Introduction

Unbroken bonds

Levison, Wilhelm: England and the continent in the eighth century, Oxford 1946; with glued-in dedication to the MGH by Elsa Levison, 21.07.1947

After the capitulation of France in World War II, the British government classified Wilhelm Levison and his wife as „enemy aliens“ and held them in an internment camp on the Isle of Man, some 270 km from their new home in Durham, from 25 June to 2 September 1940. On their release, however, they were able to return to Durham and continue their life without further disturbance.

Levison was received with open arms in English academic circles. The University of Durham, which had granted him a doctor title honoris causa in 1931, presented him with an honorary fellowship on his immigration in 1939. In 1942, he was chosen as „Ford’s Lecturer in English History“ at the famous university of Oxford, one of the most prestigious awards for historians in England. Nevertheless, Wilhelm Levison never forgot the important role that the MGH and the University of Bonn had played in his life. In the prologue to his book „England and the Continent in the Eighth Century“, published 1946 in Oxford, he writes: „I should be untrue to myself if I did not mention my old alma mater Bonnensis and the Monumenta Germaniae historica. If my present book is of any use at all, it is based on the foundation laid in connexion with the service which I was privileged to perform for these two institutions during many years, and I think with grateful mind of the happy collaboration with old friends, colleagues and pupils, many of whom did not bow the knee to Baal, but remained faithful till the hour of parting could no longer be avoided“ (Levison, England, S. VII).

One of the treasures of the MGH library is a personally dedicated copy of this anthology that Elsa Levison sent to the MGH – at that time still in Pommersfelden near Bamberg - six months after the death of her husband Wilhelm, testifying his enduring attachment to the Monumenta.

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