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| Professor Wolfgang Hug (right) in conversation with the late Chairman of Freiburg’s Museumsgesellschaft Dr. Ulrich Dold in 2010 |
We always had lively discussions about God and everything under the sun, but unlike me, he was an inexhaustible source of knowledge concerning history. Although I studied physics, Wolfgang leniently supported my late-in-life efforts in Freiburg's history.
Whenever he talked about Baden's history or religious topics, I hung on every word, reading his lips. Nobody could speak as eloquently and with a subtle ironic undertone about Erasmus of Rotterdam* as Professor Hug. His last publications concerned the Reformation, a topic he, as a committed Catholic, filled with his hopes for ecumenism.
*Erasmus spent a couple of years in Freiburg
It was impressive to see Wolfgang living in peace with his Catholic Church. He did not excuse the crimes committed by and in the name of the Church but tried to explain to posterity the conditions under which people made their decisions in the past, even if they had the chance to make a different one.
Historians and amateur historians miss you, Wolfgang. Rest in peace.
Whenever he talked about Baden's history or religious topics, I hung on every word, reading his lips. Nobody could speak as eloquently and with a subtle ironic undertone about Erasmus of Rotterdam* as Professor Hug. His last publications concerned the Reformation, a topic he, as a committed Catholic, filled with his hopes for ecumenism.
*Erasmus spent a couple of years in Freiburg
It was impressive to see Wolfgang living in peace with his Catholic Church. He did not excuse the crimes committed by and in the name of the Church but tried to explain to posterity the conditions under which people made their decisions in the past, even if they had the chance to make a different one.
Historians and amateur historians miss you, Wolfgang. Rest in peace.
*
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