Heiko Oberman - Life

Life

Oberman was born in Utrecht, Netherlands. He earned his doctorate in theology from the University of Utrecht in 1957 and joined the faculty of the Harvard Divinity School in 1958. There he rose rapidly from instructor to associate professor and, in 1963, to professor of church history. He was appointed Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard in 1964 and continued teaching there until 1966. He then accepted a chair in the theology faculty at the University of Tübingen, Germany, where he also became director of the Institute for Late Middle Ages and Reformation Research. Later in life, Oberman founded the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona. His major books include The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (1963), which articulated his program of bridging the gap between the later Middle Ages and Reformation era (at least in the field of theology), and an iconoclastic biography of Luther, translated from German as Luther: Man between God and the Devil (1989).