Mommsen studiedjurisprudence at Kiel from 1838 to 1843, finishing his studies with the degree of Doctor of Roman Law. During this time he was the roommate ofTheodor Storm, who was later to become a renowned poet. Together with Mommsen's brother Tycho, the three friends even published a collection of poems (Liederbuch dreier Freunde). Based on his research into Roman law, Mommsen then devoted himself to Ancient History, which was just being established as a separate subject area at the time; thanks to a royal Danish grant, he was able to visit France and Italy to study preserved classical Roman inscriptions. During therevolution of 1848 he worked as a war correspondent in then-DanishRendsburg, supporting the Germanannexation of Schleswig-Holstein and a constitutional reform. Having been forced to leave the country by the Danes, he became a professor of law in the same year at theUniversity of Leipzig. When Mommsen protested against the new constitution ofSaxony in 1851, he had to resign. However, the next year he obtained a professorship in Roman law at theUniversity of Zurich and then spent a couple of years in exile. In 1854 he became a professor of law at theUniversity of Breslau where he metJakob Bernays. Mommsen became a research professor at theBerlin Academy of Sciences in 1857. He later helped to create and manage the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.
In 1858 Mommsen was appointed a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and he also became professor of Roman History at theUniversity of Berlin in 1861, where he held lectures up to 1887. Mommsen received high recognition for his academic achievements: foreign membership of theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1859,[1] the Prussian medalPour le Mérite in 1868, honorary citizenship of Rome, elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society in 1870,[2] and theNobel Prize in Literature in 1902 for his main workRömische Geschichte (Roman History). (He is one of the very few non-fiction writers to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.)[3][4]
At 2 a.m. on 7 July 1880 a fire occurred in the upper floor workroom-library of Mommsen's house at Marchstraße 6 in Berlin.[6][7][8] After being burned while attempting to remove valuable papers, he was restrained from returning to the blazing house. Several oldmanuscripts were burnt to ashes, includingManuscript 0.4.36, which was on loan from the library ofTrinity College, Cambridge.[9] There is information that the important Manuscript ofJordanes fromHeidelberg University library was burnt.[10] Two other important manuscripts, fromBrussels andHalle, were also destroyed.[11]
Mommsen had sixteen children with his wife Marie (daughter of the publisher and editor Karl Reimer of Leipzig). Their oldest daughter Maria marriedUlrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, the great Classics scholar. Their grandsonTheodor Ernst Mommsen (1905–1958) became a professor of medieval history in the United States. Two of the great-grandsons,Hans Mommsen andWolfgang Mommsen, were German historians.
While he was secretary of the Historical-Philological Class at theBerlin Academy (1874–1895), Mommsen organised countless scientific projects, mostly editions of original sources.
At the beginning of his career, when he published the inscriptions of theNeapolitan Kingdom (1852), Mommsen already had in mind a collection of all known ancient Latin inscriptions. He received additional impetus and training fromBartolomeo Borghesi ofSan Marino. The completeCorpus Inscriptionum Latinarum would consist of seventeen volumes, the latest of which was published in 1986. Fifteen of these volumes were published in Mommsen's lifetime, and he prepared five of them himself. The basic principle of the edition (contrary to previous collections) was the method of autopsy, according to which all copies (i.e., modern transcriptions) of inscriptions were to be checked and compared to the original.
Mommsen was a delegate to thePrussian House of Representatives from 1863 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1879, and delegate to theReichstag from 1881 to 1884, at first for the liberalGerman Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei), later for theNational Liberal Party, and finally for theSecessionists. He was very concerned with questions about academic and educational policies and held national positions. Although he had supportedGerman Unification, he was disappointed with the politics of theGerman Empire and he was quite pessimistic about its future. Mommsen strongly disagreed withOtto von Bismarck about social policies in 1881, advising collaboration between Liberals andSocial Democrats and using such strong language that he narrowly avoided prosecution.
As a Liberal nationalist Mommsen favored assimilation of ethnic minorities into German society, not exclusion.[12] In 1879, his colleagueHeinrich von Treitschke began a political campaign against Jews (the so-calledBerliner Antisemitismusstreit). Mommsen strongly opposedantisemitism and wrote a harsh pamphlet in which he denounced von Treitschke's views. Mommsen viewed a solution to antisemitism in voluntarycultural assimilation, suggesting that the Jews could follow the example of the people ofSchleswig-Holstein,Hanover and other German states, which gave up some of their special customs when integrating intoPrussia.[13] In 1890 Mommsen became one of the co-founders of the Association for Defense against Antisemitism (Abwehrverein), a humanist association created to publicly counter the growing antisemitism in Germany.[14]
Mommsen was a vehement spokesman for German nationalism, maintaining a militant attitude towards theSlavic nations, to the point of advocating the use of violence against them. In an 1897 letter to theNeue Freie Presse ofVienna, Mommsen calledCzechs "apostles of barbarism" and wrote that "the Czech skull is impervious to reason, but it is susceptible to blows".[15][16]
Fellow Nobel Laureate (1925)Bernard Shaw cited Mommsen's interpretation of the last First Consul of the Republic, Julius Caesar, as one of the inspirations for his 1898 (1905 onBroadway) play,Caesar and Cleopatra.
