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Theodor Mommsen

The German historian and philologist Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) ranks among the greatest of 19th-century historians. Most of his work was devoted to the study of ancient Rome.

Theodor Mommsen, the son of a poor but scholarly Protestant minister, was born at Garding in the duchy of Schleswig on Nov. 30, 1817. After receiving his early schooling at home and at a gymnasium in Altona near Hamburg, he attended the University of Kiel (1838-1843), studying law. Mommsen was much influenced by the lectures of Otto John and by the writings of Friedrich Karl von Savigny; his interests became focused on the classical world, and he wrote his dissertation on Roman associations and made a study of Roman tribes.

In 1843 Mommsen received a traveling scholarship from the Danish government and a small grant from the Berlin Academy for study in Italy. There he became acquainted with Bartolommeo Borghesi, an outstanding scholar of Latin inscriptions, who had a profound influence on Mommsen's future. During this time the plans for the monumental collection of Latin inscriptions (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum) took shape, and it was published under the auspices of the Berlin Royal Academy of Science after 1861. As a sample for this task, Mommsen collected the Samnite inscriptions and the Inscriptions of the Neapolitan Kingdom, which he published in 1852, dedicated to Borghesi.

In 1847 Mommsen returned to Schleswig, where he supported the independence struggle of the Elbe duchies from Denmark by editing and writing for the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung, an organ of the provisional government. After the failure of this independence movement he accepted the chair of Roman law at the University of Leipzig (1848) but was dismissed from his position in 1851 for his support of the liberal cause during the revolution.

Before leaving Leipzig for an appointment at the University of Zurich in 1852, Mommsen had come to the attention of the publisher Karl Reimer, who persuaded him to write a popular but scholarly Roman History. The first three volumes, in addition to monographs on Roman Switzerland, were begun in Zurich and completed at the University of Breslau, where Mommsen taught from 1854 until 1858. This work, published between 1854 and 1856, describes the history of the Roman Republic to the advent of Caesar's dictatorship and made Mommsen's name famous throughout Europe. Plans for a fourth volume on the imperial period were never carried out. Instead he published a fifth volume, Roman Provinces under the Empire (1884), utilizing the Latin inscriptions collected for the Corpus inscriptionum.

Appointed editor for the Corpus inscriptionum in 1854, Mommsen received a professorship at Berlin (1858), where he remained for the rest of his life. These 45 years were filled with scholarship of stupendous proportions but of the highest quality. In addition to his continuing work on the Corpus inscriptionum, Mommsen published Römisches Staatsrecht, 3 vols. (1871-1888; Roman Constitutional Law); Römisches Strafrecht (1899; Roman Criminal Law); Reden und Aufsätze (1905; Speeches and Essays); and Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols. (1905-1910; Collected Writings); and he participated in the Monumenta Germaniae, in studies on the Roman Limes and on numismatics, and in the Thesaurus linguae Latinae. In 1902 his unique position in the world of scholarship was recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize for literature; he was the first German to achieve this honor.

In public life Mommsen intermittently served in the Prussian Parliament (1863-1866 and 1873-1879) and in the German Reichstag (Imperial Diet) (1881-1884) and was a cofounder of and contributor to the Preussischen Jahrbücher, one of the most influential German political journals. A political liberal and patriot, he found much to criticize, both in his own country and abroad. He was torn between despising Bismarck and taking pride in his national accomplishments.

Mommsen died at Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, on Nov. 1, 1903.

Further Reading

An excellent modern, although abridged, translation of the third volume of Mommsen's Roman History is in Dero A. Saunders and John H. Collins, The History of Rome: An Account of Events and Persons from the Conquest of Carthage to the End of the Republic (1958), which contains a good introduction to and evaluation of that work. Studies in English on Mommsen's life and work are in W. Warde Fowler, Roman Essays and Interpretations (1920), which describes Fowler's personal acquaintance with Mommsen, and in James Westfall Thompson and Bernard J. Holm, A History of Historical Writing, vol. 2 (1942), which includes a good bibliography.

