SYBEL, HEINRICH von. - German historian, b. 2 Dec. 1817 in Düsseldorf, d. 1 Aug. 1895 in Marburgo. He was professor at Bonn in 1844, at Marburgo in 1846, at Monaco in 1856, again at Bonn in 1861, and director of the Prussian State Archives in 1875.
His works on the First Crusade (Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges, 1841) and on the origin of the Kingdom of Germany in the Middle Ages (Die Entstehung des deutschen Königtums, 1844) are among the finest critical productions of the Rankean school. After 1848 S. broke away from Ranke and became the leader of small-German historiography, subordinating the impartiality of research and the understanding of the past to the interpretative canon of the validity of the national State in history. The first document of this tendency is Geschichte der Revolutionszeit (5 vols., 1853-58). Subsequently he engaged in controversy against Ficker, condemning the Italian policy of the medieval emperors because it was detrimental to German interests in the lands east of the Elbe. From 1889 to 1894 he wrote, on the basis of the Prussian archives, Die Begründung des deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm I (7 vols.). In 1856 he founded the Historische Zeitschrift, the most authoritative German historical journal.