He will not have said goodbye to his dear Alsatian land. Francis Rapp died at the Angers University Hospital on Sunday March 29, carried away by the Covid-19. He was 93 years old. Man will have marked French and German medieval history, as well as religious history, by the quality of his work. The nation had expressed his gratitude to him several times by making him Knight of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the National Order of Merit and Commander of the Order of Academic Palms.
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Francis Rapp was born in Strasbourg in 1926 into a family of the Catholic bourgeoisie. In addition to his brilliant studies, he joined years of scouting groups. He obtained the aggregation of history in 1952. The beginning of an impeccable university career: assistant at the University of Strasbourg, researcher at the CNRS, lecturer at the University of Nancy then, in 1974, master of conferences again in Strasbourg. Two years earlier, he had published his thesis on the Reformation in his hometown, where he united local history with the great history of the Church. A double interest which he will keep all his life.
Passion and clarity
Still on university programs, Francis Rapp's works have marked several generations of students for the clarity and strength of the subject. These include Medieval Origins of Modern Germany in 1989 and The Holy Roman Empire, from Otton the Great to Charles V , published in 2001. The latter had been awarded the Guizot Prize by the French Academy.
With his decades of teaching experience, Francis Rapp was on the board of directors of the National School of Charters and the French School in Rome. Since 1993, he also sat at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. His death follows a few weeks that of Lucien Braun, another eminent Strasbourg academic, specialist in the history of philosophy, died March 13 at 97 years old.