Georg Waitz

Georg Waitz ( born October 9, 1813 in Flensburg, † May 24, 1886 in Berlin) was a German legal historian and medievalist. He is one of the most famous publishers of historical sources on German history.

Life

Waitz studied from 1832 to 1836 at the Universities of Kiel and Berlin history, law, philosophy and Protestant theology. The experience of the historian Ranke woke Waitz at the decision to make the story to his profession. In Ranke, he also gained his doctorate in 1836 in Berlin. He then worked in Hannover, 1842 in Berlin, as a research associate of Georg Heinrich Pertz in the Monumenta Historica Germaniae (MGH ), the central collection of German sources from the Middle Ages, with.

In 1842 he was appointed by the University of Kiel as full professor of history. Since the same year he was with Clara Schelling, a daughter of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, married. In 1848 he moved to the University of Gottingen, where he co-founded in the Historical Seminar, which gained recognition worldwide as Göttingen historical school. On October 16, 1860, he received the legal honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin. In 1875, he became president of the MGH, he worked at the next Rotteck Welcker'schen Staatslexikon, the Historical Journal and the General German Biography with.

Work

The lifework Waitz ' is the reaching to the middle of the 12th century " German constitutional history ," which is still valuable because of their material wealth today (7 vols, 1844-1878, Revised Edition Vol 1-4, 1865-1885 ). Waitz was also editor and continuer of the source study of German history by Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (3rd - 5th edition, 1869-1883 ). The work contained from the outset literature, and so resulted in his development into a pure bibliography, which as of Dahlmann - Waitz is still known in his younger editions today.

Policy

1846 Waitz was a member of the Holstein estates assembly. In the same year he took part in the so-called Germanists days and was co-author of an open letter to Christian VIII of Schleswig succession question, which earned him a reprimand from the Danish Government. Also in the 1860s, he made ​​an important for the indivisibility of Schleswig-Holstein and Schleswig belonging to the German Confederation.

From May 18 1848 to May 20, 1849 Waitz was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly in St. Paul's Church for the constituency Bordesholm. There he was a member of the Constitutional Committee.