Bronze AUSTRIA Medal A.Hartic 1938 Alfons Dopsch (1868-1953) Historian 70mm (94)

AUSTRIA
BRONZE 1938 MEDAL BY
A.HARTIC
On 60TH BIRTDAY TO Alfons Dopsch
Obsverse: Bust Left 1868-1938
Reverse: Plain
70mm
Alfons Dopsch (14 June 1868 in Lobositz,
Bohemia – 1 September 1953 in Vienna) was an Austrian social and economic
historian who specialized in the history of medieval Europe. He studied
at
Institut fur Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung and was a Professor at
the
University of Vienna, 1898-1936.
Dopsch, using archaeological evidence, rejected the highly defined
periodization
of other scholars in favour of an emphasis on long term continuity and
gradual
change. He argued that the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe
was
not as catastrophic as had previously been thought and that the Middle
Ages had
evolved in an orderly way as the Germans absorbed and developed Roman
culture.
These views were criticized by the Russian historian Alexander Udaltsov
who
argued that Dopsch over emphasized the presence of private land ownership
and
social inequality among pre-feudal German clans.
Some of his views have since been rejected by modern scholars but his
work
continues to represent an important perspective on the debate about the
effects
of the collapse of the empire on Western Europe


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