GIERS, NICHOLAS KARLOVICH DE (1820-1895), Russian statesman, was born on the 21st of May 1820. Like his predecessor, Prince Gorchakov, he was educated at the lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo, near St Petersburg, but his career was much less rapid, because he had no influential protectors, and was handicapped by being a Protestant of Teutonic origin. At the age of eighteen he entered the service of the Eastern department of the ministry of foreign affairs, and spent more than twenty years in subordinate posts, chiefly in south-eastern Europe, until he was promoted in 1863 to the post of minister plenipotentiary in Persia. Here he remained for six years, and, after serving as a minister in Switzerland and Sweden, he was appointed in 1875 director of the Eastern department and assistant minister for foreign affairs under Prince Gorchakov, whose niece he had married. No sooner had he entered on his new duties than his great capacity for arduous work was put to a severe test. Besides events in central Asia, to which he had to devote much attention, the Herzegovinian insurrection had broken out, and he could perceive from secret official papers that the incident had far-reaching ramifications unknown to the general public. Soon this became apparent to all the world. While the Austrian officials in Dalmatia, with hardly a pretence of concealment, were assisting the insurgents, Russian volunteers were flocking to Servia with the connivance of the Russian and Austrian governments, and General Ignatiev, as ambassador in Constantinople, was urging his government to take advantage of the palpable weakness of Turkey for bringing about a radical solution of the Eastern question. Prince Gorchakov did not want a radical solution involving a great European war, but he was too fond of ephemeral popularity to stem the current of popular excitement. Alexander II., personally averse from war, was not insensible to the patriotic enthusiasm, and halted between two opinions. M. de Giers was one of the few who gauged the situation accurately. As an official and a man of non-Russian extraction he had to be extremely reticent, but to his intimate friends he condemned severely the ignorance and light-hearted recklessness of those around him. The event justified his sombre previsions, but did not cure the recklessness of the so-called patriots. They wished to defy Europe in order to maintain intact the treaty of San Stefano, and again M. de Giers found himself in an unpopular minority. He had to remain in the background, but all the influence he possessed was thrown into the scale of peace. His views, energetically supported by Count Shuvalov, finally prevailed, and the European congress assembled at Berlin. He was not present at the congress, and consequently escaped the popular odium for the concessions which Russia had to make to Great Britain and Austria. From that time he was practically minister of foreign affairs, for Prince Gorchakov was no longer capable of continued intellectual exertion, and lived mostly abroad. On the death of Alexander II. in 1881 it was generally expected that M. de Giers would be dismissed as deficient in Russian nationalist feeling, for Alexander III. was credited with strong anti-German Slavophil tendencies. In reality the young tsar had no intention of embarking on wild political adventures, and was fully determined not to let his hand be forced by men less cautious than himself. What he wanted was a minister of foreign affairs who would be at once vigilant and prudent, active and obedient, and who would relieve him from the trouble and worry of routine work while allowing him to control the main lines, and occasionally the details, of the national policy. M. de Giers was exactly what he wanted, and accordingly the tsar not only appointed him minister of foreign affairs on the retirement of Prince Gorchakov in 1882, but retained him to the end of his reign in 1894. In accordance with the desire of his august master, M. de Giers followed systematically a pacific policy. Accepting as a fait accompli the existence of the triple alliance, created by Bismarck for the purpose of resisting any aggressive action on the part of Russia and France, he sought to establish more friendly relations with the cabinets of Berlin, Vienna and Rome. To the advances of the French government he at first turned a deaf ear, but when the rapprochement between the two countries was effected with little or no co-operation on his part, he utilized it for restraining France and promoting Russian interests. He died on the 26th of January 1895, soon after the accession of Nicholas II.
(D. M. W.)
GIESEBRECHT, WILHELM VON (1814-1889), German historian, was a son of Karl Giesebrecht (d. 1832), and a nephew of the poet Ludwig Giesebrecht (1792-1873). Born in Berlin on the 5th of March 1814, he studied under Leopold von Ranke, and his first important work, Geschichte Ottos II., was contributed to Ranke’s Jahrbücher des deutschen Reichs unter dem sächsischen Hause (Berlin, 1837-1840); In 1841 he published his Jahrbücher des Klosters Altaich, a reconstruction of the lost Annales Altahenses, a medieval source of which fragments only were known to be extant, and these were obscured in other chronicles. The brilliance of this performance was shown in 1867, when a copy of the original chronicle was found, and it was seen that Giesebrecht’s text was substantially correct. In the meantime he had been appointed Oberlehrer in the Joachimsthaler Gymnasium in Berlin; had paid a visit to Italy, and as a result of his researches there had published De litterarum studiis apud Italos primis medii aevi seculis (Berlin, 1845), a study upon the survival of culture in Italian cities during the middle ages, and also several critical essays upon the sources for the early history of the popes. In 1851 appeared his translation of the Historiae of Gregory of Tours, which is the standard German translation. Four years later appeared the first volume of his great work, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, the fifth volume of which was published in 1888. This work was the first in which the results of the scientific methods of research were thrown open to the world at large. Largeness of style and brilliance of portrayal were joined to an absolute mastery of the sources in a way hitherto unachieved by any German historian. Yet later German historians have severely criticized his glorification of the imperial era with its Italian entanglements, in which the interests of Germany were sacrificed for idle glory. Giesebrecht’s history, however, appeared when the new German empire was in the making, and became popular owing both to its patriotic tone and its intrinsic merits. In 1857 he went to Königsberg as professor ordinarius, and in 1862 succeeded H. von Sybel as professor of history in the university of Munich. The Bavarian government honoured him in various ways, and he died at Munich on the 17th of December 1889. In addition to the works already mentioned, Giesebrecht published a good monograph on Arnold of Brescia (Munich, 1873), a collection of essays under the title Deutsche Reden (Munich, 1871), and was an active member of the group of scholars who took over the direction of the Monumenta Germaniae historica in 1875. In 1895 B. von Simson added a sixth volume to the Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, thus bringing the work down to the death of the emperor Frederick I. in 1190.
