About Heinrich von Sybel
Heinrich Karl Ludolf von Sybel (2 December 1817 – 1 August 1895) was a German historian and politician, who served in the Landtag of Prussia from 1862 to 1864 and from 1874 to 1880. He was a professor at the University of Bonn from 1861 to 1875 and director of the Prussian Archives from 1875. == Life == Sybel came from a Protestant family which had long been established at Soest. He was born in Düsseldorf, where his father held important posts in the public service under both the French and the Prussians; in 1831 he was raised to the hereditary nobility. His home was one of the centres of the vigorous literary and artistic life for which Düsseldorf was renowned at that time. Sybel was educated at the local Gymnasium, and then at the University of Berlin, where he came under the influences of Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Leopold von Ranke, whose most distinguished pupil he was to become. After taking his degree, he settled down in 1841 as a Privatdozent in history at the university of Bonn. He had already made himself known by critical studies on the history of the Middle Ages, of which the most important was his Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (History of the First Crusade) (Düsseldorf, 1841; new ed., Leipzig, 1881), a work which, besides its merit as a valuable piece of historical investigation employing the critical methods he had learnt from Ranke, was also of some significance as a protest against the vaguely enthusiastic attitude encouraged by the Romantic school towards the Middle Ages. In 1861 Lady Duff-Gordon published an English translation of a part of this book, to which were added lectures on the crusades delivered in Munich in 1858, under the title History and Literature of the Crusades. This was followed by a study of the growth of German kingship (Die Entstehung des deutschen Königtums, Frankfurt, 1844, and again 1881), after which he was appointed professor.
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