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August Ludwig von Schlözer (5 July 1735, inGaggstatt – 9 September 1809, inGöttingen) was a Germanhistorian andpedagogist who laid foundations for the critical study ofRussian medieval history. He was a member of theGöttingen school of history.
August Ludwig von Schlözer was born at Gaggstatt,Hohenlohe-Kirchberg (todayKirchberg an der Jagst),Württemberg. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all wereProtestant clergymen. In 1751, he followed them and began his studies intheology inUniversity of Wittenberg, moving in 1754 to the increasingly renownedUniversity of Göttingen to study history. After his studies, in 1755 he went to work as a tutor inStockholm, where he spent a year and a half as tutor in the family of the minister of the German congregation, and during 1756/1757 inUppsala, studyingOld Norse andGothic with the philologistJohan Ihre, then again in Stockholm as secretary of a German merchant. While inSweden he wrote anEssay on the General History of Trade and of Seafaring in the Most Ancient Times (1758, in Swedish) onPhoenicians, which together with a publication onSwedish history made him fairly well known.[citation needed] In 1759, he returned toGöttingen, where he began the study ofmedicine.[1]
In 1761, he went toSt. Petersburg withGerhardt Friedrich Müller, theRussian historiographer, as Müller's literary assistant and as tutor in his family. Here Schlözer learnedRussian 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 toCount Rasumovski, who procured his appointment as adjunct to the Academy. In 1765, he was appointed by theEmpress Catherine an ordinary member of the Academy and professor of Russian history.[1] In 1767, he was elected a foreign member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In 1767, he left Russia on leave and did not return. He settled at Göttingen, where in 1764 he had been madeprofessor extraordinarius, anddoctor honoris causa in 1766, and in 1769 he was promoted to an ordinary professorship.[1] Schlözer was acknowledged a brilliant professor who drew crowds of students, among whom wereArnold Heeren,Karl Friedrich Eichhorn andJohannes von Müller. Schlözer had broad interests. He translated a pedagogical piece by theFrenchmanLa Chalotais in 1771, as well as a travel book aboutJamaica for children and an introductory work on world history (Vorbereitung zur Weltgeschichte für Kinder, 1779). Schlözer criticised harshlyJohann 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 withpolitical 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 andstatistics. He was a proponent ofJohn Locke andMontesquieu. Statistics were also important to him for their informational value for government. His exchange of ideas about the study of people and society withAdam F. Kollár inVienna helped Kollár to clarify his own approach, incorporate and broaden some of Schlözer's views and eventually coin the termethnology and provide its first definition in 1783.
Between 1776 and 1782, he had his own political periodical:A.L. Schlözer's Briefwechsel meist historischen und politischen Inhalts (10 vols.); continued between 1782 and 1793 with the nameA.L. Schlözer's Staats-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 thedeclaration of human rights in 1791. In 1793, the government prohibited the publication of theStaats-Anzeigen.
Schlözer was a versatilehistorian giving lectures on a range of issues includingOliver Cromwell, theDutch revolution,banks, theFrench Revolution (already in 1790), luxury, and the history of Germans inRomania, while continuing publishing onRussian history. HisAllgemeine nordische Geschichte (General northern history), 2 vols. (Halle, 1772) was long considered a reference work on Russian history. He translated the famousNestor Chronicle to the year 980, 5 vols. (Göttingen, 1802–1809). In 1769 he started lecturing on 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 hisVorstellung einer Universalgeschichte in 1772. He continued to improve this piece in the following decades, until finalising theWeltgeschichte nach ihren Haupttheilen im Auszug und Zusammenhange (Main elements of world history in excerpts and context), 2 vols (2nd ed., Göttingen, 1792–1801).
TheWeltgeschichte (World History) provides guidance for education. Parts of this piece appear unfinished and it sometimes has a halting style. Some of its ideas are outdated. However, other ideas have more substance, one of which is globally applied until today as we will see in the following. TheWeltgeschichte offers insight on the state of science at that time. Schlözer tackled three challenges: the scope, the topic and the structure of aglobal 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 thePhoenicians 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 Nahrungsart erschafft, der Herrscher zwingt, der Priester lehrt, 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 auniversal history, separating it in six epochs:
This classification was not new, except for setting theMiddle Ages between 476 and 1492, which he as well as his colleague and rival in GöttingenJohann 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 ofJesus. 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 did not 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 philosopherHannah 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 ourcollective consciousness, more than anybody else.
In 1804, Schlözer was ennobled by the emperorAlexander I of Russia and made a privy councillor. He retired from active work in 1805.[1] He was much admired by the new Russian historiographerNikolai Karamzin, while the professorsMikhail Kachenovsky andMikhail Pogodin proclaimed themselves Schlozer's followers.
Schlözer, who in 1769 marriedCaroline Friederike Roederer, daughter ofJohann Georg Roederer (1726–1763), professor of medicine at Göttingen and body physician to the king of England, left five children. His daughterDorothea, born on 10 August 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 Russiancoinage. After her marriage with Rodde, a burgomaster ofLübeck, she devoted herself to domestic duties. She died on 12 July 1825 (see Reuter,Dorothea Schlözer, Göttingen, 1887). Schlözer's son Christian (1774–1831) was a professor at Bonn, and publishedAnfangsgründe der Staatswirthschaft (1804–1806) and his father'sÖffentliches und Privat-Leben aus Originalurkunden (1828). The youngest son,Karl von Schlözer, a merchant and Russian consul-general atLübeck, was the father ofKurd von Schlözer (1822–1894), the historian and diplomatist, who in 1871 was appointedGerman ambassador to the United States and in 1882 to theVatican, when he was instrumental in healing the breach between Germany and the papacy caused by theMay Laws.[1]
"Шлецер, Август-Людовик" .Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian). 1906.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schlözer, August Ludwig von".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 342–343. This work in turn cites: