GEEL, JACOB (1789-1862), Dutch scholar and critic, was born at Amsterdam on the 12th of November 1789. In 1823 he was appointed sub-librarian, and in 1833 chief librarian and honorary professor at Leiden, where he died on the 11th of November 1862. Geel materially contributed to the development of classical studies in Holland. He was the author of editions of Theocritus (1820), of the Vatican fragments of Polybius (1829), of the Ὀλυμπιακός of Dio Chrysostom (1840) and of numerous essays in the Rheinisches Museum and Bibliotheca critica nova, of which he was one of the founders. He also compiled a valuable catalogue of the MSS. in the Leiden library, wrote a history of the Greek sophists, and translated various German works into Dutch.
GEELONG, a seaport of Grant county, Victoria, Australia, situated on an extensive land-locked arm of Port Phillip known as Corio Bay, 45 m. by rail S.W. of Melbourne. Pop. of the city proper (1901) 12,399; with the adjacent boroughs of Geelong West, and Newton-and-Chilwell, 23,311. Geelong slopes to the bay on the north and to the Barwon river on the south, and its position in this respect, as well as the shelter it obtains from the Bellarine hills, renders it one of the healthiest towns in Victoria. As a manufacturing centre it is of considerable importance. The first woollen mill in the colony was established here, and the tweeds, cloths and other woollen fabrics of the town are noted throughout Australia. There are extensive tanneries, flour-mills and salt works, while at Fyansford, 3 m. distant, there are important cement works and paper-mills. The extensive vineyards in the neighbourhood of the town were destroyed under the Phylloxera Act, but replanting subsequently revived this industry. Corio Bay, a safe and commodious harbour, is entered by two channels across its bar, one of which has a depth of 23½ ft. There is extensive quayage, and the largest wool ships are able to load alongside the wharves, which are connected by rail with all parts of the colony. The facilities given for shipping wool direct to England from this port have caused a very extensive wool-broking trade to grow up in the town. The country surrounding Geelong is agricultural, but there are large limestone quarries east of the town, and in the Otway Forest, 23 m. distant, coal is worked. Geelong was incorporated in 1849.
GEESTEMÜNDE, a seaport town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, on the right bank of the Weser, at the mouth of the Geeste, which separates it from Bremerhaven, 32 m. N. from Bremen by rail. Pop. (1905) 23,625. The interest of the place is purely naval and commercial, its origin dating no farther back than 1857, when the construction of the harbour was begun. The great basin, which can accommodate large sea-going vessels, was completed in 1863, the petroleum basin was opened in 1874, and additional wharves have been constructed for the reception of vessels engaged in the fishing industry. The fish market of Geestemünde is the most important in Germany, and the auction hall practically determines the price of fish throughout the empire. The whole port is protected by powerful fortifications. Among the industrial establishments of the town are shipbuilding yards, foundries, engineering works and saw-mills.
GEFFCKEN, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH (1830-1896), German diplomatist and jurist, was born on the 9th of December 1830 at Hamburg, of which city his father was senator. After studying law at Bonn, Göttingen and Berlin, he was attached in 1854 to the Prussian legation at Paris. For ten years (1856-1866) he was the diplomatic representative of Hamburg in Berlin, first as chargé d’affaires, and afterwards as minister-resident, being afterwards transferred in a like capacity to London. Appointed in 1872 professor of constitutional history and public law in the reorganized university of Strassburg, Geffcken became in 1880 a member of the council of state of Alsace-Lorraine. Of too nervous a temperament to withstand the strain of the responsibilities of his position, he retired from public service in 1882, and lived henceforth mostly at Munich, where he died, suffocated by an accidental escape of gas into his bedchamber, on the 1st of May 1896. Geffcken was a man of great erudition and wide knowledge and of remarkable legal acumen, and from these qualities proceeded the personal influence he possessed. He was moreover a clear writer and made his mark as an essayist. He was one of the most trusted advisers of the Prussian crown prince, Frederick William (afterwards the emperor Frederick), and it was he (it is said, at Bismarck’s suggestion) who drew up the draft of the New German federal constitution, which was submitted to the crown prince’s headquarters at Versailles during the war of 1870-71. It was also Geffcken who assisted in framing the famous document which the emperor Frederick, on his accession to the throne in 1888, addressed to the chancellor. This memorandum gave umbrage, and on the publication by Geffcken in the Deutsche Rundschau (Oct. 1888) of extracts from the emperor Frederick’s private diary during the war of 1870-71, he was, at Bismarck’s instance, prosecuted for high treason. The Reichsgericht (supreme court), however, quashed the indictment, and Geffcken was liberated after being under arrest for three months. Publications of various kinds proceeded from his pen. Among these are Zur Geschichte des orientalischen Krieges 1853-1856 (Berlin, 1881); Frankreich, Russland und der Dreibund (Berlin, 1894); and Staat und Kirche (1875), English translation by E.F. Fairfax (1877). His writings on English history have been translated by S.J. Macmullan and published as The British Empire, with essays on Prince Albert, Palmerston, Beaconsfield, Gladstone, and reform of the House of Lords (1889).
GEFFROY, MATHIEU AUGUSTE (1820-1895), French historian, was born in Paris. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure he held history professorships at various lycées. His French thesis for the doctorate of letters, Étude sur les pamphlets politiques et religieux de Milton (1848), showed that he was attracted towards foreign history, a study for which he soon qualified himself by mastering the Germanic and Scandinavian languages. In 1851 he published a Histoire des états scandinaves, which is especially valuable for clear arrangement and for the trustworthiness of its facts. Later, a long stay in Sweden furnished him with valuable documents for a political and social history of Sweden and France at the end of the 18th century. In 1864 and 1865 he published in the Revue des deux mondes a series of articles on Gustavus III. and the French court, which were republished in book form in 1867. To the second volume he appended a critical study on Marie Antoinette et Louis XVI apocryphes, in which he proved, by evidence drawn from documents in the private archives of the emperor of Austria, that the letters published by Feuillet de Conches (Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth, 1864-1873) and Hunolstein (Corresp. inédite de Marie Antoinette, 1864) are forgeries. With the collaboration of Alfred von Arneth, director of the imperial archives at Vienna, he edited the Correspondance secrète entre Marie-Thérèse et le comte de Mercy-Argenteau (3 vols., 1874), the first account based on trustworthy documents of Marie Antoinette’s character, private conduct and policy. The Franco-German War drew Geffroy’s attention to the origins of Germany, and his Rome et les Barbares: étude sur la Germanie de Tacite (1874) set forth some of the results of German scholarship. He was then appointed to superintend the opening of the French school of archaeology at Rome, and drew up two useful reports (1877 and 1884) on its origin and early work. But his personal tastes always led him back to the study of modern history. When the Paris archives of foreign affairs were thrown open to students, it was decided to publish a collection of the instructions given to French ambassadors since 1648 (Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France depuis le traité de Westphalie), and Geffroy was commissioned to edit the volumes dealing with Sweden (vol. ii., 1885) and Denmark (vol. xiii., 1895). In the interval he wrote Madame de Maintenon d’après sa correspondance authentique (2 vols., 1887), in which he displayed his penetrating critical faculty in discriminating between authentic documents and the additions and corrections of arrangers like La Beaumelle and Lavallée. His last works were an Essai sur la formation des collections d’antiques de la Suède and Des institutions et des mœurs du paganisme scandinave: l’Islande avant le Christianisme, both published posthumously. He died at Bièvre on the 16th of August 1895.