 
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen

(born Nov. 30, 1817, Garding, Schleswig — died Nov. 1, 1903, Charlottenburg, near Berlin, German Empire) German historian and writer. After studying law, he did research in Italy and became a master of epigraphy, the study and interpretation of inscriptions. In 1848 he became a professor of law at Leipzig, but he was soon dismissed for his participation in liberal political activities; he later held teaching posts elsewhere. He remained politically minded all his life. He is most famous for his History of Rome, 4 vol. (1854 – 56, 1885), considered his masterpiece. He edited the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (from 1863), a comprehensive collection of Latin inscriptions that greatly advanced understanding of life in the ancient world. His Roman Constitutional Law, 3 vol. (1871 – 88), represented the first codification of Roman law. His lifetime scholarly output was immense, his publications numbering almost 1,000. He received the 1902 Nobel Prize for Literature.

For more information on Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen, visit Britannica.com.

 
German Literature Companion: Theodor Mommsen

Mommsen, Theodor (Garding in Schleswig, 1817-1903, Charlottenburg), studied law for a time with his brother Tycho and Th. Storm, and specialized in Roman law, on which he became a widely acknowledged authority. His student friendship with Storm resulted in a collection of legends and the Liederbuch dreier Freunde (1843). In the year of the Revolutions, 1848 (see Revolutionen 1848-9), he became professor of Roman law at Leipzig. He also taught at Zurich and Breslau before he settled in Berlin.

Mommsen was as closely involved with his scholarship as with the critical political developments of his day. During the Revolutionary period he sympathized with the left and was praised by K. Gutzkow as well as the young Gustav Freytag for his lively, anthropological approach to history, most obvious in his famous and massive Römische Geschichte (3 vols., 1854-6). This is a work complete in itself, from the beginnings to Julius Caesar. A ‘fifth’ volume, published in 1885, was an account of the Roman provinces (there was no fourth volume). An illustrated abridged edition of the three-volume work (over 1, 000 pages in one volume) was a best seller in 1932.

Mommsen also wrote on Roman law (Römisches Staatsrecht, 2 vols., 1871-5, expanded to 3 vols., 1887-8). In this field he was influenced by Savigny, and in history by Edward Gibbon and B. G. Niebuhr (1776-1831). By his own example Mommsen proved his maxim that history is not merely for the scholar but should promote the political consciousness of all. In the Römische Geschichte, which was translated into nine languages, he purposely modernized Roman terminology (e.g., Bürgermeister for consul). He devoted much time to politics and was for several years a member of the Prussian Landtag and of the Reichstag, distinguishing himself as a keen critic of Bismarck as well as of the nationalistic and anti-Semitic historian Treitschke. He was the first German to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1902).

Gesammelte Schriften (8 vols.) appeared in 1905-13 (3rd edn., vols. 1-8 of 9, 1996); the English version of a volume based on (unpublished) lectures, compiled by two of Mommsen's students, appeared as A History of Rome under the Emperors (ed. Th. Wiedemann, trans. C. Krojzl) in 1996. Published correspondence includes Briefwechsel mit Th. Storm, ed. H.-E. Teitge (1966).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Mommsen, Theodor
(tā'ōdōr môm'sən) , 1817–1903, German historian. Appointed (1848) professor of civil law at the Univ. of Leipzig, he supported the Revolution of 1848 and lost his chair because of his political opinions. He subsequently taught Roman law at Zürich and Breslau and, from 1858, ancient history at the Univ. of Berlin. After the unification (1870) of Germany he came to publicly oppose the policies of Bismarck. His greatest work is his History of Rome (3 vol., 1854–56; several English translations), a classic of historical writing. The fourth volume was never completed, but the fifth appeared in 1885. Mommsen's work, an unmatched re-creation of Roman society and culture, is based largely on his study of ancient coins, inscriptions, and literature. His liberal politics prejudiced his view of ancient history; his German contemporaries are clearly visible on his Roman scene. Although a great admirer of Caesar, he vigorously denounced Caesarism. Mommsen also wrote authoritatively on Roman law, notably in Römisches Staatsrecht (3 vol., 1871–76) and Römisches Strafrecht (1899), and on archaeology. He edited several volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Mommsen received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature.
 
