Rudolf Much, the son of archaeologist Matthäus Much, was an Austrian Germanist, considered one of the founding fathers of Germanic studies.
Education
His 1887 dissertation On the Prehistory of Germany (Zur Vorgeschichte Deutschlands) reflects the interest in Germanic antiquity Much shared with his teacher Wilhelm Tomaschek, whose special field of interest was the tribal territories of the Germanic peoples in antiquity.
Career
In 1906, Much became professor at the newly founded chair of Germanic Antiquity (Germanische Altertumskunde und Sprachgeschichte) in Vienna, which he held until his retirement in 1932. Much cannot, however, be described as sympathetic towards the rise of the Nazi Party, and he was careful to put scholarship before ideology, and his recensions often expressed disdain for ideologically motivated bad scholarship. Much"s major opus is his commentary of Tacitus" Germania, published posthumously in 1937- He also contributed some 260 articles to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Board
Politics
Much was sympathetic towards German nationalism and the interwar period calls for a Großdeutschland prohibited by the Allies. Much is nevertheless treated critically in more recent assessment, his German nationalism in retrospect appearing as a precursor to Nazi ideology.
Membership
Austrian Academy of Sciences. Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities]
He also became a member of the Catholic-German nationalist Deutsche Gemeinschaft secret society.