HURTER, FRIEDRICH von. — Historian, b. 19 March 1787 at Schaffhausen (Switzerland), d. 27 Aug. 1865 at Graz (Austria). He studied at Göttingen from 1804 to 1806. As a Protestant pastor at Schaffhausen, he showed himself very conciliatory toward Catholics; he therefore did not long enjoy the sympathies of Protestant circles: in 1841 he resigned his position and on 16 June 1844 he converted to Catholicism.
Court historian at Vienna, he published in eleven volumes a work, still valuable today, on Emperor Ferdinand II (Geschichte Kaiser Ferdinands II. und seiner Eltern bis zu dessen Krönung in Frankfurt, Schaffhausen 1850–1860) and dealt with the life of Wallenstein (Beiträge zur Geschichte Wallensteins, 1855; Wallensteins vier letzte Lebensjahre, 1862). The work that brought him renown was his four-volume Geschichte Papst Innocenz' III. und seiner Zeitgenossen, Hamburg 1834–42, which was also translated into Italian.