Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Historian, born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at Kiel, London, and Edinburgh, in 1816 became Prussian ambassador at the Vatican, and on his return in 1823 lectured at Bonn. His main work, the Römische Geschichte (1811–32, History of Rome), based on the constructive analysis of historical source material, marked him out as a founder of the 19th-c school of German historical scholarship.

Barthold Georg Niebuhr (August 27, 1776 – January 2, 1831) was a German statesman and historian.

Son of Carsten Niebuhr, he was born at Copenhagen. From the earliest age young Niebuhr manifested extraordinary precocity, and from 1794 to 1796, being already a finished classical scholar and acquainted with several modern languages, he studied at the University of Kiel.

In 1799 he returned to Denmark, where he entered the state service;

He commenced his lectures with a course on the history of Rome, which formed the basis of his great work Römische Geschichte. In 1813 Niebuhr's own attention was diverted from history by the uprising of the German people against Napoleon;

He next accepted (1816) the post of ambassador at Rome, and on his way thither he discovered in the cathedral library of Verona the long-lost Institutes of Gaius, afterwards edited by Savigny, to whom he communicated the discovery under the impression that he had found a portion of Ulpian. During his residence in Rome Niebuhr discovered and published fragments of Cicero and Livy, aided Cardinal Mai in his edition of Cicero's De Republica, and shared in framing the plan of the great work, Beschreibung Roms (The Description of the City of Rome), on the topography of ancient Rome by Christian Charles Josias Bunsen and Ernst Platner (1773-1855), to which he contributed several chapters.

He also, on a journey home from Italy, deciphered in a palimpsest at St Gall the fragments of Flavius Merobaudes, a Roman poet of the 5th century. He also assisted in August Bekker's edition of the Byzantine historians, and delivered courses of lectures on ancient history, ethnography, geography, and on the French Revolution.

In February 1830 his house was burned down, but the greater part of his books and manuscripts were saved.

Niebuhr's Roman History counts among epoch-making histories both as marking an era in the study of its special subject and for its momentous influence on the general conception of history. "The main results," says Leonhard Schmitz, "arrived at by the inquiries of Niebuhr, such as his views of the ancient population of Rome, the origin of the plebs, the relation between the patricians and plebeians, the real nature of the ager publicus, and many other points of interest, have been acknowledged by all his successors." Other alleged discoveries, such as the construction of early Roman history out of still earlier ballads, have not been equally fortunate; but if every positive conclusion of Niebuhr's had been refuted, his claim to be considered the first who dealt with the ancient history of Rome in a scientific spirit would remain unimpaired, and the new principles introduced by him into historical research would lose nothing of their importance. He brought in inference to supply the place of discredited tradition, and showed the possibility of writing history in the absence of original records. By his theory of the disputes between the patricians and plebeians arising from original differences of race he drew attention to the immense importance of ethnological distinctions, and contributed to the revival of these divergences as factors in modern history. More than all, perhaps, since his conception of ancient Roman story made laws and manners of more account than shadowy lawgivers, he undesignedly influenced history by popularizing that conception of it which lays stress on institutions, tendencies and social traits to the neglect of individuals.

Niebuhr's personal character was in most respects exceedingly attractive. His chief defect was an over-sensitiveness, leading to peevish and unreasonable behaviour in his private and official relations, to hasty and unbalanced judgments of persons and things that had given him annoyance, and to a despondency and discouragement which frustrated the great good he might have effected as a philosophic critic of public affairs.