Abraham Friesen
Abraham Friesen was born in Winnipeg, Canada, on December 20, 1933. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Manitoba, Canada, in 1958 and 1962 respectively. In between he spent 1957 & 58 at the University of Goettingen on a fellowship. From 1960 to 63 he taught high school in the city of Winnipeg and then enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Renaissance & Reformation History at Stanford University, studying under the renowned scholar of Christian Humanism and the Reformation, Lewis W. Spitz. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Marxist Interpretation of the Reformation as a fellow of the Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany, graduating from Stanford in 1967. That summer he was appointed Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught until 2004.