Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich von Raumer

Abstract

Few German men of letters living in the first half of the nineteenth century had more friends than Ludwig Tieck, but of these none was more closely associated with him over a long period of years than Friedrich von Raumer, who was by adoption one of the distinguished Prussians of his day. Raumer was born at Wörlitz, Anhalt, in 1781; he studied law and political science at Halle and Gottingen and then entered the Prussian service as Referendar, Assessor and Rat, successively. In 1809 he became Regierunisrat in Potsdam and in the following year was transferred to the office of Chancellor Hardenberg. In 1811 he was appointed professor of history at Breslau, a post which he held until 1819, when he became professor of political science at Berlin. While a delegate to the German Parliament of 1848, he was sent to Paris as German minister, and on his return to Berlin, he became a member of the First Chamber there. In 1853 he was retired as professor but continued to deliver lectures until shortly before his death in 1873. He is regarded as a pioneer in German historiography, and as one of the leading German historians before Ranke. His two principal works are Geschichte der Hohenslaufen und ihrer Zeit in six volumes (1823-1825) and Geschichte Europas seit dem Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts in eight volumes (1832-1850), both splendid examples of the Romantic attitude toward history. Interest in literature is revealed in his fourvolume Bandbuch tur Geschichte der Literatur (1864-1866), as well as in several No veil en.