Accession Speech of SASA Foreign Member Günter Prinzing

‘Succession to the Throne in Byzantium and its Impact on the Neighbouring Countries of the Balkans’ is the title of the accession speech, which SASA Foreign Member Günter Prinzing will deliver at the SASA Grand Hall, on Friday, 24 June, at 12 o’clock.

Professor Prinzing was born on 24 September 1943, in Hamburg, where he attended primary school and the famous Gymnasium Christianeum. He studied Slavonic studies and the history of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, focusing on Byzantine studies at the universities of Hamburg, Vienna, Lyon and Munich. This kind of study experience greatly expanded his scientific horizons, therefore, in Germany, Günter Prinzing is considered one of the greatest erudite people, particularly in his knowledge of East European and Balkan Middle Ages. He is the greatest authority on the Serbian and Bulgarian languages among German medievalists, which facilitates confident perusal of sources and literature of domestic and Balkan origin.

His university career, Professor Günter Prinzing started at the Ruhr University Bochum, followed by the University of Münster, where he worked as an assistant first, and then as an assistant professor. In 1986, he took over the Department of Byzantine Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. He presided over The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies for ten years (2001-2011), and he was the leader of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities’ project ‘Prosopography of the Middle Byzantine Period’ for five years (2007-2012), as well as the president of the new Mainz branch of the Southeast Europe Society, for ten years (1999-2009).

Professor Prinzing is the recipient of the bronze medal Zasłużony Kulturzy Gloria Artis in Poland (2007) and the bronze medal for merits of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland (2017).

The live broadcast is available at the link Директан пренос.