Godefroid Kurth

Academic career

In 1873, Kurth became the first person to be awarded the "special doctorate in historical sciences", for a dissertation on Cato the Elder. The same year, he became chair of Medieval History and Belgian History at the University of Liège. One of his students, Henri Pirenne, became a noted historian. Léon-Ernest Halkin considered them the founders of the scientific method of history in Belgium. Kurth modeled his pedagogy on that instituted by the German historian Leopold von Ranke at the University of Berlin. On 7 May 1894 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. He was a member of the committee that organized the Exposition de l'art ancien au Pays de Liège for the 1905 International exposition in Liège.

In 1906, Kurth was promoted to emeritus status and left the university to take up the position of director of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome. In 1908, a Festschrift was published in his honor, Mélanges Godefriod Kurth (Université de Liège, 1908). Halkin said of him, "Godefroid Kurth [was] the last of the romantic historians and the first of the 'technical' historians in Belgium."

Political and social thought

In Liège, Kurth encountered difficulties because of his strongly held Catholic views, which were considered ultramontane by his contemporaries. He was an active member of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1873, he was elected president of the Cercle catholique de l'Est, one of the predecessor bodies to the Catholic Party, which Kurth played a role in founding. He was also a pioneer of Christian democracy, helping organize the Social Congresses held in Liège in 1886, 1887, and 1890 that gave shape to Catholic social teaching. His study of the medieval guild system brought an increased appreciation for the principles of charity, brotherhood, and justice. Published in 1886, Les Origines de la civilisation moderne brought him an international reputation but was controversial in drawing a direct connection between the "civilizing principle" of Christianity and the development of modern civilization.

Later life and death

Kurth, who had strong links with the German Centre Party and with German colleagues, was repulsed by the German invasion of Belgium and the accompanying atrocities. Over the summer and autumn of 1915, he gathered testimony of the atrocities, including the killings at Aarschot, but was placed in detention by the Germans in an unheated location. He contracted pneumonia and died at Asse on 4 January 1916. He was provisionally buried in Asse, and later exhumed and reburied in Arlon at St Martin's Church. There are streets named after him in both Arlon, Asse and Liège.

His work on the atrocities was published posthumously as Le Guet-apens prussien en Belgique ("The Prussian Ambush in Belgium"). Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier wrote in the preface that Kurth, whose family origins were German, was "overwhelmed by the invasion, its iniquity, its atrocities, its sham".

In January 1950, KBR bought the letters sent by Kurth to his cousin, Jean-Pierre Waltzing.

Honours and awards

• Prix quinquennal des Sciences historiques (1891)
• Commander in the Order of St Gregory the Great (1906)
• Commander in the Order of Leopold (1907)
• Honorary Doctorate of the Catholic University of Leuven (1912)