With a doctorate in law and was instrumental in the appearance of scientific history in Germany in the 19th Century involved. With his never-completed “Roman History” and numerous other works of Theodor Mommsen set scientific milestones. Moreover, the Nobel Laureate linked with the historic mind political interest that gaggle him to the Prussian Landtag and Reichstag and in the so-called Berlin Antisemitism Dispute …
Theodor Mommsen was on 30 November 1817 born son of a pastor’s family in Garding in South Schleswig.
With school from 1838 to 1843 Mommsen studied law at the University of Kiel. There also the historian Johann Gustav Droysen Bernhard was one of his formative teachers. Following the promotion Mommsen went through a grant from the Danish king from 1844 to 1847 according to research trip to Italy. In the revolution of 1848, the historian and politically motivated. He advocated universal suffrage and national unification of the individual German states under a constitutional monarchy. At that time Mommsen edited the “Schleswig-Holstein’s newspaper.”
With Mommsen was appointed in autumn 1848 as a professor at the University of Leipzig, where he became involved in liberal “German society”. During the post-revolutionary authoritarianism Mommsen was in 1850 sentenced to prison in Leipzig, in the year with, but, acquitted. At the same time, but, he lost his professorship in Leipzig. He married the daughter of Marie Reimer Leipzig publishers. In the jump of 1852 Mommsen could take up a professorship in Roman Law at the University of Zurich. That same year, the historian with the publication of his pool made aware of the inscriptions of the Kingdom of Naples itself.
Then he was admitted as a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where he was the publication of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) headed. 1854 Mommsen was summoned as a professor of Roman Law at the University of Breslau. Now appeared the first three volumes of one of the most vital projects of the historian, which became the most successful German-language work of history: The “Roman History” (1854-1856 Vol 1-3 first, then 1885 Volume 5, missing Vol. 4) set out with regard to the reasons for the downfall of ancient Rome and the National Liberal demands for well loved sovereignty and constitutional self to which the current political debate in Mommsen era dominated.
These political thoughts were incorporated into the main work of Mommsen, which he open from 1871 1888 with the three-volume “Roman constitutional law.” In the jump of 1858 Mommsen was a regular member admission into the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where he now stepped up the work on the CIL-edition, for which he could submit up to his death, the last tape 15. Also referred to Mommsen 1861 now on a chair in Roman-age tumskunde at the Berlin University, he served as its rector moreover of 1874 to 1875. His addition to the academic teaching and research activities led Mommsen unwavering political commitment to a successful 1863 candidacy for the German Progressive Party, for which he sat until 1866 in the Prussian Landtag.
With the German Empire from 1873 to 1879 he was responsible for the National Liberal Party in the local parliament. In the wake of German unification in Mommsen spoke in terms of absolute Nati-onalismus for the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein and Alsace-Lorraine. In the so-called Berlin Antisemitism Dispute of 1879, he represented at his adversary and historian colleagues Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke a very confusing position because he’s anti-Semitic utterance (“The Jews are our misfortune!”) Criticized for tactical considerations.
In the years 1881 to 1884 Mommsen sat as expressive of the “secessionists” in the German Reichstag. With he had called Bismarck’s social policy as a “fraud,” strained the Chancellor a libel against the historian, but, finished in an acquittal. For his scientific achievements Mommsen was awarded the medal “Pour le Merit” (1868) and the honorary citizenship of Rome. Mommsen was awarded for his 1902 masterpiece “Roman History” the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Theodor Mommsen died on 1 November 1903 in Berlin.
Mommsen went from the family more vital historians of the 20th Century, such as Hans Mommsen and Wolfgang J. Mommsen forth.
