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Ferdinand Gregorovius Versus Theodor Mommsen on the City of Rome and Its Legends

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Ferdinand Gregorovius Versus Theodor Mommsen on the City of Rome and Its Legends Ferdinand Gregorovius versus Theodor Mommsen on the City of Rome and Its Legends Maya Maskarinec, Columbia University ABSTRACT This article argues that Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–91) in his popular but much critiqued Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter challenged the ideals of an objective, dispassionate historiography advocated by the leading German historians of his gen- eration. To do so it focuses on Gregorovius’s treatment of the city of Rome and its urban legends, comparing Gregorovius’s approach with that taken by his famous con- temporary Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) in his unfinished Römische Geschichte. This reveals how, unlike Mommsen, Gregorovius allowed his experiences in Rome to influence his historical presentation. As a result, the city of Rome and its legends emerge as actors in the drama of history and Gregorovius embeds in his work a nar- rative of the destruction of Rome that rests uneasily with the pattern of progress that Gregorovius, like his contemporaries, was convinced underpinned history. hese fools possess nothing of that true blossom of cultivation that is called urbanitas,” wrote Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–91) in his journal on May 29, T — fi – 1876 referring speci cally to Theodor Mommsen (1817 1903), whom he de- scribes, in the same entry, as “the epitome of German pedantry.”1 More than mere per- An earlier version of this essay was accepted for presentation at the Making of the Humanities III con- ference at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome in 2012. I am grateful to the reviewers of this article for their perceptive criticism. 1. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher 1852–1889, ed. Hanno-Walter Kruft and Markus Völkel (Munich: Beck, 1991), 370. Gregorovius reports how Mommsen had delivered a pro-German nationalistic toast at a dinner in Rome and then remarks, “Mommsen ist nicht nur einer der aus- gepichtesten Typen des deutschen Pedantendünkels, sondern auch ganz persönlich mit hochgradiger Arroganz begabt. ...Von der wahren Blüte der Bildung, welche Urbanitas heißt, besitzen diese Narren nichts.” Gregorovius bequeathed his revised journal of the period 1852–74 to his friend Friedrich Althaus, who edited and published it with an introduction: Ferdinand Gregorovius, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Friedrich Althaus (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta Nachfolger, 1892). The whereabouts of the original manuscript are not known; presumably it was destroyed by Althaus. The continuation History of Humanities, Volume 1, Number 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/685062 © 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 2379-3163/2016/0101-0008$10.00 101 This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 102 | HISTORY OF HUMANITIES SPRING 2016 sonal animosity against Mommsen, Gregorovius’s comments indicate his conception of historical scholarship. In 1875 Gregorovius reflected on his fourteen-volume Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, published 1859–72.2 He wrote in his diary, “I am satisfied to have created a spiritual portrait of Rome in its entirety [geistiges Totalbild] that nevertheless rests on the firm foundation of the most comprehensive and solid studies in the archives. Per- haps it will vindicate Wilhelm von Humboldt’s remark that to write a lifelike historical work one must possess the gift of distance.”3 In the same diary entry he repeatedly re- flects on his intimate engagement with the city of Rome. He wrote his history “for the sake of myself and my subject, for which I was filled with a passionate ardor [lei- denschaftlichen Glut].”4 His history would never have come into being had not “one day on the bridge of the Quattro Capi, the bewitching ideal image [Idealbild] of Rome reflected itself within me.”5 His relationship to the work “was always both a personal and an artistic one.”6 Archival research, so Gregorovius reflects, went hand in hand with his own enthusiasm for his subject to create his masterpiece. It was first and fore- most the living city of Rome that bewitched him and inspired and guided his project. This article argues that Gregorovius championed a form of passionate historical scholarship that stood at odds with the professionalized distance advocated by the leading German historians of his generation.7 The centenary of Gregorovius’s death (1875–89) is now located, together with Gregorovius’s other surviving papers, in the Gregoroviusiana collection at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. In addition to Gregorovius’s diaries, some of his letters have also been published (despite Gregorovius’s injunction to his friends to destroy them). 2. I follow the Kampf edition: Ferdinand Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter: Vom V. bis zum XVI. Jh., ed. Waldemar Kampf, 4 vols. (1953–57; Munich: Beck, 1978), based primar- ily on Gregorovius’s fourth and last revision, published in Stuttgart by J. G. Cotta/J. G. Cotta Nach- folger, 1886–96. 