Historian and political journalist, born in Dresden, E Germany. He became professor of political science in Freiburg im Breisgau (1863), and professor of history in Kiel (1866), in Heidelberg (1867), and in Berlin (1874). In 1886 he was nominated Historiograph des preußischen Staates. In 187184 he was a member of the Reichstag (initially national-liberal, later independent). As a proponent of a unified German state under one authority, he fought against socialism and democracy and advocated a strong central government and colonial acquisitions. He was an early exponent of anti-semitism. With his main work Deutsche Geschichte des 19. Jh. (187994) he moulded the historical understanding and the nationalist tendencies of the German bourgeoisie.
Heinrich Gothard von Treitschke (September 15, 1834 - April 28, 1896), German historian and anti-semitic political writer, was born at Dresden.
He was the son of an officer in the Saxon army who rose to be governor of Königstein and military governor of Dresden. After studying at Leipzig and Bonn, where he was a pupil of Dahlmann, he established himself as a Privatdozent at Leipzig, lecturing on history and politics. He at one point became very popular with the students, but his political opinions made it impossible for the Saxon government to appoint him to a professorship.
He was at that time a strong Liberal;
On Sybel's death he succeeded him as editor of the Historische Zeitschrift.
As a strong advocate of colonial expansion he was also a bitter enemy of Britain.
In the Reichstag he had originally been a member of the National Liberal Party, but in 1879 he was the first to accept the new commercial policy of Bismarck, and in his later years he joined the Moderate Conservatives, though his deafness prevented him from taking a prominent part in debate.
Treitschke approached history as a politician, and confined himself to those periods and characters in which great political problems were being worked out: above all, he was a patriotic historian, and he never wandered far from Prussia. The first volume was published in 1879, and during the next sixteen years four more volumes appeared, but at his death he had only advanced to the year 1847. He also wrote biographical and historical essays, and essays on contemporary politics.
The most important essays were collected as Historische und politische Aufsatze (4 vols., Leipzig, 1896); in 1896 a new volume appeared, called Deutsche Kämpfe, neue Folge. After his death his lectures on political subjects were published under the title Politik. He brought out also in 1856 a short volume of poems called Vater-ländische Gedichte, and another volume in the following year. His first works to be translated into English were two pamphlets on the war of 1870, What we demand from France (London, 1870), and The Baptism of Fire of the North German Confederation (1870).
Treitschke's students included Heinrich Class, Hans Delbrück, Otto Hintze, Max Lenz, Erich Marcks, Friedrich Meinecke, Karl Peters, Ludwig Schiemann, Gustav Schnürer, Georg Simmel and Friedrich von Bernhardi. During World War I, many writers in the West, particularly in Britain, blamed Bernhardi for creating attitudes amongst the political class of Germany that were seen as an incitement to war. A complete translation of both volumes of Treitschke's Politics was published in London in 1916.
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