Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/878

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

868 Notes and News power of thought. In 1884 Dr. Stubbs became bishop of Chester, whence in 1889 he was translated to Oxford. The episcopal office made further historical writing impossible for him, as for the late bishop of London. Yet he gave great attention to the revision of the successive editions of his Constitutional History, and he found time to render much aid to the Historical Manuscripts Commission, of whose productions he assured the present writer that he always read the proof-sheets. Indeed under the rubric "Favorite Recreations" in the English Who's WIio (a rubric characteristically and rightly absent from the American book of the same name) the Bishop of Oxford had the note, " making out pedi- grees and correcting proof-sheets." In ecclesiastical matters Dr. Stubbs was an old-fashioned High Churchman, an active and conscientious prelate, but gifted with a sense of humor. In private he was a kindly and witty gentleman, the friend and aider of all serious historical students. Professor Bernhard Erdmannsdorffer of Heidelberg died on March first, aged 68. He was a distinguished teacher, particularly in the fields of modern history and had held a professorship at Heidelberg since 1874. His first publications were two seventeenth-century biographies, of Charles Emanuel I. of Savoy and of Georg Friedrich of Waldeck, printed in 1862 and 1869. At Berlin he had an important part in the editing of the documents of the Great Elector. At Heidelberg, after the establishment of the Baden Historical Commission, he edited some of the earlier volumes of the political correspondence of the Margrave Karl Friedrich. But his chief narrative historical work was his Deutsche Geschichte vom westphiilischen Frieden Us zum Regierungsan- tritt Friedrichs des Grossen (1892-1893) in the Oncken series. Former pupils of Erdmannsdorffer, of whom there are not a few in America, may be glad to have their attention called to the article by Gothein in the April number of the Preussische Jahrbilchcr. Dr. Karl Biedermann died on March 6, aged eighty-nine. He had an active part in Saxon and German politics in the revolutionary years 1 84 7-1 848, and was a member of the Frankfort Parliament of the latter year. His first important historical work, and a very interesting one, was his Deutschlands Politische, Materielle und Scciale Zustaiide im aclif- zehnten Jahrhundert {iS><^^-i?>6-]^. This was followed (1870-1882) by his Dreissig Jahre deutscher Geschichte, relating to the stirring years 1840- 1870. This reached a fourth edition in 1896, and was supplemented by, and finally combined with, a historical account of the twenty-five years preceding, 1815-1840. Anotherwork of high popularity was his Deutsche Jldhs- und Kulturgeschichte (1885, third ed. 1898). Dr. Biedermann, who retained to the last an honorary professorship at Leipzig, also wrote an entertaining autobiography entitled JSrein Leben und ein Stuck Gf- schichte {i?,?>6). Rev. Dr. William Bright, canon of Christ Church, who since 1868 had been professor of ecclesiastical history in the L^niversity of Oxford, and whose Chapters in Far/y English Church ZT/V/iJ^j was highly esteemed, died on March 6, aged seventy-six.