Otto Brunner

Who was Otto Brunner?

Otto Brunner was an Austrian historian. He is best known for his work on later medieval and early modern European social history.

Brunner's research made a sharp break with the traditional forms of political and social history practiced in German and Austrian academia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, proposing in its place a new model of social history informed by attention to "folkish" cultural values, particularly as related to political violence and ideas of lordship and leadership.

He taught at the University of Vienna and later the University of Hamburg. From 1940 to 1945, he also served as the director of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research in Vienna, a prestigious school for archival and historical studies.