Education
He first studied theology and then political science at the University of Göttingen.
historian scientist university professor
He first studied theology and then political science at the University of Göttingen.
Ewers was a farmer’s son from the village of Amelunxen (now a part of Beverungen) in the Bishopric of Paderborn. His first employment, as was customary for a graduate from a poor background, was as a private tutor. This brought him to the Imperial Russian province of Livonia, where he was to remain for the rest of his life.
Influenced by the Hegelian definition of society and state, he described the traditional tribal structure of Russia as the foundation of Russian statehood, most notably in this 1826 monograph Das älteste Recht der Russen.
Evers" ideas have found a continued reception among Russian legal theorists. On the basis of his publications, he was offered in 1810 the Chair of History, Statistics, and Geography of the Russian State at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu) in what is today Estonia.
He occupied that chair until 1826, when he transferred to the Law Faculty. In 1816, Ewers declined an offer of the Chair of Political Economy at the newly founded University of Berlin.
In the same year, he had become Prorector of the University of Dorpat and in 1818, Rector, to which office he was re-elected every year until his death at Dorpat in 1830, aged 51.
Russian Academy of Sciences.
