SEECK, OTTO. - Protestant historian, b. at Riga on 2 February 1850, d. at Münster on 29 July 1921.
He first studied chemistry, then, from 1867 to 1869, history at the University of Dorpat. He subsequently went to Berlin, taking his doctorate under Th. Mommsen in 1872. Privatdozent in 1877, he became associate professor in 1881 and, in 1885, full professor of ancient history at the University of Greifswald, from which he moved in 1907 to that of Münster. He published the Notitia dignitatum in 1876 and collaborated on the Monumenta Germaniae historica (there he edited Symmachus in 1883); he dealt with the sources of the Odyssey (Quellen der Odyssee, 1887) and with various subjects of ancient history (Kalendertafel der Pontifices, 1885; Entwicklung der antiken Geschichtsschreibung, 1898; Kaiser Augustus, 1902; Die Briefe des Libanius zeitlich geordnet, 1920).
Special mention is due to his Regesten der Kaiser und Päpste für die Jahre 311-476 (1918–19) and to the History of the Decline of the Ancient World (Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, 6 vols., 1895–1920), a Darwinian interpretation of the events of the Roman Empire, tending to find the cause of the Empire’s fall solely in the progressive barbarization of the “races.” S. entirely failed to perceive the importance assumed by Christianity in the crisis of the ancient world.