Karl von Rotteck

Karl von Rotteck
Academic work

Karl Wenzeslaus Rodecker von Rotteck (18 July 1775, Freiburg, Baden – 26 November 1840, Freiburg) was a German political activist, historian, politician and political scientist. He was a prominent advocate of freedom of the press and the abolition of compulsory labor.

His father was a physician raised to the nobility by Emperor Joseph II, and a professor of medicine at the University of Freiburg. His mother came from a noble line from Lothringen (Poirot d'Ogeron). Karl was reared as a Catholic, and was a talented and industrious scholar. At 15, he began attending the University of Freiburg, where he studied jurisprudence. During the preparatory philosophical courses, Rotteck got to know the first Protestant professor of the university, Johann Georg Jacobi, whose teaching and society were major influences on him. Like many of his contemporaries, Rotteck was sympathetic with the strivings of the French for freedom in the French Revolution, but his sympathy with the Revolution was quickly extinguished by its raw realities. The invasion of his homeland by the French and the changes in land ownership which followed their victories outraged his sense of justice and his national sensitivities.

In 1797, at 22, he passed with excellence the Baden juridical exam and began his judicial career as a magistrate of the city of Freiburg. Even as a student, he had had little joy in jurisprudence, and the prosaic duties of his office completely spoiled the field for him. Having from early childhood an interest in historical studies, especially biography, he applied in 1798 for the vacated office of professor of history at the University of Freiburg and received it. In those times, the frankness with which he expressed himself and his spirited idealism compensated for his lack of objective historical knowledge, without which later no beginner would think of trying for a teaching position, to say nothing of being allowed to fill it for 20 years. He held the position until 1818. He lacked some physical requirements for teaching: he spoke monotonously, and with a weak voice. But his genuine spiritedness and outrage bound his listeners to him, and left behind ideal conceptions of how things should be arranged.

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