Fritz Heichelheim

Fritz Moritz Heichelheim (May 6, 1901, Gießen - April 22, 1968, Toronto) was a German-born ancient historian, who specialized in ancient economic history, at the University of Gießen and as Professor of Greek and Roman History at the University of Toronto.

Heichelheim was a pupil of the ancient historian Richard Laqueur at Gießen where he took his promotion in 1925 and his habilitation in 1929. After lecturing there for nearly four years, he, like his colleague at Gießen, Margarete Bieber, was dismissed in 1933 in accordance with the National Socialists’ “cleansing” of the universities (see Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service).

Like many German scholars, he was forced to emigrate abroad, in his case to Great Britain and, in 1951, to Canada, where he was professor at the University of Toronto since 1962.

Literary works

• Die auswärtige Bevölkerung im Ptolemäerreich, Leipzig 1925 (Alien Inhabitants of Ptolemaic Empire).
• An Ancient economic history, 2 vols., Leiden, 1968.
• A History of the Roman People Prentice-Hall, 2003.