The playwrightHeiner Müller wrote a 'performance text' entitledMommsens Block (1993), inspired by the publication of Mommsen's fragmentary notes on the later Roman empire and by theEast German government's decision to replace a statue ofKarl Marx outside theHumboldt University of Berlin with one of Mommsen.[18]
There is aGymnasium (academic high school) named for Mommsen in his hometown ofBad Oldesloe, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. His birthplaceGarding in the west of Schleswig styles itself "Mommsen-Stadt Garding".
"One of the highpoints ofMark Twain's European tour of 1892 was a large formal banquet at theUniversity of Berlin... . Mark Twain was an honoured guest, seated at the head table with some twenty 'particularly eminent professors'; and it was from this vantage point that he witnessed the following incident..."[19] In Twain's own words:
When apparently the last eminent guest had long ago taken his place, again those three bugle-blasts rang out, and once more the swords leaped from their scabbards. Who might this late comer be? Nobody was interested to inquire. Still, indolent eyes were turned toward the distant entrance, and we saw the silken gleam and the lifted sword of a guard of honor plowing through the remote crowds. Then we saw that end of the house rising to its feet; saw it rise abreast the advancing guard all along like a wave. This supreme honor had been offered to no one before. There was an excited whisper at our table—'MOMMSEN!'—and the whole house rose. Rose and shouted and stamped and clapped and banged the beer mugs. Just simply a storm!
Then the little man with his long hair andEmersonian face edged his way past us and took his seat. I could have touched him with my hand—Mommsen!—think of it! ... I would have walked a great many miles to get a sight of him, and here he was, without trouble or tramp or cost of any kind. Here he was clothed in a titanic deceptive modesty which made him look like other men.[20]
Mommsen published over 1,500 works, and effectively established a new framework for the systematic study ofRoman history. He pioneeredepigraphy, the study ofinscriptions in material artefacts. Although the unfinishedHistory of Rome, written early in his career, has long been widely considered as his main work, the work most relevant today is, perhaps, theCorpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a collection of Roman inscriptions he contributed to theBerlin Academy.[21]
Mommsen, Theodor.Rome, from earliest times to 44 B. C. (1906)online
Mommsen, Theodor.History of Rome: Volume 1 (1894)online edition
Mommsen, Theodor.History of Rome: Volume 2 (1871)online edition
Mommsen, Theodor.History of Rome: Volume 3 (1891)online edition
Mommsen, Theodor.History of Rome: Volume 4 (1908)online edition
Mommsen, Theodor:Römische Geschichte. 8 Volumes.dtv, München 2001.ISBN3-423-59055-6
The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian (1885), published as volume 5 of hisHistory of Rome, is a description of all Roman regions during the early imperial period.
Roman Chronology to the Time of Caesar (1858) written with his brotherAugust Mommsen.
Roman Constitutional Law (1871–1888). This systematic treatment ofRoman constitutional law in three volumes has been of importance for research on ancient history.
Iordanis Romana et Getica (1882) was Mommsen's critical edition ofJordanes'The Origin and Deeds of the Goths and has subsequently come to be generally known simply asGetica.
^quote: Another manuscript is beyond recall; namely, 0.4.36, which was borrowed by Professor Theodor Mommsen and perished in the lamentable fire at his house in 1880. It was not, apparently, an indispensable or even a very important authority for the texts (Jordanes, the Antonine Itinerary, etc.) which it contained, and other copies of its archetype are yet in being: still, the loss of it is very regrettable; M. R. James'"The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: a Descriptive Catalogue". Archived fromthe original on 12 July 2009.
^Mahan, Alfred Thayer.From Sail to Stream: Recollections of Naval Life. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1907: 277
^Heiner Müller,Mommsen's Block. InA Heiner Müller Reader: Plays | Poetry | Prose. Ed. and trans.Carl Weber. PAJ Books Ser. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.ISBN0-8018-6578-6. p.122-129.
^Saunder and Collins, "Introduction" to their edition of Mommsen'sHistory of Rome (Meridian Books 1958), at 1–17, 1.
Mueller, G. H. "Weber and Mommsen: non-Marxist materialism,"British Journal of Sociology, (March 1986), 37(1), pp. 1–20in JSTOR
Whitman, Sidney, and Theodor Mommsen. "German Feeling toward England and America,"North American Review, Vol. 170, No. 519 (Feb. 1900), pp. 240–243, an exchange of letters
Krmnicek, Stefan (ed.).Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) auf Medaillen und Plaketten. Sammlung des Instituts für Klassische Archäologie der Universität Tübingen (Von Krösus bis zu König Wilhelm. Neue Serie 2). Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Tübingen 2017.
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