History

Heinz Schilling was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2002 for his outstanding interdisciplinary research into the history of early modern Europe, in which he reveals the interrelationship between confessionalisation and national identity formation.
The relationship between Church and State; the role of migrants; education; the imposition of norms and values; comparison of developments across Europe: most of the research themes studied by Heinz Schilling could have come straight from the leader columns of today’s newspapers. The difference is that in Schilling’s case it is the relationship between all these themes in the past which is important, and thus the historical origins of key elements of the world in which we now live. Schilling is concerned above all with European history in the time of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and his work has brought us a more coherent picture of this period. For many years historians studying early modern Europe (1550-1650), either studied the processes of state formation or religious developments. Schilling, by contrast, studies religious, social and political factors in relation to each other. He has pointed out that both the newly formed Protestant and the Catholic states began working closely with what was generally the only official Church within their region. Schilling makes clear that there is much greater unity in European history than was previously assumed, and he raises that history above the boundaries between countries and religions.

Further reading
Niederländische Exulanten im 16. Jahrhundert. Ihre Stellung im Sozialgefüge und im religiösen Leben deutscher und englischer Städte, Gütersloh 1972.
Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung. Eine Fallstudie über das Verhältnis von religiösem und sozialem Wandel in der Frühzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe, Gütersloh (Gütersloher Verlagshaus) 1981.
Religion, Political Culture, and the Emergence of Early Modern Society. Essays in German and Dutch History, Leiden 1992.
Confessional Europe: Bureaucrats, La Bonne Police, Civilizations, in: Handbook of European History 1400-1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, hg. von Th. A. Brady, H.A. Oberman und J.D. Tracy, Bd. II, Leiden 1995, S. 641-681.
Die neue Zeit. Vom Christenheitseuropa zum Europa der Staaten. 1250 bis 1750, Berlin (Siedler) 1999, Siedler Geschichte Europas, Bd. 3.

Biography
Professor Heinz Schilling was born in 1942 in Bergneustadt, Germany. In 1963 he embarked on a study of history, German studies, philosophy and sociology at the universities of Cologne and Freiburg. His dissertation (1971) deals with Dutch emigrants in the 16th century. The topic of his Habilitation (a postdoctoral dissertation which is a requirement for those wishing to become a professor at a university in Germany) was the relationship between religious conflicts and state formation. From 1980 he was attached successively to the universities of Osnabrück and Giessen, and since 1992 Heinz Schilling has been a professor in the Department of History at Humboldt University in Berlin. He has also been a guest lecturer at the universities of Wisconsin, Madison and Berkeley. Not only is Schilling himself an extremely productive researcher, but his work has also provided a baseline for comparative research by others.
Professor Schilling also actively seeks to make his subject accessible to a wider public, and makes regular contributions to radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and exhibitions. He is also a member of various societies and editor of several journals and series.

Jan de Vries was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2000 for his pioneering research into the development of the European economy between 1500 and 1800.
He conducted pioneering research into the early modern history of the European economy, specifically in the Dutch Republic (the Northern Netherlands). Professor De Vries has used economic theories and concepts to organise a huge quantity of wide-ranging historical data in a most original and transparent manner, allowing him to reveal astonishing viewpoints and patterns. He has succeeded in tracing the origins of the modern market economy and has shown the transition from the early modern economy to industrial society. He has gone further than any other historian thus far in analysing the role that urbanisation played during this period. Professor De Vries’s studies have focused mainly on the way in which different economic parties (households, farmers, artists, municipal authorities or groups of labourers) responded to market trade and, in turn, contributed to its development and expansion. He has succeeded in showing the links between macro-economic developments and history at local level, so that his work often has a very practical grounding. For example, he has analysed the role of the barge in the modernisation of Holland, and showed how the flourishing art market depended on economic variables. His work not only makes a highly significant contribution to the study of economic and demographic history, but also provides signposts for art historical research.

Further reading
The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500-1700. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1974;
The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1976;
Barges and Capitalism: Passenger Transportation in the Dutch Economy, 1632-1839. Wageningen: AAG-Bijdragen, 1978; 2e uitg. Utrecht: Hes Publishers, 1981;
European Urbanization, 1500-1800. Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1984;
Jan de Vries en Ad van der Woude, Nederland 1500-1815: De eerste ronde van moderne economische groei. Amsterdam, Balans, 1995;
David Freedberg en Jan de Vries (ed.), Art in History, History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-century Dutch Culture. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1991.

Biography
Jan de Vries was born in the Netherlands in 1943. He moved to the United States as a boy and is an American citizen. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1970 (Yale University). Since 1977 he has been Professor of History and, since 1982, Professor of History and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Professor de Vries and Ad van der Woude co-authored the standard work The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy from 1500 to 1815, which was awarded the Gyorgy Ranki Prize for ‘the best book on the economic history of Europe’. Professor De Vries was made a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989. He is also a member of the British Academy, the Society for Dutch Literature (Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde), and various international scholarly organisations. From 1991 to 1993 he held the post of president of the Economic History Association, and he is an editor of the Journal of Economic History.