Wikipedia: Theodor Mommsen
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen Nobel_Prize.png

Born: November 30 1817(1817--)
Garding, Schleswig
Died: November 1 1903 (aged 85)
Occupation: Classical Scholar, Jurist and Historian
Nationality: German

Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (November 30 1817–November 1, 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist[1] and writer[2], generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the 19th century[citation needed]. His work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, and was also a prominent German politician, as a member of the Prussian and German parliaments. His works on Roman law and on the law of obligations had a significant impact on the German civil code (BGB).

Life

Mommsen was born in Garding in Schleswig as a son of a poor minister. He grew up in Oldesloe and studied at home, thought he attended gymnasium in Altona for four years. He studied Greek and Latin and received his diploma in 1837, graduating as a doctor of Roman law. As he could not afford to study at one of the more prestigious German universities, he enrolled at the university of Kiel.

Mommsen studied jurisprudence at the University of Kiel (Holstein) from 1838 to 1843. Thanks to a Danish grant, he was able to visit France and Italy to study preserved classical Roman inscriptions. During the revolution of 1848 he supported monarchists and worked as a war correspondent (journalist) in Danish at that time Rendsburg, supporting the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein by his country and constitutional reform. He became a professor of law in the same year at the University of Leipzig. When Mommsen protested the new constitution of Saxony in 1851, he had to resign. However, the next year he obtained a professorship in Roman law at the University of Zurich and spent a couple of years in exile. In 1854 he became a profesor of law at the University of Breslau where he met Jakob Bernays. Mommsen became a research professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1857. He later helped to create and manage the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.

In 1858 Mommsen was appointed a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and he also became professor of Roman History at the University of Berlin in 1861, where he held lectures up to 1887. Mommsen received high recognition for his scientific achievements: the medal Pour le Mérite in 1868, honorary citizenship of Rome, and the Nobel prize for literature in 1902 for his main work Römische Geschichte (Roman History). He is one of the very few non-fiction writers to receive the Nobel prize in literature. Mommsen had sixteen children with his wife Marie (daughter of the editor Karl Reimer from Leipzig), some of whom died in childhood. Two of his great-grandsons, Hans and Wolfgang, are prominent German historians.

Mommsen worked hard. He rose at five and began to work in his library. Whenever he went out, he took one of his books along to read, and contemporaries often found him reading whilst walking in the streets.

1880 Fire

Not all of Mommsen's library was completely destroyed by the fire; the Roman History v4 was damaged but preserved[3]
Enlarge
Not all of Mommsen's library was completely destroyed by the fire; the Roman History v4 was damaged but preserved[3]

On 2 am July 7, 1880 a fire occurred in the upper floor workroom-library of Mommsen's house at Marchstraße 6 in Berlin.[4][5][6]. Several old manuscripts were burnt to ashes, including Manuscript 0.4.36 which was on loan from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge;[7] There is information that the Manuscript of Jordanes from Heidelberg University library was burnt.[8] Two other important manuscripts, from Brussels and Halle, were also destroyed.[9]

Scholarly works

Theodor Mommsen in 1881
Enlarge
Theodor Mommsen in 1881

Mommsen published over 1,500 works, and effectively established a new framework for the systematic study of Roman history. He pioneered epigraphy, the study of inscriptions in material artifacts. Although the unfinished History of Rome has been widely considered as his main work, the work most relevant today is perhaps the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a collection of Roman inscriptions he contributed to the Berlin Academy.

