HIRSCHFELD, HEINRICH OTTO

HIRSCHFELD, HEINRICH OTTO (1843–1922), German historian. Hirschfeld, born in Koenigsberg, Prussia, studied classical philology. While at Berlin he was strongly influenced by Theodor *Mommsen, and became his protégé and close collaborator. He was lecturer at Goettingen (1869), and professor at Prague (1872), Vienna (1876), and Berlin (1885), where he succeeded Mommsen. Hirschfeld was one of the group of scholars who collaborated in the preparation of the Inscriptionum Galliae Narbonensis latinae…, as planned by Mommsen. Between 1888 and 1904 he published the Latin inscriptions of Gaul for this work. Hirschfeld's principal scholarly interests were Roman imperial administration and Roman Gaul. His work on Gaul illustrated his concept of the imposition of Roman civilization throughout the empire as a most important aspect of Roman history. Hirschfeld was one of the founders of the Archaeological and Epigraphical Seminar of the University of Vienna, and worked on the systematic investigation of the ancient remains in the Austro-Hungarian provinces. This early work provided the basis for the study of Roman civilization in Central Europe and the Balkans. In addition to his volumes of the Inscriptionum, Hirschfeld's major published work is Die kaiserlichen Verwaltungsbeamten bis auf Diocletian (1905²). Most of his numerous smaller works are collected in his Kleine Schriften (1913).

bibliography:

Wilcken, in: Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1922), xcvii–civ; Muenzer, in: Neue Jahrbuecher fuer das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur fuer Paedagogik, 49 (1932), 304–6.

[Irwin L. Merker]