Emil Seckel (10 January 1864, Neuenheim near

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

– 26 April 1924,

Todtmoos Todtmoos is a village and municipality in the district of Waldshut in the southern part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most po ...

) was a German

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

and law historian. Emil Seckel studied law at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Wü ...

. Seckel professor in 1898. In 1901 Seckel took over the professorship for

Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the ''Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor J ...

at the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

. On December 7, 1911, he became a member of the

Prussian Academy of Sciences The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (german: Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften) was an academy established in Berlin, Germany on 11 July 1700, four years after the Prussian Academy of Arts, or "Arts Academy," to which "Berlin ...

. In 1920, Seckel was appointed rector of the

Humboldt University Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of ...

in Berlin as the successor to the historian

Eduard Meyer Eduard Meyer (25 January 1855 – 31 August 1930) was a German historian. He was the brother of Celticist Kuno Meyer (1858–1919). Biography Meyer was born in Hamburg and educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums and later at the univer ...

. The chemist Walther Nernst succeeded him in 1921. Seckel's main areas of research were jurisprudence and especially Roman law. The edition of the collection of the

capitularies A capitulary (Medieval Latin ) was a series of legislative or administrative acts emanating from the Frankish court of the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, especially that of Charlemagne, the first emperor of the Romans in the west since the ...

Benedictus Levita Benedict Levita (of Mainz), or Benedict the Deacon, is the pseudonym attached to a forged collection of capitularies that appeared in the ninth century. The collection belongs to the group of pseudo-Isidorian forgeries that includes the false dec ...

was one of his central fields of work. The central management of the ''

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' (''MGH'') is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empire ...

'' assigned him the task of preparing the publication of a new edition in 1896 after the editor responsible

Victor Krause The name Victor or Viktor may refer to: * Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname Arts and entertainment Film * ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film * ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...

suddenly died at the age of 31. Before his death Seckel had published more than a thousand pages of research on the sources, but was unable to present a new edition of ''Benedictus Levita''. His sons included the pediatrician Helmut Paul George Seckel (1900-1960), for whom the

Seckel syndrome Seckel syndrome, or microcephalic primordial dwarfism (also known as bird-headed dwarfism, Harper's syndrome, Virchow–Seckel dwarfism and bird-headed dwarf of Seckel) is an extremely rare congenital nanosomic disorder. Inheritance is autosomal ...

is named, and the art historian Dietrich Seckel.

Literary works

* ''Beiträge zur Geschichte beider Rechte Mittelalter'', 1898 * ''Gestaltungsrechte des bürgerlichen Rechts'', 1903

External links

* http://bibliothek.bbaw.de/kataloge/literaturnachweise/seckel/literatur.pdf
東北大学附属図書館／特殊文庫
at www.library.tohoku.ac.jp 1864 births 1924 deaths Jurists from Heidelberg 20th-century German historians Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences People from the Grand Duchy of Baden University of Tübingen alumni Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin German male non-fiction writers 19th-century German historians {{Germany-law-bio-stub