About: Hans Hirsch

Hans Hirsch (27 December 1878 – 20 August 1940) was an Austrian academic who worked between 1903 and 1914 on the vast "Monumenta Germaniae Historica" sources project, and subsequently became a full-time professional historian. He accepted an ordinary (full) professorship in history at the German University (as it became known after 1918) in Prague as the war ended, transferring in 1926 to the University of Vienna. The focus of his research and teaching was on medieval history. In parallel he built for himself a reputation as a specialist on the (recently "discovered" - or, at least, reclassified by the media) "Sudeten Germans", which marked him out as a more than averagely politicised historian. His application for party membership was still outstanding at the time of his death, however.