THE CRITICAL METHOD: Niebuhr

Abstract

[Statesman and scholar, Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831) had an influence second to none on the rise of historical scholarship. Inspired by his father, the famous traveller, Carsten Niebuhr, and by the Romantic writers of his day, Niebuhr turned early to a study of antiquity and had mastered twenty languages before he reached his thirtieth year. He began his career in the civil service of his native Denmark, entering the Prussian service just before the disaster of 1806. He became an important member of the Prussian reform movement, and in 1810 was appointed a lecturer at the newly founded University of Berlin. From 1816 to 1823 Prussian ambassador to the Vatican, he spent his last years at the University of Bonn. He was an exceptional man, of whom Dilthey said: “No young man should enter a university without having morally elevated himself by contemplating the figure of this great scholar.”