Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903)

Mommsen's best known work is RÖMISCHE GESCHICHTE (3 vols. 1854-56). Although Leo Tolstoy's name was mentioned among the most prominent candidates for the prize, the Nobel committee couldn't accept his radical views, and Mommsen was the one awarded. Tolstoy died in 1910 without receiving the most famous acknowledgment in literature.

Mommsen's greatest interest was in Roman law, but he also participated in contemporary politics. "Bismarck has broken the nation's backbone," he wrote when Bismarck made Berlin the political capital. "The injury done by the Bismarck era is infinitely greater than its benefits... The subjugation of the German personality, of the German mind, was a misfortune that cannot be undone."

"Keine Kunde, ja nicht einmal eine Sage erzaehlt von der ersten Einwanderung des Menschengeschlechts in Italien; vielmehr war im Altertum der Glaube allgemein, dass dort wie ueberall die erste Bevoelkerung dem Boden selbst entsprossen sei. Indes die Entscheidung ueber den Ursprung der verschiedenen Rassen und deren genetische Beziehungen zu den verschiedenen Klimaten bleibt billig dem Naturforscher ueberlassen; geschichtlich ist es weder moeglich noch wichtig festzustellen, ob die aelteste bezeugte Bevoelkerung eines Landes daselbst autochthon oder selbst schon eingewandert ist." (from Römische Geschichte, Book 1)

Theodor Mommsen was born in Garding, Schleswig. His father was a Protestant minister, who encouraged his son to read German classics and such authors as Victor Hugo, Byron, and William Shakespeare. He studied philology and jurisprudence at Kiel. During these years he published a collection of poems, LIEDERBUCH DREIER FREUNDE, with his brother Tycho and Theodor Storm. Mommsen's poems from 1836-37 record his break with Christianity: "Erst war ich Christ, / Darauf Deist, / Dann Atheist." Later declared of being "homo minime ecclesiasticus." From 1844 to 1847 Mommsen pursued archaeological studies in Italy and France. In 1848 he became a professor of law at Leipzig University. During the revolution of 1848 he edited a liberal newspaper, the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung.

Two years later Mommsen had to resign because of his participation in an uprising in Saxony. In 1852 he was appointed professor of law at the University of Zurich. He was professor of law in Breslau (1854-1858), and then he became professor of ancient history at Berlin until his death. In 1854 he married Marie Reimer, the daughter of a bookseller; they eventually had sixteen children. He served as a member of the Progressive party in the state parliament of Prussia from 1863 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1879. After the unification of Germany, Mommsen sat in the German imperial parliament. In 1882 he was tried and acquitted on a charge of slandering chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) in an election speech. Bismarck saw that "only a completely ready state can permit the luxury of a liberal government."

Mommsen wanted to combine national unity with freedom (eine Synthese von Einheit und Freiheit). He had been an ardent supporter of the unification process, but did not accept its side effects, the bureaucratic centralism and uncritical obedience, the 'German slave mentality'. Mommsen also attacked the anti-Semitism that he found among many of his colleagues. The conservative nationalist, scholar and journalist Heinrich von Treitschke published in 1879 a study on anti-Semitic movements, and defended the natural rejection - inherent in the German national psyche – of foreign influences. Next year Mommsen with over 70 influential figures protested against anti-Semitic incitement. He wrote that Jews are Germans and that racist hatred will come to an end sooner or later – not only religious tolerance will return to normal but there will be real respect for the distinctiveness of the Jewish culture.

Mommsen produced an enormous quantity of texts – there are over 1 000 entries in the bibliography of his writings compiled by Karl Zangemeister and Emil Jacobs in 1905. Mommsen was devoted to scientific research and his profound knowledge of auxiliary science in historical studies was unique. He edited the monumental CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM LATINARUM, helped to edit the MONUMENTA GERMANIAE HISTORICA, and from 1873-95 he was permanent secretary of the Academy. Mommsen died on November 1, 1903 in Charlottenburg.

Mommsen's first three volumes of The History of Rome, written in vigorous and lively style, spanned the Roman republic from its origins to 46 B.C. The work brought Mommsen acclaim throughout Europe, but he was also accused of "journalism": turning the real state of affairs upside-down. In this and other works Mommsen boldly drew parallels between modern times and ancient Rome. Egon Friedell sees in his Die Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit (1927-31) that in Mommsen's hands Crassus becomes a speculator in the manner of Louis Philippe, the brothers Gracchus are Socialist leaders, and the Gallians are Indians, etc. Mommsen never published the fourth part, partly because he could not write the story of humankind under the imperial authorities, it was alien to his "liberal republican sentiment". And it has been said that the crucial issue was possibly his negative relationship to Christianity. However, as a part of his teaching responsibilities at Berlin University, he gave a number of lectures on the history of Rome under the Emperors. The manuscript for the final volume, was destroyed by fire in 1880. Notes compiled by two of Mommsen's students on his lectures between 1863 and 1886 were later collected as A History of Rome Under the Emperors, to give a view of Mommsen's interpretation of the imperial age. The book, published in 1992 was considered a tremendous discovery. Mommsen admired Gibbon's colorful Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but his approach to the period was different – individual characters did have a central place in his thought. With a few exceptions, all the Emperors were ineffectual and dreadfully mediocre from Vespasian to Diocletian, according to Mommsen.