Munz was born in Chemnitz, Germany in 1921, and educated in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The Munz family were Jewish, and the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany led Munz and his mother and sister to emigrate to New Zealand. They arrived in Christchurch in January 1940. Later in 1940, Munz enrolled in Canterbury University College, where he studied German, history and philosophy. His philosophy lecturer was Karl Popper, who had also migrated from Europe to New Zealand to escape the Nazi regime. The two men became close friends. After graduating from Canterbury in 1944, Munz earned a PhD at Cambridge University in England. At Cambridge he studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Academic career
Munz returned to New Zealand to lecture at Victoria University of Wellington, where he taught the history of the middle ages, 17th century France, and the French Revolution. He published work on medieval history, and translated the work of other writers from German and Italian into English. From the 1950s, Munz also researched and published on the place of religion in modern thought and the role of myth in society. From the mid 1970s, his work focused increasingly on philosophy. Some of his published work focused on his two mentors, Popper and Wittgenstein. He agreed with Popper that there is such a thing as certain knowledge, and that societies are better off when knowledge is free and open.
Controversy
One of his former students wrote that Munz "liked being provocative", and in his later life he took several controversial positions. He was highly critical of postmodern history, and in 1994 published a long and scathing review of Anne Salmond's book Two Worlds in which he suggested that she was less interested in historical truth than "faddish" postmodernism and political correctness. The review also made a number of unflattering comments about traditional Maori society, saying that they "found" New Zealand but did not "discover" it, and that they "were not good observers... a society in which people are unable to discern and diagnose life-threatening events is lacking in something that is essential." In 2004 Munz appeared before the New Zealand Parliament's Law and Orderselect committee to argue that consensual incest should be legalised. He argued that "the prohibition of incest is completely universal in early Palaeolithic societies and has lingered on ever since. But in modern civil societies it is an outmoded prohibition." He was a frequent critic of the state of Israel, saying that "I'm Jewish myself and I find it absolutely devastating how other Jews can do things like steal other people's lands and then kill them."
