TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON German historian and political writer, the son of a Saxon officer, was born at Dresden on Sept. 15, 1834. Prevented by deafness from enter ing the public service, he studied at Leipzig and Bonn, where he was a pupil of Dahlmann. He established himself as a Privatdozent at Leipzig, lecturing on history and politics, and at once became very popular with the students, but his political opinions made it impossible for the Saxon government to appoint him to a profes sorship. He was at that time a strong Liberal ; he hoped to see Germany united into a single state with a parliamentary govern ment, and that all the smaller states would be swept away. In 1863 he was appointed professor at Freiburg; in 1866, at the out break of war, he showed his Prussian sympathies by removing to Berlin, became a Prussian subject, and was appointed editor of the Preussische Jahrbiicher. After holding appointments at Kiel and Heidelberg, he was in 1874 made professor at Berlin ; he had already in 1871 become a member of the Reichstag, and from that time till his death in 1896 he was one of the most prominent fig ures in the city. On Sybel's death he succeeded him as editor of the Historische Zeitschrift. He had outgrown his early Liberalism and become the chief panegyrist of the house of Hohenzollern.
Treitschke did more than any one to mould the minds of the rising generation, and he carried them with him even in his violent attacks on all opinions and all parties which appeared in any way to be injurious to the rising power of Germany. He supported the government in its attempts to subdue by legislation the Socialists, Poles and Catholics; and he was one of the few men of eminence who gave the sanction of his name to the attacks on the Jews which began in 1878. As a strong advocate of colonial expansion he was a bitter enemy of Great Britain, and he was to a large extent responsible for the anti-British feeling of German Chauvin ism during the last years of the 19th century. In the Reichstag
he had originally been a member of the National Liberal party, but in 1879 he was the first to accept the new commercial policy of Bismarck, and in his later years he joined the Moderate Con servatives. He died at Berlin on April 28, 1896.
As an historian Treitschke confined himself to those periods and characters in which great political problems were being worked out: above all, he was a patriotic historian, and he never wandered far from Prussia. His peat achievement was the His tory of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (Eng. trans. by E. and C. Paul, 7 vols., 1915-19). The first volume was published in 1879, and during the next sixteen years four more volumes ap peared, but at his death he had only advanced to the year The most important of the essays were collected under the title Historische und politische Aufsiitze (4 vols., Leipzig, 1896) ; a selection from his more controversial writings was made under the title Zehn Jahre deutscher Kampfe; in 1896 a new volume appeared, called Deutsche Kiimpfe, neue Folge. After his death his lectures on political subjects were published under the title Politik (Eng. trans., 2 vols., 1916). He brought out also in 1856 a short volume of poems called Vaterliindische Gedichte, and another volume in the following year. His Briefe, ed. M. Corni. celius (3 vols., Berlin, 1859-96), were reprinted at Leipzig (1913-20).