Rudolf Much the son of archaeologist Matthäus Much, was an Austrian

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

 Germanist, considered one of the founding fathers of Germanic studies

Germanic studies

Germanic studies is the field of study of the Germanic languages and the history of the Germanic peoples.Subfields*English studies*German studies*Dutch studies*Scandinavian studies*Runology*comparative linguistics Founding figures...

.

His 1887 dissertation On the Prehistory of Germany (Zur Vorgeschichte Deutschlands) reflects the interest in Germanic antiquity Much shared with his teacher Wilhelm Tomaschek

Wilhelm Tomaschek

Wilhelm Tomaschek, or Vilém Tomášek was a Czech-Austrian geographer and orientalist. Born at Olmiitz, in Moravia, he received his education at Vienna,...

, whose special field of interest was the tribal territories of the Germanic peoples in antiquity. In 1906, Much became professor at the newly founded chair of Germanic Antiquity (Germanische Altertumskunde und Sprachgeschichte) in Vienna, which he held until his retirement in 1932.

Much was sympathetic towards German nationalism

German nationalism in Austria

German nationalism is a political ideology and a current in Austrian politics. It has its origins in the German National Movement of the 19th century, a nationalist movement of the German-speaking population in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had striven for a closer connection of the...

 and the interwar period

Interwar period

Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....

 calls for a Großdeutschland prohibited by the Allies

Allies of World War I

The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...

.
He also became a member of the Catholic-German nationalist Deutsche Gemeinschaft secret society. Much cannot, however, be described as sympathetic towards the rise of the Nazi Party, and he was careful to put scholarship before ideology, and his recensions often expressed disdain for ideologically motivated bad scholarship.
Much is nevertheless treated critically in more recent assessment, his German nationalism in retrospect appearing as a precursor to Nazi ideology.

Much's major opus is his commentary of Tacitus

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...

' Germania

Germania (book)

The Germania , written by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus around 98, is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire.-Contents:...

, published posthumously in 1937-
He also contributed some 260 articles to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde

Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde

The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde is an important German-language encyclopedia treating the history of the Germanic peoples from antiquity to the middle ages...

Literature

• Hermann Reichert: Rudolf Much. In: Reallexkion der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Bd. 20, S. 273–279.
• Rudolf Simek: Rudolf Much. In: Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie. K. G. Saur Verlag, München u.a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-23160-1
• Wiesinger, Peter: 150 Jahre Germanistik in Wien, außeruniversitäre Frühgermanistik und Universitätsgermanistik; Peter Wiesinger/Daniel Steinbach, Wien: Ed. Praesens, 2001, 246 S., ISBN 3-7069-0104-8

External links