3. “Ich bin zufrieden, ein geistiges Totalbild Roms verfaßt zu haben, welches doch auf dem festen Grunde der umfassendsten und gediegensten Studien in den Archiven ruht. Vielleicht wird sich an ihm der Ausspruch Wilhelm von Humboldts bewahrheiten, daß nur der ein lebendiges Geschichtswerk schreiben kann, welcher die Gabe der Distanz besitzt” (Gregorovius, entry for June 9, 1875, Römische Tagebücher, ed. Kruft and Völkel, 356). 4. “Ich schrieb es, um meiner selbst und des Gegenstandes willen, von dem ich mit einer leidenschaftlichen Glut erfüllt war” (ibid.). 5. “So wäre auch meine Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter nicht entstanden, wenn nicht eines Tags auf der Brücke Quattro Capi das bezaubernde Idealbild Roms sich in meinem Innern abgespiegelt hätte” (ibid.). 6. “Mein Verhältnis zu ihr war stets ein persönliches und künstlerisches” (ibid.). 7. For a convenient overview of predominant trends in nineteenth-century medieval history, see František Graus, “Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters,” Historische Zeitschrift 243 (1986): 529–89. More generally, still useful is G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (New York: This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). GREGOROVIUS VERSUS MOMMSEN ON ROME |103 has increased scholarly interest in this little-known German scholar whose works have always been criticized by professional historians but have continued to attract edu- cated readers to this day; his approach to Rome as a city in his Geschichte der Stadt Rom remains largely unstudied.8 In this article I focus on Gregorovius’s engagement with his subject, the city of Rome, and its legends, in his Geschichte der Stadt Rom, as contrasted with the approach taken by the leading German historian of his gener- ation, Theodor Mommsen, in his unfinished Römische Geschichte, to demonstrate how Gregorovius’s attitude to Rome, simultaneously scholarly and dilettantish, gave par- ticular inflection to his work. Both Gregorovius’s Geschichte der Stadt Rom and Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte received popular acclaim as literary masterpieces in their authors’ lifetimes, and both have continued to influence how later generations imagine ancient and medieval Rome. Yet whereas Mommsen’s Rome is grounded in the close study of ancient sources, Gregorovius’s passion for the city of Rome fed into his conception of medieval Rome. In Mommsen’s history, the city of Rome is an agent in the larger patterns of historical progress, and Roman legends are the cobwebs that historical criticism must sweep away. In Gregorovius’s history, the city of Rome, the Rome that he had explored and imagined, and Rome’s legends, the poetry that populated its monuments, emerge as actors in the drama of history, producing a work that continues to challenge the ideals of an objective, dispassionate historiography. Gregorovius embeds in his work Smith, 1949). For ninteenth-century approaches to antiquity and the Middle Ages in Germany and Italy more specifically, see Karl Christ and Arnaldo Momigliano, eds., L’antichità nell’Ottocento in Italia e Germania, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), and espe- cially the essay by Karl Christ, “Aspekte der Antike-Rezeption in der deutschen Altertumswissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts,” 21–38; Annette M. Baertschi and Colin G. King, eds., Die modernen Väter der Antike: Die Entwicklung der Altertumswissenschaften an Akademie und Universität im Berlin des 19. Jahrhunderts, Transformationen der Antike no. 3 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009); Reinhard Elze and Pierangelo Schiera, eds., Italia e Germania: Immagini, modelli, miti fra due popoli nell’ottocento; il Medioevo,Annalidell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988). 8. Scholarship on Gregorovius has tended to focus on the accuracy of Gregorovius’s history or on his writings as a source for late nineteenth-century Rome. Pertinent to the present study is recent work that has drawn attention to the close connection between Gregorovius’s life and work: Hanno-Walter Kruft, “Gregorovius und die Anschauung Roms,” in Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Eine kritische Würdigung, ed. Arnold Esch and Jen Petersen (Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993), 1–11; Markus Völkel, “Rom sehen—die erste vollständige Edition der ‘Römischen Tagebücher 1852–1889,’” in Ferdinand Gregorovius und Italien: Eine kritische Würdigung, ed. Arnold Esch and Jen Petersen (Tübingen: Niemayer, 1993), 59–72. The most up-to-date bibliography of works by and about Gregorovius is found in vol. 4 of Kampf’s edition of Gregorovius’s Geschichte. An introduction to Gregorovius’s Geschichte is also provided by Waldemar Kampf in the same volume: “Entstehung, Aufnahme und Wirkung der Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter,” 9–54. This content downloaded from 160.039.159.048 on March 28, 2016 16:27:15 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
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