  • Roman Provinces under the Empire, 1884
  • History of Rome: Mommsen's most famous work appeared in three volumes between 1854 and 1856, and exposed Roman history up to the end of the Roman republic and the rule of Julius Caesar, whom Mommsen portrayed as a gifted statesman. He closely compared political issues and terminology, especially of the late Republic, to political developments in the 19th century (nation-state, democracy). It is counted among the great classics of historical works. Mommsen never wrote a continuation of his Roman history to incorporate the imperial period. Notes taken during his lectures on the Roman Empire between 1863 and 1886 were published (in 1992) under the title A History of Rome Under the Emperors. In 1885 a presentation of the Roman provinces in the imperial period appeared as volume 5 of Roman History (The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian). There was no volume 4. The work has also received some criticism, accusing him of "journalism", and in 1931 Egon Friedell argued that in his hands "Crassus becomes a speculator in the manner of Louis Philippe, the brothers Gracchus are Socialist leaders, and the Gallians are Indians, etc."[10]
  • Roman Chronology to the Time of Caesar (1858) written with his brother August Mommsen.
  • Roman Constitutional Law (1871-1888). This systematic treatment of Roman constitutional law in three volumes has been of importance for research on ancient history.
  • Roman Criminal Law (1899)
  • Monumentum Ancyranum
  • Iordanis Romana et Getica (1882) was Mommsen's critical edition of Jordanes' The Origin and Deeds of the Goths and has subsequently come to be generally known simply as Getica.
  • More than 1,500 further studies and treatises on single issues.

A bibliography of over 1,000 of his works is given by Zangemeister in Mommsen als Schriftsteller (1887; continued by Jacobs, 1905).

Mommsen as editor and organiser

While he was secretary of the Historical-Philological Class at the Berlin Academy (1874-1895), Mommsen organised countless scientific projects, mostly editions of original sources.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

At the beginning of his scientific career, Mommsen already envisioned a collection of all known ancient Latin inscriptions when he published the inscriptions of the Neapolitan Kingdom (1852). He received additional impetus and training from Bartolomeo Borghesi of San Marino. The complete Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum would consist of sixteen volumes. Fifteen of them appeared in Mommsen's lifetime and he wrote five of them himself. The basic principle of the edition (contrary to previous collections) was the method of autopsy (which in Greek means literally "to see for oneself"), according to which all copies (i.e., modern transcriptions) of inscriptions were to be checked and compared to the original.

Further editions and research projects

Mommsen also published the fundamental collections in Roman law: the Corpus Iuris Civilis and the Codex Theodosianus. Furthermore, he played an important role in the publication of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the edition of the texts of the Church Fathers, the Limes Romanus (Roman frontiers) research and countless other projects.

Mommsen as politician

Mommsen was a delegate to the Prussian Landtag in 1863-1866 and again in 1873-1879, and delegate to the Reichstag in 1881-1884, at first for the liberal German Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei), later for the National Liberal Party, and finally for the Secessionists. He was very concerned with questions about scientific and educational policies and held national positions. Disappointed with the politics of the empire, regarding whose future he was quite pessimistic, in the end he advised collaboration between Liberals and Social Democrats.

In 1881 Mommsen strongly disagreed with Bismarck about social policies in 1881. He used strong words and narrowly avoided prosecution. In 1879 his colleague Heinrich von Treitschke (the so-called 'Berliner Antisemitismusstreit') begun a political campaign against Jews and Mommsen criticized him sharply in public. On the other hand, he insisted on assimilation of them, as he disagreed with their cultural or religious independence.

Mommsen was violent supporter of German nationalism, maintaining a militant attitude towards the Slavic nations. He appealed to German speaking inhabitants of Austria-Hungary to "Be hard. The Czech skull cannot absorb knowledge, but even it is accessible to blows."[11]

Trivia

  • Until 2007, Mommsen was both the oldest person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature and the first-born laureate; born in 1817, he won the second Nobel ever awarded at the age of eighty-five. The next oldest laureate in Literature is Paul Heyse, born in 1830, who won the Nobel in 1910. Since 2007, when Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature, she is the oldest person who was ever awarded the prize.
  • Fellow Nobel Laureate (1925) Bernard Shaw cited Mommsen's interpretation of the last First Consul of the Republic, Julius Caesar, as one of the inspirations for his 1898 (1905 on Broadway) play, Caesar and Cleopatra.
  • The playwright Heiner Müller wrote a 'performance text' entitled Mommsen's Block (1993), inspired by the publication of Mommsen's fragmentary notes on the later Roman empire and by the East German government's decision to replace a statue of Karl Marx outside the Humboldt University of Berlin with one of Mommsen.[12]
  • There is a Gymnasium (academic high school) named for Mommsen in his hometown of Bad Odesloe, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

