Francis Rapp ‑ a French medievalist specializing in the history of Alsace and medieval Germany – succumbed to Covid-19 on 29 March 2020.
An emeritus university professor, he was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres since 1993.
Born in Strasbourg, the son of lawyer Léon Rapp, Rapp was born into a Catholic and patriotic family. He did his secondary studies at the Jean Sturm Gymnasium and practiced scouting within the Scouts de France. Breaking with forced incorporation, he joined a clandestine scouting group that gathered about twenty young people at the Mont Sainte-Odile from December 1942. At the end of the 1960s he joined the Association des Guides et Scouts d'Europe and was commissioner of the Alsace Province until the mid-1980s.
Rapp graduated as a major of the agrégation d'histoire in 1952, then was a teacher at the Lycée Fustel-de-Coulanges de Strasbourg between 1952 and 1953 and a resident of the Fondation Dosne-Thiers from 1956 to 1961; he was a lecturer at the faculté des lettres de Nancy from 1961 to 1972, then an assistant in medieval history at the Marc Bloch University of Strasbourg. After becoming a Doctor of Letters in 1972, he was a lecturer and then a professor at the University of Strasbourg from 1974.
A lecturer in the history of Christianity at the Faculté de théologie protestante de Strasbourg between 1972 and 1991, Rapp was an associate professor at the university of Neuchâtel and a visiting scholar at several universities in North America and Europe.
Rapp was a member of the Consultative Committee of Universities, the Higher Council of University Bodies, the National Committee of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, the Scientific Council and the Board of Directors of the École nationale des chartes and the École française de Rome . He was also a member of the Académie des sciences, lettres et arts d'Alsace , the Académie des Marches de l’Est and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
A member of the editorial board of the review Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte and a contributor to the Encyclopédie de l'Alsace and the Nouveau dictionnaire de biographie alsacienne , Rapp was elected in 1993 as a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in the seat of Emmanuel Laroche.
Rapp died on 29 March 2020 in Angers at the age of 93, following an infection from COVID-19.