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Rudolf Much (7 September 1862 – 8 March 1936) was an Austrian philologist and historian who specialized in Germanic studies. Much was Professor and Chair of Germanic Linguistic History and Germanic Antiquity at the University of Vienna, during which he tutored generations of students and published a number of influential works, some of which have remained standard works up to the present day.
Since 1901, was Assistant Professor of Celts and Germanic peoples Antiquity and Scandinavian Language and Literature at the University of Vienna. Since, 1904, Much served as Associate Professor, and then Professor of Germanic Linguistic History and Antiquity ( Germanische Sprachgeschichte und Altertumskunde) at the University of Vienna. In this capacity he was also tasked with lecturing on Scandinavian literature. Throughout his academic career, Much served on the committees of many scholarly committees and was the editor of several scholarly journals. He declined to be the editor of the first edition of the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, to which he was nevertheless one of the most important contributors.
Much retired from his Chair as Professor Emeritus in 1934, but continued to lecture at the University. A popular professor, Much acquired a large following of students at the University of Vienna, many of whom would later acquire prominent positions in the field. Students of Wolfram include Otto Höfler, Julius Pokorny, Walter Steinhauser, Richard Wolfram, Siegfried Gutenbrunner, Dietrich Kralik, Eberhard Kranzmayer, Lily Weiser-Aall, Gilbert Trathnigg and Robert Stumpfl. Accordingly, Much's pan-German stance and perceptions had a profound uptake and dissemination in the fields of German ethnology, German dialects, German language and, most directly, German pre-medieval studies ("Deutsche Altertumskunde") that is lasting, often in unexpressed ways via one of his many students, to the present via an unbroken chain of knowledge transmission.
Much believed the Germanic peoples had originated in Scandinavia, to where their ancestors had migrated at an unknown point in time from the Proto-Indo-European homeland. Much was unsure of the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, but sympathized with theories suggesting a north-central European location. He believed Germani had originally been the name of one Germanic tribe, which had subsequently been applied by outsiders to the Germanic peoples as a whole.
Much's Die Germania des Tacitus (1937), is considered the standard work on Germania by Tacitus, and continues to the basis for modern research on this book.
Much never joined a political party, as he considered that incompatible with being a scholar. Much opposed the politicization of scholarship, and for this reason, he protested vigorously against appointing Nazis to positions at the University of Vienna. His son, the physician Horand Much, was executed by the Nazis in 1943.
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