Everything about August Ludwig Von Schl Zer totally explained
August Ludwig von Schlözer (
July 5,
1735 -
September 9,
1809) was a
German historian who laid foundations for the critical study of
Russian history.
August Ludwig von Schlözer was born at Gaggstatt (today
Kirchberg an der Jagst),
Württemberg. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all were
protestant priests. In
1751 he followed them and began his studies in
theology in
University of Wittenberg, moving in 1754 to the increasingly famous
University of Göttingen to study history. After his studies he went in
1755 as a tutor to
Stockholm, where spent a year and a half as tutor in the family of the minister of the German congregation, and during 1756/1757 in
Uppsala, studying
Old Norse and
Gothic with the philologist
Johan Ihre, then again in Stockholm as secretary of a German merchant. While in
Sweden he wrote in Swedish an
Essay on the General History of Trade and of Seafaring in the most Ancient Times (1758) on
Phoenicians, which together with a publication on
Swedish history made him fairly well known. In
1759 he returned to
Göttingen, where he began the study of
medicine.
In
1761 he went to
St. Petersburg with
Gerhardt Friedrich Müller, the
Russian historiographer, as Müller's literary assistant and as tutor in his family. Here Schlözer learned
Russian and devoted himself to the study of Russian history. In
1762 a quarrel with Müller placed him in a position of some difficulty from which he was delivered by an introduction to
Count Rasumovski, who procured his appointment as adjunct to the Academy. In
1765 he was appointed by the
Empress Catherine an ordinary member of the Academy and professor of Russian history.
In
1767 he left Russia on leave and didn't return. He settled at Göttingen, where in
1764 he'd been made
professor extraordinarius, and
doctor honoris causa in
1766, and in 1769 he was promoted to an ordinary professorship. Schlözer was acknowledged a brilliant professor who drew crowds of students, amongst whom were
Arnold Heeren,
Karl Friedrich Eichhorn and
Johannes von Müller. Schlözer had broad interests. He translated a pedagogical piece by the
Frenchman De La Chalatois in 1771, as well as a travel book about
Jamaica for children and an introductory work on world history (
Vorbereitung zur Weltgeschichte für Kinder,
1779). Schlözer criticised harshly
Johann Bernhard Basedow, a then famous pedagogue, for his education approach using games and for his separation of girls and boys education.
Schlözer's activity was enormous, and he exercised great influence by his lectures as well as by his books, bringing historical study into touch with
political science generally, and using his vast erudition in an attempt to solve practical questions in the state and in society. Schlözer was interested in politics and
statistics. He was a proponent of
John Locke and
Montesquieu. Statistics were also important to him for their informational value for government. His exchange of ideas about the study of people and society with
Adam F. Kollár in
Vienna helped Kollár to clarify his own approach, incorporate and broaden some of Schlözer's views and eventually coin the term
ethnology and provide its first definition in 1783.
Between
1776 and
1782 he'd his own political periodical:
A.L. Schlözer's Briefwechsel meist historischen und politischen Inhalts (10 vols.); continued between 1782 and
1793 with the name
A.L. Schlözer's Stats-Anzeigen (18 vols.) by which he produced a strong impression. This periodical criticised the German government harshly, and was widely read with up to 4400 subscribers. It was first in German to publish the declaration of
human rights in
1791. In 1793 the government prohibited the publication of the
Stats-Anzeigen.
Schlözer was a versatile
historian giving lectures on a range of issues including
Oliver Cromwell, the
Dutch revolution,
banks, the
French Revolution (already in 1790), luxury, and the history of Germans in
Romania, while continuing publishing on
Russian history. His
Allgemeine nordische Geschichte (General northern history), 2 vols. (Halle,
1772) was long considered a reference work on Russian history. He translated the famous
Nestor Chronicle to the year
980, 5 vols. (Göttingen,
1802-
1809).
1769 he started lecturing on the general world history, a topic reserved to the most educated in that time. The growing knowledge of other continents and the past posed a challenge to historians. How to compress all this information in history books in an understandable way? And what are the criteria for selecting and sorting information? In other words, scholars sought fundamental threads in history. Hundreds of articles and books addressed this question in the second half of the 18th century, drawing famous intellectuals including Herder and Schiller. Schlözer contributed to these discussions and published his
Vorstellung einer Universalgeschichte in 1772. He continued to improve this piece in the following decades, until finalising the
Weltgeschichte nach ihren Haupttheilen im Auszug und Zusammenhange (
Main elements of world history in excerpts and context), 2 vols (2nd ed., Göttingen, 1792-1801).