Dr Mona Ozouf has been awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 1998 in recognition of her innovative approach to the French Revolution.
Unlike many others in the field, Dr Ozouf has taken neither a political nor a biographical approach to the French Revolution, thus avoiding the pitfalls of the subject. From a cultural-historical and anthropological angle, she has presented the Revolution as a popular event. Dr Ozouf studied the mentality of the French bourgeoisie during the Revolution, and the use of festivals and other cultural manifestations as a means to a revolutionary end. Festivals appear to have contributed significantly to the change in values and the nation’s unification. Her pioneering book on the festivals of the French Revolution has changed our perspective on the period and has suggested new avenues for historical research. While maintaining intellectual integrity and refraining from politicising, she has presented a compelling new image of the French Revolution that had so far remained hidden.
Mona Ozouf holds a special place among the historians of our period, both as an eminent specialist on the interaction between culture and politics since the Age of the Revolutions, and as an author with a extraordinary ability to convey a comprehensive vision of modern history to a broad public. Dr Ozouf has an unparalleled grasp of the subtle interplay between unity and variety – the interplay between nation and region, between the realism of politics and the utopia of celebration, between the unitary Citizen’s Republic and the perception of individual differences, between egalitarian democracy and the need for a dream, and between Europe and the singularity of France.

Biography
Mona Ozouf is a historian who has specialised in the French Revolution. She is Emeritus Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, France.

Professor Heiko A. Oberman has been awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Historical Science 1996 for his studies on the relation between religious and intellectual ideas in the late middle Ages and early Reformation. The awarding committee is of the opinion that Oberman is a true pioneer in the field of Historical Science, particularly due to the new light he has shed on the study of the history of the Middle Ages and Modern Age. Oberman has moved beyond traditional boundaries by linking eras, subdisciplines and national research methods.
In the late sixties, Professor Oberman’s focus extended yet further and he called for a practice of history in which intellectual and social history could function, in harmony, side-by-side. This new approach was the impetus for his book Masters of the Reformation. The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe (1977). From a methodological point of view, the great significance of this book was the step he initiated toward the analysis of religious views, such as those upheld among the various social strata. Oberman has bridged traditional gaps between historical subdisciplines and has broadened insight into the dissemination of religious innovation.

Biography
Professor Heiko A. Oberman was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands in 1930. He received his university training at the University of Utrecht. From 1964 until 1966 he was Winn Professor of Eccleciastical History, Harvard University. From 1966 until 1984 he was Director of the Institut für Spätmittelalter und Reformation, University of Tübingen, Germany. In 1984 he became Professor of the History of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation at the University of Arizona, Tucson, in the United States.
In 1981 and 1982, respectively, he published standard works on the origin of German anti-Semitism, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation and the biography Luther – Man between God and the Devil. Both works have been translated into Dutch.
Professor Oberman became a member (living abroad) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. He passed away in 2001.

Peter R.L. Brown was awarded the Amsterdam Prize for Historical Science 1994 for his research on the transition from paganism to Christianity in late Antiquity.
Peter R. L. Brown received the prize in recognition of the fact that his work is not afraid to challenge conventional historical wisdom. In a series of brilliant, highly readable studies, Peter Brown has subtly described the gradual transition from paganism to Christianity in late Antiquity. Brown has shown an uncanny knack for bringing to light aspects of this process which have been largely ignored. As an historian Brown oversteps the traditional chronological boundaries between the late Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages in his search for what distinguished and what united pagans and Christians, and for the answers to the questions as to how and why the pagan world of ancient Rome was gradually transformed into the Christian. Professor Brown has a long list of publications to his credit, many of which have been translated into other languages. His masterful biography of the great Latin doctor of the Church St Augustine, which appeared in 1967, was followed three years later by his brilliant World of Late Antiquity. From Marcus Aurelius to Mohammed. Brown’s Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. Towards a Christian Empire (1992) is a compelling account of how the Church adopted the pagan ideal of co-operation between the urban elite and the central imperial government under the guise of Christianity.
Professor Brown’s research engages and informs the educated layman as effectively as it does the professional scholar. His studies of a subject of no less weight than the Christian conversion of Europe are as intellectually profound as they are pleasurable to read.

