Richard Fester
German historian (1860-1945)
Richard Fester (20 September 1860 – 5 January 1945) was a German historian.
Life
Richard Fester was born in Frankfurt where his father, Dr. Anselm Fester, worked as a lawyer-notary. Richard attended secondary school in the city until 1881 and then volunteered for a year of military service.
He undertook his university studies in History and Philology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, and the University of Strasbourg. It was at the University of Strasbourg that he passed his university final exams and also, on 6 March 1886, received his doctorate for work on the Imperial Military Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the seventeenth century. His habilitation qualification followed, from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, on 18 November 1893. Between July 1888 and September 1892, he was also working as an assistant at the Regional Archives Office in Karlsruhe. From 1893, he was giving private tutorials at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He moved to northern Bavaria (Franconia) in 1896, taking a post as a visiting professor in Medieval and Modern History at the University of Erlangen, which became a full professorship three years later on 16 October 1899.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Richard Fester” is german historian (1860-1945). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Richard, Fester and German, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “german historian (1860-1945)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q98141. VIAF identifies the subject as 111780649. The Library of Congress control number is nr00039773. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1860, 1945, 1881 and 1886.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Fester” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.