Wilhelm Wattenbach (22 September 181920 September 1897), was a German

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

. He was born at Rantzau in

Holstein Holstein (; nds, label=Northern Low Saxon, Holsteen; da, Holsten; Latin and historical en, Holsatia, italic=yes) is the region between the rivers Elbe and Eider. It is the southern half of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of German ...

. He studied

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

at the universities of

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, and in 1843 he began to work upon 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 ...

''. In 1855 he was appointed

archivist An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to Document, records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist c ...

at Breslau; in 1862 he became a professor of history at

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 ...

, and ten years later a professor at Berlin, where he was a member of the directing body of the ''

'' and a member of the Academy. He died at

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition, Wattenbach was distinguished by his thorough knowledge of the chronicles and other original documents of the Middle Ages, and his most valuable work was done in this field.

Works

*''Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des XIII Jahrhunderts'' (1858), his principal book, a guide to the sources of the history of Germany in the Middle Ages, several editions
1893 ed.
ref> *''Anleitung zur lateinischen Paläographie'' (Leipzig, 1869, and again 1886) *''Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter'' (Leipzig, 1871, and again 1896) *''Beiträge zur Geschichte der christlichen Kirche in Böhmen und Mähren'' (Vienna, 1849) *''Geschichte des römischen Papsttums'' (Berlin, 1876) *''Anleitung zur griechischen Paläographie'' (Leipzig, 1867, and again 1895).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wattenbach, Wilhelm 1819 births 1897 deaths 19th-century German historians 19th-century German male writers German palaeographers People from the Duchy of Holstein University of Bonn alumni German male non-fiction writers Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities