ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates a historian from a neutral state – rather than a scholar from Germany and Austria, countries generally considered centres of Germanocentric ideology – to explore his wide network of volkisch-nationalist colleagues and his motives for collaborating. It provides Hektor Ammann’s trajectory from his early political and scholarly works in the 1920s to his position as professor of medieval economic history at the universities of Mannheim and Saarbrucken in the late 1950s. The chapter illustrates the development of Ammann’s ideology and reconstructs his intellectual milieu. It explores his ideas about economics in the late Middle Ages, before exploring Ammann’s trajectory in the post-war period and continuities in his ideology. Ammann’s political ideology was interrelated with his conception of medieval economic history, and he legitimised his political positions through his historical investigations. Ammann’s academic competence and the originality of his approaches to medieval economic history would have allowed him to pursue an academic career.
