Johann Gustav Droysen

Background

Johann Gustav Droysen was born on July 6, 1808 in Treptow, Pomerania. His father, Johann Christoph Droysen, was an army chaplain, in which capacity he was present at the celebrated siege of Kolberg in 1806-1807.

Education

Droysen was educated at the gymnasium of Stettin and at the University of Berlin.

Career

After graduation from the University of Berlin he had been teaching there from 1833 to 1840. He gave lectures from 1833 as privat-dozent, and from 1835 as professor, without a salary. During these years he was occupied with classical antiquity; he published a translation of Aeschylus and a paraphrase of Aristophanes. He also wrote on Alexander the Great and used the term Hellenism to describe the diffusion of Greek culture over the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East in the 4th–1st centuries BC. His work was published under the title of Geschichte des Hellenisg nus (Hamburg, 1836-1843). A new and revised edition of the whole work was published in 1885; it had been translated into French, but not into English.

In 1840 he became professor of history at the University of Kiel. After the revolution of 1848 Droysen became a member of the Frankfurt Parliament and secretary of its constitutional committee. After the Prussian king Frederick William IV refused the German imperial crown in 1849, Droysen, disappointed, retired from politics. During the next two years he continued to support the cause of the duchies, and in 1850 he collaborated with Carl Samwer in writing a history of relations between Denmark and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein from 1806, a work that affected the opinions of many Germans on the then-acute dispute with Denmark. A translation was published in London in the same year under the title The Policy of Denmark towards the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The work was one of great political importance, and had much to do with the formation of German public opinion on the rights of the duchies in their struggle with Denmark.

Droysen supported the rights of the duchies so prominently that in 1851, after Holstein passed to Denmark, he prudently left Kiel to teach at Jena, where he finished a biography (1851–1852) of Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Prussian general in the War of Liberation. In 1859 he went to the University of Berlin, where he remained till his death. He spent his remaining years on his great work, Geschichte der preussischen Politik, 14 vol. (1855–86; “History of Prussian Politics”). This history, unfinished at Droysen’s death, ends at the year 1756.

Achievements

• He made himself known as a historian by his work Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (Berlin, 1833).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Johann Gustav Droysen: Das Leben Des Feldmarschalls Grafen York Von Wartenburg. Band 1 (German Edition)

    (Johann Gustav Droysen Das Leben Des Feldmarschalls Grafen...)

  • Outline of the Principles of History

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • History of Alexander the Great (Transactions Vol. 102 #3)

    (Flora Kimmich has translated J.G. Droysen's classic study...)

  • Geschichte Alexanders des Großen (German Edition)

Connections

Droysen was twice married and had three sons: Hans, Gustav, and Ernst. His eldest son, Gustav, was the author of several well-known historical works, namely, Gustav Adolf, Herzog Bernhard von Weimar, an admirable Historischer Handatlas, and several writings on various events of the Thirty Years' War. Another son, Hans, was the author of some works on Greek history and antiquities.

Father:

Johann Christoph Droysen

He was pastor at Greifenhagen.

Son:

Hans Droysen

Son:

Ernst Droysen

Son:

Gustav Droysen

References

• The German Historicist Tradition
• What is History for? Johann Gustav Droysen and the Functions of Historiography (Making Sense of History)