Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Barthold Georg Niebuhr (born with Copenhagen the August 27th 1776; † with Bonn the January 2nd 1831) is an eminent historian of the ancient Rome.

Biography

Barthold Georg Niebuhr, talented kid of the famous orientalist Carsten Niebuhr, studied during a few six-month periods at the University of Kiel, but stopped its studies and entered well quickly to the service of the Danish government; however since 1801 it accepted the post of professor of its old university of Kiel: its young age for such a function surprised less still than the fact that it had not finished its studies by a diploma. A few years later (1806), Niebuhr took again its activity of senior official with Berlin, this time at the service of the Prussian government, then in 1810 obtained the pulpit of ancient history in the new university Université Humboldt of Berlin, was emissary of Prussia near the the Holy See of 1816 with 1823 and finally Professor in Bonn starting from 1825. Any child, Niebuhr expressed an exceptional gift for the foreign languages: he only learned several Eastern languages and was one of the founding members of the company of historical sciences philological and criticisms, which developed in reaction against the Roman history of Tite-Live. Its conclusions, and particularly its calling into question of the source S of the Discorsi of Machiavel on the Roman state, were often by too approximatives : he proved more once Machiavel carried it in precision on Niebuhr. In the reconstitution of the things of the past, this last did not hesitate to call upon in last spring its personal intuition (its Divination , as it called it itself). It does not remain about it less than with Niebuhr, the study of traditional Antiquity took a methodical Net turn and methodological. In spite of many conclusions without a future on the value of the sources, its criticisms stimulative on Tite-Live and other authors inspired by the historians and philologists of the scale of Karl Otfried Müller, Theodor Mommsen, Jacob Burckhardt, and even Leopold von Ranke and Johann Gustav Droysen. The inexorable rise of the German Historicisme cannot be explained without the influence of Niebuhr.

Posterity

With Niebuhr, the history ceased playing the part of simple decoration in the noble disciplines of the German university which were up to that point the Philosophie, the Philologie, the Droit and the Political sciences, to acquire the academic statute of discipline to whole share. The fact that this scientist, by his impassioned and marginal character, which moved away from him well of his/her friends, hesitated all his life between a career diplomatic and university, does not decrease of anything its influence on the later generations researchers.

Works

Römische Geschichte (a) 241 v. Chr. 1811 - 1832.
Carsten Niebuhrs Leben (1817), Kiel.
“ Lectures one the History off Rome from the Earliest Times to the Fall off the Western Worsens ” (2nd Engl. edition, 1848)

Volume ** Volume
Volume

Sources

Edgar Allan Poe, Review off Lieber' S Reminiscences off Niebuhr, from Southern Literary Messenger, January 1836.
Gerrit Walther, Niebuhrs Forschung (Frankfurter historische Abhandlungen data base 35), Stuttgart 1993.

External bonds

Homage on historicum.net

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