The
Weltgeschichte provides guidance for education. Parts of this piece appear unfinished and it sometimes has a halting style. Its ideas are sometime superseded or plain wrong. However, other ideas are fascinating, one of which is globally applied until today as we'll see in the following. The
Weltgeschichte is a fascinating work that offers insight in the state of science at that time. Schlözer tackled three challenges: the scope, the topic and the structure of a global history.
Since Schlözer opposed a strictly European perspective, the scope was the entire mankind. Moreover, he included all classes of society and social and cultural developments. The development of
glass by the
Phoenicians and the introduction of potatoes in Europe were more important than the names of the
Chinese or German emperors.
The central topic was development and the influence of historical events on today. Schlözer identified five fundamental factors for development:
"Die Lebensart bestimmt, Klima und Narungsart erschaft, der Herrscher zwingt, der Priester lert, und das Beispiel reisst fort". (Schlözer,
Weltgeschichte I, 66) –
"The life-style determines, climate and nutrition creates, the sovereign forces, the priest teaches, and the example inspires.".
Schlözer also developed a structure for a
universal history, separating it in six epochs:
This classification wasn't new, except for setting the
Middle Ages between
476 and
1492, which he as well as his colleague and rival in Göttingen
Johann Christoph Gatterer suggested roughly at the same time. These time borders for the Middle Ages are still accepted today.
Schlözer’s most important innovation, however, was his suggestion to count backwards from the birth of
Jesus. An incentive for this was the growing disbelief of the biblical Creation and the then generally acknowledged creation date of
3987 BC. First speculations that the
Sun and the
Earth were perhaps created tens of thousands of years ago emerged in the
18th century. Schlözer's suggestion offered room for further theories about the creation of the Earth. Schlözer mentioned in a footnote that he adopted this idea from foreign historians, but didn't reveal them. Whoever they were, Schlözer was the one to introduce this novel chronology into the European history, an act of tremendous importance for it was the fundamental for all ancient history. According to the philosopher
Hannah Arendt, this new method enabled man to look back
"into an indefinite past to which one can add at will and into which we can inquire further as it stretches ahead". August Ludwig von Schlözer was instrumental in abandoning Creation beliefs of our collective consciousness, more than anybody else.
In
1804 Schlözer was ennobled by the emperor
Alexander I of Russia and made a privy councillor. He retired from active work in
1805. He was much admired by the new Russian historiographer
Nikolai Karamzin, while the professors
Mikhail Kachenovsky and
Mikhail Pogodin proclaimed themselves Schlozer's followers.
Schlözer, who in
1769 married Caroline Roederer, daughter of
Johann Georg Roederer (
1726-
1763), professor of medicine at Göttingen and body physician to the king of England, left five children. His daughter
Dorothea, born on
August 10,
1770, was one of the most beautiful and learned women of her time, and received in
1787 the degree of doctor. She was recognized as an authority on several subjects, especially on Russian
coinage. After her marriage with Rodde, a burgomaster of
Lübeck, she devoted herself to domestic duties. She died on
July 12,
1825 (see Reuter,
Dorothea Schlözer, Göttingen, 1887). Schlözer's son Christian (1774-1831) was a professor at Bonn, and published
Anfangsgründe der Staatswirthschaft (1804-1806) and his father's
Öffentliches und Privat-Leben aus Originalurkunden (1828). The youngest son,
Karl von Schlözer, a merchant and Russian consul-general at
Lübeck, was the father of
Kurd von Schlözer (1822-1894), the historian and diplomatist, who in
1871 was appointed German ambassador to the
United States and in
1882 to the
Vatican, when he was instrumental in healing the breach between Germany and the papacy caused by the
May Laws.
See Zermelo,
August Ludwig Schlözer (Berlin, 1875); Wesendonck,
Die Begründung der neuern deutschen Geschichtsschreibung durch Gatterer und Schlözer (Leipzig, 1876) and F. Frensdorff in
Allgemeine deutsche Biog. vol. xxxi.
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