Bernd Moeller

Who is Bernd Moeller?

Bernd Moeller is a German Protestant theologian and church historian.

Bernd Moeller studied Protestant theology as well as history. In 1956 he received his doctorate from the Protestant theological department of the University of Mainz with the dissertation Die Anfechtung bei Johann Tauler. Two years later his habilitation followed on Johannes Zwick und die Reformation in Konstanz at the University of Heidelberg. In 1964 he succeeded Ernst Wolf as the chair of church history with an emphasis on Reformation history at the University of Göttingen, and he taught there until his retirement in 1999 . He was succeeded in turn by Thomas Kaufmann.

Moeller is a specialist in general church history and the urban history in the late medieval and the Reformation era. He was chairman of the Society for Reformation Research. Moeller has taken part in the publication of nearly 40 books. His Geschichte des Christentums in Grundzügen has gone through ten editions. Of particular importance is Ökumenische Kirchengeschicht a project jointly edited with Raymond Kottje which first appeared in 1970. This work showed from its first appearance that church history had entered a new era. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich.