Georg Gottfried Gervinus

Georg Gottfried Gervinus ( born May 20, 1805 in Darmstadt, † March 18, 1871 in Heidelberg ) was a German historian and National Liberal politician.

Life

Gervinus studied by bookseller in Bonn and commercial training in Darmstadt from 1825 to 1827 at the University of Giessen, then to 1829 at the University of Heidelberg history, philology and philosophy. In 1835 he was appointed to Heidelberg as professor of history and literature. In 1836 he moved to Göttingen. There he was, however, in 1837 deposed and expelled from the country because he was one of the Göttingen Seven - the opposition to ending - next to him, these were still Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht, Heinrich Ewald and Wilhelm Eduard Weber Hanoverian State Constitution, protested by the King, Ernst August. This act aroused the German public stir.

Between 1835 and 1842 Gervinus published his major work, the history of German national literature. In 1844 he took his academic activities in Heidelberg back on as an honorary professor.

From 1847 he was editor -founded by Karl Mathy and Friedrich Daniel Bassermann German newspaper, at this time the tide of liberal intellectuals. Gervinus was a member of the Pre-Parliament and of the Siebzehnerausschusses formed from this. From May 18 to July 31, 1848 he was MP for Wanzleben in the Frankfurt National Assembly.

In 1853 he was convicted of democratic publications ( Introduction to the History of the nineteenth century ) from the Mannheim High Court for high treason to two months imprisonment and released again from the university service. This judgment, however, was soon afterwards declared by the King's Bench in Mannheim on the ground that the denominated treason charges should not have been accepted by the High Court. The charges were subsequently withdrawn entirely unspecified reasons and dropped. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences took him in 1863 as a foreign member in their ranks.

At Gervinus's biography is extraordinary that he did not mittrug under the German historians of his time widespread uncritical legitimation of the Bismarckian system. In particular, his efforts to free themselves from a purely nation-state approach to track overall trends of the Restoration period, make it an isolated phenomenon.

1960 Essen Gervinuspark was named after him.

Works (selection)

• Introduction to the History of the nineteenth century, 1853
• G. G. Gervinus life. By himself, in 1860, 1893
• History of the National poetic literature of the Germans, 5 vols, 1835-1842
• History of the nineteenth century, since the Vienna treaties, 8 vols, 1855-1866
• Broad History, 1837
• Handel's oratorio texts, GG Gervinus ( Translator ), Berlin, Verlag von F. Duncker, 1875
• Shakespeare, 1862