Karl von Hegel

Friedrich Wilhelm Karl, Ritter von Hegel (7 June 1813 – 5 December 1901) was a German historian and son of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. During his lifetime he was a well-known and well-reputed historian who received many awards and honours. He was one of the major urban historians during the second half of the 19th century. Life and work Karl Hegel was born in Nuremberg. He was the son of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who died in 1831, when Karl Hegel was 18 years old. Hegel's own career suffered from the fame of his father. His mother, Marie Helena Susanna von Tucher (1791–1855) came from a long-established Nuremberg family of nobility. Hegel lived his first three years in Nuremberg. The family relocated to Heidelberg in 1816, where his father became Professor of Philosophy. In 1818, they relocated again, this time to Berlin. Karl Hegel studied in Berlin and in Heidelberg. One of his academic teachers was Leopold von Ranke. In 1837, he earned a PhD in Berlin (his Doctor's thesis was about Alexander the Great). From 1838 to 1839, he went to Italy and did many historical researches. Back in Berlin, he worked for a brief time as a high school teacher. From 1841 to 1856, he was Professor for History and Politics at the University of Rostock. In 1847, he published two volumes of the History of Urban Constitution of Italy since the Time of the Roman Empire until the End of the 12th Century. From then on he was a well-known historian of the 19th century. The universities of Leipzig, Kiel, Munich, Greifswald and Erlangen offered him a professorship. In 1850, he was as elected representative of the Erfurt Parliament. During the same year, he married his cousin Susanna Tucher. In 1856, the University of Erlangen appointed him to the newly created teaching professorship of history. During 1870, he was vice-rector at FAU. From 1862 to 1899, 27 volumes of the edition “Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte” were published by Karl Hegel for the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Hegel edited six chronicles volumes (Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Mainz) in many parts on his own. With Hegel as a department manager, the edition of the chronicles was one of the most successful projects of the Munich Historical Commission at the Royal Academy, which was still young during Hegel's lifetime.