Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Barthold Georg Niebuhr , 1776-1831, German historian, b. Copenhagen; son of Karsten Niebuhr . He served in the Danish and, after 1806, in the Prussian civil service, took part in the foundation of the Univ. of Berlin, and was (1816-23) Prussian ambassador to the Holy See. From 1823 to his death he taught at the Univ. of Bonn. Niebuhr's history of Rome (3 vol., 1811-32; tr. 3 vol., 1828-42) may be said to have inaugurated modern scientific historical method. Niebuhr related individual events to the political and social institutions of ancient Rome; he sought to recreate the past in terms understandable to the modern reader. An admirer of the Roman republic, he favored agrarianism as the basis of a well-balanced state. He regarded Prussia as a modern parallel of the Roman state and advocated Prussian leadership in the unification of Germany. His liberalism was antirevolutionary, and he was sympathetic to reforms instituted from above.

Bibliography: See his translated Collected Lectures (8 vol., 1852-53); A. Guilland, Modern Germany and Her Historians (tr. 1915, repr. 1970).