Friedrich Christoph Schlosser

Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (17 November 1776 – 23 September 1861) was a German historian, Professor of History at the University of Heidelberg and a Privy Councillor in Prussia. Early years He was born at Jever in the District of Friesland. He studied theology, mainly at Göttingen, and then tutored privately. Turning to the study of history, he became and remained for a quarter of a century the most popular German historian. Work In 1807, inspired by his study of Dante, he published his first work Abélard und Dulcin, a defence of scholasticism and medieval thought. Two years later biographical studies of Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr Vermili (Leben des Theodor de Bela und des Peter Martyr Vermili, Heidelberg, 1809) revealed more great scholarship. In 1812 his History of the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East (Geschichte der bilderstürmenden Kaiser des oströmischen Reichs) was published, in which he contradicted some points in Edward Gibbon's highly opinionated work and sought to avoid painting the past in present-day colours. It won him the favour of Archbishop Karl Theodor Dalberg and secured him a Professorship in the Frankfurt Lyceum.