Gerd Tellenbach

From 1962 to 1971, he was director of the German Historical Institute in Rome, a state-sponsored research center dedicated to German-Italian studies and the history of the Papacy in the Middle Ages.

At Freiburg, as well as during his tenure as director of the German Historical Institute in Rome, he trained and served as a mentor to a large number of students of medieval history who went on to receive important academic chairs throughout Germany.

His most famous student was Karl Schmid (1923–1993), who further developed Tellenbach's research on medieval noble families and pioneered important new techniques in prosopography and source criticism using monastic necrologies and memorial books.

His conception of the Investiture Controversy as an epochal clash of opposing ideologies about "right order in the world," (hierocratic vs. monarchic) was certainly formed as a young scholar witnessing the vicious political conflicts that engulfed the universities in the 1930s and 1940s.

Throughout his career, and particularly in his publicly visible role as university Rektor, he remained a thoughtful and forceful advocate of academic and intellectual freedom as critical components of liberal democracy.