Theodor Mommsen: Nineteenth-Century Classical Scholar and Historian
Theodor Mommsen (30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, and archaeologist. He received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature for his historical writings, including The History of Rome, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th century.
Early Life and Education
Mommsen was born in Garding in the Duchy of Schleswig in 1817, then part of Denmark. His parents were originally from Friesland, and his father was a Lutheran minister. He grew up in Bad Oldesloe in Holstein and had two brothers. Though he studied mostly at home, he attended the Gymnasium Christianeum in Altona for four years, studying Greek and Latin before receiving his diploma in 1837. Unable to afford study at Göttingen, he enrolled at the University of Kiel.
From 1838 to 1843, Mommsen studied jurisprudence at Kiel and finished with a degree in Doctor of Roman Law. During this time he was roommates with Theodor Storm, who later became a renowned poet. Together with Mommsen’s brother Tycho, the three friends published a collection of poems titled Liederbuch dreier Freunde.
Career and Achievements
After his studies, Mommsen devoted himself to Ancient History with the aid of a royal Danish grant that allowed him to visit France and Italy to study preserved classical Roman inscriptions. During the revolution of 1848, he worked as a war correspondent in Rendsburg, supporting German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein and constitutional reform. Forced to leave Denmark by the authorities, he became a professor of law at the University of Leipzig in 1848. When he protested the new constitution of Saxony in 1851, he resigned but obtained a professorship in Roman law at the University of Zurich the following year. In 1854 he became a professor of law at the University of Breslau, where he met Jakob Bernays. He became a research professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1857 and later helped create and manage the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.
In 1858 Mommsen was appointed a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and in 1861 he became professor of Roman History at the University of Berlin, holding lectures until 1887. His most significant scholarly project was the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a comprehensive collection of all then-known ancient Latin inscriptions. Beginning with his publication of inscriptions of the Neapolitan Kingdom in 1852, he organized this monumental work, which would eventually consist of seventeen volumes—fifteen published during his lifetime, with five prepared by Mommsen himself. The collection used the method of autopsy, checking all modern transcriptions against original sources. He also published fundamental collections in Roman law, including the Corpus Iuris Civilis and the Codex Theodosianus, and played an important role in the publication of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and other major scholarly projects. As secretary of the Historical-Philological Class at the Berlin Academy from 1874 to 1895, he organized countless scientific projects.
Awards and Honors
Mommsen received foreign membership of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1859, the Prussian medal Pour le Mérite in 1868, honorary citizenship of Rome, membership in the American Antiquarian Society in 1870, membership in the American Philosophical Society in 1873, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902 for Römische Geschichte (Roman History). He remains one of the very few non-fiction writers to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Notable Events and Milestones
On 7 July 1880 at 2 a.m., a fire broke out in the upper floor workroom-library of Mommsen’s house at Marchstraße 6 in Berlin. While attempting to remove valuable papers, he was burned and then restrained from returning to the blazing house. Several old manuscripts were destroyed, including Manuscript 0.4.36 on loan from Trinity College, Cambridge, and manuscripts from Heidelberg University, Brussels, and Halle.
Mommsen served as a delegate to the Prussian House of Representatives from 1863 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1879, and as a delegate to the Reichstag from 1881 to 1884, representing first the German Progress Party, then the National Liberal Party, and finally the Secessionists. Though he had supported German Unification, he became disappointed with the politics of the German Empire. In 1881 he strongly disagreed with Otto von Bismarck over social policies, advising collaboration between Liberals and Social Democrats in language so forceful he narrowly avoided prosecution. When Heinrich von Treitschke began a political campaign against Jews in 1879, Mommsen strongly opposed antisemitism and wrote a pamphlet denouncing von Treitschke’s views. In 1890 he became one of the co-founders of the Association for Combating Antisemitism (Abwehrverein).
Additional Resources
More detailed information about Theodor Mommsen’s life, scholarly works, and historical impact is available through Wikipedia and other biographical archives dedicated to 19th-century classical scholarship and German intellectual history.
