Colmar Grünhagen

[1] Meanwhile, it was from the University of Halle that on 21 December 1850 Grünhagen received his doctorate for a piece of work on the pontiff who famously (for historians) launched the First Crusade with a powerful sermon preached on a hillside just outside Clermont on 27 November 1095, Pope Urban II.

At Easter 1853 he began work as a teaching assistant at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium (secondary school) in the city, becoming a full teacher there a few months later.

[5] The prestigious titles dated back to the late medieval period, but the core responsibilities of the head of the archives department appear to have remained broadly constant.

He combined this and other positions with the editorship of the journal of the Silesian Historical Association ("Verein für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens") between 1863 and 1905.

[4] Through his long tenure in these positions and as a result of the impressive quantity and detail of his output on Silesian history, Grünhagen became highly influential in his chosen specialist field, as well as with the Historical Association and the historian community more broadly.