Biography
He was born at Wörlitz in Anhalt-Dessau. His father (who died in 1822), was Kammerdirektor in Anhalt and did great service to agriculture. After studying at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium, Berlin, and at the universities of Halle and Göttingen, Raumer began to practise law. He entered the Prussian civil service in 1801 as a civil magistrate, and rose in the service to become councillor to Chancellor Hardenberg in 1809.
He was made a professor at the University of Breslau in 1811, where he served until 1816. In 1819, he became professor of political science and history at the University of Berlin holding the chair until 1847, and giving occasional lectures until 1853. He was for some time secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. That position he also resigned in 1847.
At different times between 1816 and 1855, he traveled extensively through Europe and the United States. In 1815, he carried on historical investigations in Venice, and in the two following years he travelled in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. He went to England in 1835, to Italy in 1839 and to the United States in 1841-1843. He revisited the United States 1853-55. These visits led to the publication of various works.
In 1848 he was elected a member of the Frankfurt Parliament, where he associated himself with the right centre, supporting the proposal for a German empire under the supremacy of Prussia. He was sent to Paris as ambassador by imperial regent Archduke John of Austria, and was one of the deputation which offered the imperial crown to Frederick William IV. After the breakdown of the German parliament, Raumer returned to Berlin, where he was made a member of the first chamber of the Prussian parliament.
He died at Berlin in 1873.
Read more about this topic: Friedrich Ludwig Georg Von Raumer
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)