Professor Björn Weiler
It is with much sadness that the University notes the passing of Professor Björn Weiler, a member of the Department of History & Welsh History, and a highly respected and talented historian of medieval Europe.
Born in Schweinfurt, Bavaria in 1969, Björn undertook undergraduate study at the Free University of West Berlin before gaining a Masters degree and PhD at the University of St Andrews as an Erasmus student. Following brief spells employed at Swansea University and the University of Durham, Björn was appointed Lecturer at Aberystwyth in 2001, was promoted shortly thereafter to Senior Lecturer in 2006 and was awarded a personal chair in 2012.
Björn’s research centred on medieval Latin narrative texts from across Europe, on which he was an acknowledged expert. Beginning his research, as a postgraduate on the English king, Henry III, and his relationship with European rulers in the thirteenth century, a more traditionally political investigation, Björn came increasingly to direct his attention to chronicle writing. In the first place, this involved detailed discussion and close reading of the work of the thirteenth-century English chronicler, Matthew Paris, work that resulted in a number of seminal publications in leading history journals. His work on English sources led him to continental narrative sources and he developed a vast understanding of medieval political writing. This work was framed in terms of political culture and also generated key publications, including an edition of essays arising from a British Academy conference on historical culture and historical writing.
Throughout his prolific career, Björn also continued and developed an interest in medieval kingship, both in terms of the practical questions as to how it was established and how maintained, but also in relation to the political symbolism of royal power in the Middle Ages. As such, Björn was an advocate for historical investigation of political symbolism, an approach more in favour amongst German academics working in Germany; instrumental in bringing such thinking into the British research environment, he applied it with vigour. A major outcome was Björn’s Cambridge University Press monograph, Paths to Kingship, an important investigation of high medieval power and the modes through which it was established. In this work, as through so much of his output, Björn showed himself not only to be an enthusiast for comparative and pan-European investigation of major topics in medieval history but a historian with a deftness of touch and an exemplary depth of understanding. As one colleague wrote in recent days, Björn was ‘a genuinely great historian’, and his published work will stand as testimony to that.
The esteem with which Björn was held in the discipline was recognised through the award of fellowships at other institutions, including the Centre for Research in the Arts & Social Sciences, Cambridge University, the Centre for Medieval Studies at Bergen, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. That esteem is also evident in a workshop to be held in his honour at the University of Bonn in January and a two-volume festschrift being prepared in tribute to his life and work.
Björn was widely respected across the community of medieval historians, but also greatly liked and admired by colleagues across the University and by his students. In their personal tributes to him, many have noted his care for the wellbeing of others and his considerable sense of humour. One former student noted ‘the regular emails with a link to a song accompanied by a recipe that he had recently tried. From Debussy, Satie and Bach to Rammstein and cheesy disco music – there was a song for every occasion.’
Björn will be greatly missed by all who knew him and the department and University have lost a talented colleague and dear friend.
My thanks to Björn’s colleagues for preparing this tribute.
Dr Steve Thompson, Head of the Department of History and Welsh History