References

  1. ^ http://www.nndb.com/people/618/000107297/
  2. ^ Nobel Prize in Literature#List of Nobel Laureates in Literature
  3. ^ Archiv der BBAW, 47/1 fol. 6; in "Phönix aus der Asche" http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/etc/dokumente/a130801.pdf; page 57
  4. ^ Title: Phönix aus der Asche : Theodor Mommsen und die Monumenta Germaniae Historica; Authors: Arno Mentzel-Reuters Mark Mersiowsky Peter Orth Olaf B. Rader; Published: München und Berlin 2005; URL: http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/etc/dokumente/a130801.pdf; page 53
  5. ^ Vossische Zeitung 12/7/1880 (Nr. 192) in column "Lokales"
  6. ^ Contemporery Map
  7. ^ quote: Another manuscript is beyond recall; namely, 0.4.36, which was borrowed by Professor Theodor Mommsen and perished in the lamentable fire at his house in 1880. It was not, apparently, an indispensable or even a very important authority for the texts (Jordanes, the Antonine Itinerary, etc.) which it contained, and other copies of its archetype are yet in being: still, the loss of it is very regrettable ; M R James' The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: a Descriptive Catalogue; http://rabbit.trin.cam.ac.uk/James/Jamespref.html
  8. ^ Quote: Der größte Verlust war eine frühmittelalterliche Jordanes-Handschrift aus der Heidelberger Univer-sitätsbibliothek. Url:http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/etc/dokumente/a130801.pdf; page 53
  9. ^ vor allem zwei aus Brüssel und Halle entlehnte Handschriften
  10. ^ Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto, Finland.
  11. ^ http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817944915_146.pdf
  12. ^ Heiner Müller, Mommsen's Block. In A Heiner Müller Reader: Plays | Poetry | Prose. Ed. and trans. Carl Weber. PAJ Books Ser. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001. ISBN 0801865786. p.122-129.

Literature

  • Wilhelm Weber, Theodor Mommsen (1929)
  • W. Warde Fowler, Theodor Mommsen: His Life and Work (1909)
  • Mommsen, Theodor: Römische Geschichte. 8 Volumes. dtv, München 2001. ISBN 3-423-59055-6
  • Heuß, Alfred: Theodor Mommsen und das 19. Jahrhundert. Kiel 1956; reprinted Stuttgart 1996. ISBN 3-515-06966-6
  • Wickert, Lothar: Theodor Mommsen. 4 volumes. Frankfurt/Main, 1959?1980.
  • Rebenich, Stefan: Theodor Mommsen: eine Biographie. Beck, München 2002. ISBN 3-406-49295-9
  • Josef Wiesehöfer (ed.), Theodor Mommsen: Gelehrter, Politiker und Literat, unter Mitarbeit von Henning Börm. Stuttgart, 2005. (see review)
  • Anthony Grafton - Roman Monument (History Today September 2006)

External links

5 & 8 (vol. 6 & 7 do not exist) in German].

Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates

Sully Prudhomme (1901) • Theodor Mommsen (1902) • Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903) • Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray (1904) • Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905) • Giosuè Carducci (1906) • Rudyard Kipling (1907) • Rudolf Eucken (1908) • Selma Lagerlöf (1909) • Paul von Heyse (1910) • Maurice Maeterlinck (1911) • Gerhart Hauptmann (1912) • Rabindranath Tagore (1913) • Romain Rolland (1915) • Verner von Heidenstam (1916) • Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan (1917) • Carl Spitteler (1919) • Knut Hamsun (1920) • Anatole France (1921) • Jacinto Benavente (1922) • William Yeats (1923) • Władysław Reymont (1924) • George Bernard Shaw (1925)

Complete roster | (1901–1925) | (1926–1950) | (1951–1975) | (1976-2000) | (2001–2025)


Persondata
NAME Mommsen, Christian Matthias Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mommsen, Theodor
SHORT DESCRIPTION German Classical Scholar, Jurist and Historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Garding, Schleswig
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1903
PLACE OF DEATH

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