BÖHMER, JOHANN FRIEDRICH. — Historian, born on 22 April 1795 in Frankfurt am Main, died there on 22 October
1863. Archivist and librarian in his native city, he was Pertz’s secretary and treasurer in the society of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. His Regesta Imperii, a fundamental publication for medievalists, which appeared from 1833 onward and covered a period extending from the year 911 to 1347, is owed to him. A Protestant, he had a deep admiration for the medieval papacy and considered the so-called Reformation a grave misfortune for the German people. Ranke judged B. to be “a son of the Middle Ages born in an age not his own, orphaned in a world foreign to him.”
BIBL.: W. Wattenbach, s. V. in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, III, pp. 76–78; G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth century, Londra 1913, passim. Silvio Furlani