Biography
Peter R.L. Brown was born in Dublin in 1935. He received his university training at New College, Oxford (MA) and remained at Oxford until 1975, as Fellow of All Souls (1956-1975), as Lecturer in Late Roman and Early Byzantine History (1970-1973) and as Reader with the same teaching responsibilities (1973-1975). From 1975 until 1976 he was Professor of History and Classics at Royal Holloway College, University of London. In 1978 he left England to become Professor of History and Classics at Berkeley (1975-1986). In 1986 he moved to Princeton University and in 1991 Brown was appointed foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Herman van der Wee received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Historical Science 1992 for his outstanding work in economic history. His interests extend from the Middle Ages to the present. 
Whether writing about the Low Countries, Europe or the world at large, he is capable of focusing on small but nonetheless significant details one moment, and then standing back and surveying global historical developments the next. His uncanny ability to analyse and synthesize complex sources using innovative methodologies has inspired countless other members of his profession.
In 1951 Van der Wee presented a thesis entitled Outline of a method for the history of prices and wages, and then turned his attention to the economic development of Antwerp and its European hinterland during the early modern period. Out of this research grew his monumental doctoral dissertation, which was published in 1963: The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy, fourteenth-sixteenth centuries. This pioneering study is distinguished by innovative approaches to historical inquiry, metrology, monetary history, statistics, and to the analysis of economic cycles and development. After completing his dissertation, Van der Wee continued his exploration of the institutional aspects of Western European monetary and financial history and quantitative social history. In the contest of an international project surrounding the history of banking in pre-industrial Europe, he studied the role of sixteenth-century Antwerp merchants in developing new financial techniques.
His interest in quantitative social history drew him into such matters as famine, employment, food, living standards and poverty. Van der Wee has not confined his research to the distant past. Not only has he published a study of the National Bank of Belgium, but also Prosperity and Upheaval: The World Economy. 1945-1980 (1983), which outlines global economic development since World War Two and also looks at current economic structures.

About the laureate
Herman van der Wee was born in 1928 in Lier, Belgium. He enrolled as a law student at the Catholic University of Louvain in 1945, where he received the doctor’s degree in 1950. His interest in the more speculative aspects of law led to a degree in philosophy in 1949. In 1951 and 1952 he earned further degrees in the political and social sciences as well as history. The academic year of 1951-1952 he spent in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, the following year at the London School of Economics.
Alongside his research, Van der Wee has had a brilliant academic career in Belgium and abroad. At the Catholic University of Louvain he progressed from the rank of lecturer (1955) to associate professor (1966), to professor (1967) and finally to full professor (1969). In the course of the decades that followed he has worked at numerous universities around the world as either a visiting professor or research fellow.
He is a member of many national and international organisations, including the Royal Academy of Science, Arts and Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. In 1986 he was elected president of the International Economic History Association. He founded the Workshop on Quantitative Economic History at the University of Louvain in 1968, which attracts graduate students and young scholars from all over the world, and promulgates new statistical, sociological and economic methodologies.
Van der Wee has been honoured by the Eugene Baie Foundation (1966) and the Royal Academy of Belgium (1968), besides receiving two Fulbright-Hayes fellowships (1975 and 1981). He is a compelling teacher, who inspires his students with his distinctive commitment to learning and scholarly innovation.

Peter Gay received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Historical Science 1990 for outstanding work in the field of European history. The decision was based on excellent scholarship, but must on the ability to reach a wider audience than that of professional historians only. 
Professor Gay’s oeuvre most emphatically meets these criteria. In his work Professor Gay studies history from a social perspective. He has expressed his view of history in some thirty books, but his most significant publications are undoubtedly his volumes on the Enlightenment and the world of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie.
The two volumes which appeared in the late 1960s under the general title The Enlightenment: an Interpretation, have become standard works. They are scholarly studies, but are also accessible to a wider public. They are comprehensive and informative. Professor Gay describes the Enlightenment with great admiration for its courage, energy and humanity, although there are certainly also many demonstrable problems and shortcomings. The author’s firm belief in progress and learning is unmistakably clear from this work.
During the 1970s Professor Gay turned to the application of psychoanalysis to historical themes. He wrote a large-scale biography of Freud and two volumes on the world of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie in the United States and Europe, an undertaking which will be continued in three subsequent volumes. In the two volumes of this ambitious project which have so far appeared, he has been able to present new and invariably interesting information. These books offer an insight into the attitude of the bourgeoisie to sexuality and love which is much more dynamic and attractive than the one previously presented to the general public. In general, the scope, power and elegance which is characteristic of Professor Gay’s work command admiration.

About the laureate
Peter Gay was born in 1923 in Berlin. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 where he obtained his B.A. at the University of Denver, Colorado in 1946. In 1947 he received his M.A. and in 1951 his Ph.D. from Columbia University. From 1962 to 1969 he worked as Professor of History at Columbia University, occupying the William R. Shepherd Chair from 1967 onwards.
Since 1969 he has worked at Yale University, where he was appointed Professor in Comparative and Intellectual European History. In addition, he held the Durfee Chair and the Sterling Chair of History.
Professor Gay is a member of the American Historical Association, the French Historical Society and Phi Beta Kappa. Furthermore he has held a number of major fellowships.
Professor Gay’s many books include studies of the European Enlightment, Voltaire’s political thought, the social democratic revisionism of Bernstein, and the culture of the Weimar Republic.
Professor Gay passed away in May 2015.