See S. Riezler, Gedächtnisrede auf Wilhelm von Giesebrecht (Munich, 1891); and Lord Acton in the English Historical Review, vol. v. (London, 1890).
GIESELER, JOHANN KARL LUDWIG (1792-1854), German writer on church history, was born on the 3rd of March 1792 at Petershagen, near Minden, where his father, Georg Christof Friedrich, was preacher. In his tenth year he entered the orphanage at Halle, whence he duly passed to the university, his studies being interrupted, however, from October 1813 till the peace of 1815 by a period of military service, during which he was enrolled as a volunteer in a regiment of chasseurs. On the conclusion of peace (1815) he returned to Halle, and, having in 1817 taken his degree in philosophy, he in the same year became assistant head master (Conrector) in the Minden gymnasium, and in 1818 was appointed director of the gymnasium at Cleves. Here he published his earliest work (Historisch-kritischer Versuch über die Entstehung u. die frühesten Schicksale der schriftlichen Evangelien), a treatise which had considerable influence on subsequent investigations as to the origin of the gospels. In 1819 Gieseler was appointed a professor ordinarius in theology in the newly founded university of Bonn, where, besides lecturing on church history, he made important contributions to the literature of that subject in Ernst Rosenmüller’s Repertorium, K. F. Stäudlin and H. G. Tschirner’s Archiv, and in various university “programs.” The first part of the first volume of his well-known Church History appeared in 1824. In 1831 he accepted a call to Göttingen as successor to J. G. Planck. He lectured on church history, the history of dogma, and dogmatic theology. In 1837 he was appointed a Consistorialrath, and shortly afterwards was created a knight of the Guelphic order. He died on the 8th of July 1854. The fourth and fifth volumes of the Kirchengeschichte, embracing the period subsequent to 1814, were published posthumously in 1855 by E. R. Redepenning (1810-1883); and they were followed in 1856 by a Dogmengeschichte, which is sometimes reckoned as the sixth volume of the Church History. Among church historians Gieseler continues to hold a high place. Less vivid and picturesque in style than Karl Hase, conspicuously deficient in Neander’s deep and sympathetic insight into the more spiritual forces by which church life is pervaded, he excels these and all other contemporaries in the fulness and accuracy of his information. His Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, with its copious references to original authorities, is of great value to the student: “Gieseler wished that each age should speak for itself, since only by this means can the peculiarity of its ideas be fully appreciated” (Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, p. 284). The work, which has passed through several editions in Germany, has partially appeared also in two English translations. That published in New York (Text Book of Ecclesiastical History, 5 vols.) brings the work down to the peace of Westphalia, while that published in “Clark’s Theological Library” (Compendium of Ecclesiastical History, Edinburgh, 5 vols.) closes with the beginning of the Reformation. Gieseler was not only a devoted student but also an energetic man of business. He frequently held the office of pro-rector of the university, and did much useful work as a member of several of its committees.
GIESSEN, a town of Germany, capital of the province of Upper Hesse, in the grand-duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, is situated in a beautiful and fruitful valley at the confluence of the Wieseck with the Lahn, 41 m. N.N.W. of Frankfort-on-Main on the railway to Cassel; and at the junction of important lines to Cologne and Coblenz. Pop. (1885) 18,836; (1905) 29,149. In the old part of the town the streets are narrow and irregular. Besides the university, the principal buildings are the Stadtkirche, the provincial government offices, comprising a portion of the old castle dating from the 12th century, the arsenal (now barracks) and the town-hall (containing an historical collection). The university, founded in 1607 by Louis V, landgrave of Hesse, has a large and valuable library, a botanic garden, an observatory, medical schools, a museum of natural history, a chemical laboratory which was directed by Justus von Liebig, professor here from 1824 to 1852, and an agricultural college. The industries include the manufacture of woollen and cotton cloth of various kinds, machines, leather, candles, tobacco and beer.