Barthold Georg Niebuhr (27 August 1776 – 2 January 1831) was a Danish–German statesman, banker, and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. By 1810 Niebuhr was inspiring German patriotism in students at the University of Berlin by his analysis of Roman economy and government. Niebuhr was a leader of the Romantic era and symbol of German national spirit that emerged after the defeat at Jena. But he was also deeply rooted in the classical spirit of the Age of Enlightenment in his intellectual presuppositions, his use of philologic analysis, and his emphasis on both general and particular phenomena in history.
Education
Niebuhr was born in Copenhagen, the son of Carsten Niebuhr, a prominent German geographer resident in that city. His father provided his early education. By 1794 the precocious young Niebuhr had already become an accomplished classical scholar who read several languages. That year he entered the University of Kiel, where he studied law and philosophy. There he formed an important friendship with Madame Hensler, the widowed daughter-in-law of one of the professors, six years older than himself. He also made the acquaintance of her sister, Amelie Behrens, whom he subsequently married. In 1796 he left Kiel to become private secretary to the Danish finance minister, Count Schimmelmann, but in 1798 he gave up this appointment and travelled in Great Britain, spending a year at Edinburgh studying agriculture and physics. Of his stay in Great Britain, he said "my early residence in England gave me one important key to Roman history. It is necessary to know civil life by personal observation in order to understand such states as those of antiquity. I never could have understood a number of things in the history of Rome without having observed England."
In 1799 he returned to Denmark, where he entered the state service; in 1800 he married Amalie Behrens (1773–1815) and settled at Copenhagen. In 1804 he became chief director of the national bank. After the death of his first wife, Niebuhr married (1816) Margarete Henslen (1787–1831), with whom he had one son, Marcus, and three daughters, Amalie, Lucia and Cornelia.
To Prussia
In September 1806, he quit the Denmark post for a similar appointment in Prussia. He showed much business ability in his banking work, which he attributed to his life in England and Scotland. He arrived in Prussia on the eve of the catastrophe of Jena. He accompanied the fugitive government to Königsberg, where he rendered considerable service in the commissariat, and was afterwards still more useful as commissioner of the national debt and by his opposition to ill-considered schemes of taxation. He was also for a short time Prussian minister in the Netherlands, where he endeavoured without success to fund a loan. The extreme sensitiveness of his temperament, however, disqualified him for politics; he proved impracticable in his relations with Hardenberg and other ministers, and in 1810 retired for a time from public life, accepting the more congenial appointment of royal historiographer and professor at the university of Berlin.
In 1809 he became a third class corresponding member, living abroad, of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands.
Academic and diplomatic career
He commenced his lectures with a course on the history of Rome, which formed the basis of his great work Römische Geschichte. The first edition in two volumes, based upon his lectures, was published in 1811–1812, but attracted little attention at the time owing to the absorbing interest of political events. In 1813 Niebuhr's own attention was diverted from history by the uprising of the German people against Napoleon; he entered the Landwehr and ineffectually sought admission into the regular army. He edited for a short time a patriotic journal, the Prussian Correspondent, joined the headquarters of the allied sovereigns, and witnessed the battle of Bautzen, and was subsequently employed in some minor negotiations. In 1815 he lost both his father and his wife.
He next accepted (1816) the post of ambassador at Rome. Before his departure for Rome, he married his wife's niece. On his way to Rome, he discovered in the cathedral library of Verona the long-lost Institutes of Gaius, afterwards edited by Savigny, to whom he communicated the discovery under the impression that he had found a portion of Ulpian. The reason that Niebuhr visited Verona is a matter of controversy among scholars, with some alleging that he was on a "secret mission" to obtain the Gaius manuscript which others had previously found. The evidence points towards a fortunate coincidence.