy of Bavaria in the early and high Middle Ages. In 1980 he habilitated instead in Cologne with an annotated edition of the order of life of a Limburg monastery of the regulated Canons Regular of St. Augustine from the 12th century. In 1981/82 he represented the chair of medieval history at the University of Heidelberg, which had become vacant due to the death of Peter Classen.