GREGOROVIUS, FERDINAND. — German historian, born on 19 January 1821 in Neidenburg (East Prussia), died in Munich on 19 May 1891. Of a family originally Polish (Grezgorzewski), in which the career of Protestant pastor was traditional, he was sent to study at the gymnasium in Gumbinnen and then, for theology, at Königsberg.
At a very young age, the idea of the Polish revolution briefly crossed his mind; moreover, he was and always considered himself a Prussian patriot. In 1845 he published a novel; in 1851 an essay on the Emperor Hadrian. In 1852, after coming to Rome, he began his library and archive studies for the *History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages*, which he began writing three years later and completed in 1871. In 1889 he published a *History of Athens in the Middle Ages*, quite different, both as a work of scholarship and as a work of art, from that of Rome. Among his poetic works, the *Years of Travel in Italy* deserve mention, which can be considered an archive in themselves, and among the minor ones, a translation of the Sicilian anecdote by Giovanni Meli. His last work was an attempt at synthesis on *The Great Monarchies*, which appeared in the *Nuova Antologia* a few days before his death, in which he sought to present Prussia as the heir to the tradition of universal empire that begins with Egyptian and Assyrian civilization and defines the true German idea of constituting an empire of moral freedom, truth, duty, and labor under the most humane form.
G. sincerely loved Italy and especially Rome, of which he was an honorary citizen. His name remains linked to the history of the Eternal City, which he carried from the conquest by Alaric (410) to the Sack (1527), and which was placed on the Index in 1874 for its anti-Catholic bias. Archaeological and documentary discoveries and subsequent new studies have rendered this work outdated in many respects, where often the poet takes over.
GREGOROVIUS FERDINAND — GRENOBLE
*zu seiner Zeit* (Stuttgart 1884, Italian trans. Rome 1910); *Kleine Schriften* (Leipzig 1887-92); *Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter* (Stuttgart 1889); *Le grandi monarchie ossia gli imperi universali nella storia*, in *Nuova Antologia*, 115-20 (1891); *Gedichte* (Leipzig 1892); *Römische Tagebücher* (Stuttgart 1892, Italian trans. Milan 1895).