Karl von Hegel

Karl Ritter von Hegel (7 June 1813, in Nuremberg – 5 December 1901, in Erlangen) was a German historian. During his lifetime he was a well-known and highly reputed historian who received many awards and honours, because he was one of the leading urban historians in the second half of the 19th century. However, his work has been little noted in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Karl Hegel was the son of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. His father died in 1831, when Karl Hegel was 18 years old. Hegel's own career suffered under the fame of his father. His mother, Marie Helena Susanna von Tucher (1791–1855) came from a long-established Nuremberg family of nobility. In Nuremberg, Hegel spent his first three years. The family relocated to Heidelberg in 1816, where his father became Professor of Philosophy. In 1818, they moved 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 a lot of historical researches. Back to Berlin, he worked for a short time as a high school teacher. From 1841 to 1856, he was Professor for History and Politics at the . 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. In the same year, he married his cousin Susanna Tucher. In 1856, the University of Erlangen appointed him to the newly created teaching chair in history. In 1870, he was vice-rector at FAU.

From 1862 to 1899, 27 volumes of the edition “Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte” appeared under his leadership and 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. Designated historians, specialists in German studies and jurists such as Karl Lamprecht, Georg von Below, Matthias Lexer or Ferdinand Frensdorff were his employees.

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