GUTHRUM (Godrum) (d. 890), king of East Anglia, first appears in the English Annals in the year 875, when he is mentioned as one of three Danish kings who went with the host to Cambridge. He was probably engaged in the campaigns of the next three years, and after Alfred’s victory at Edington in 878, Guthrum met the king at Aller in Somersetshire and was baptized there under the name of Æthelstan. He stayed there for twelve days and was greatly honoured by his godfather Alfred. In 890 Guthrum-Æthelstan died: he is then spoken of as “se nor∂erna cyning” (probably) “the Norwegian king,” referring to the ultimate origin of his family, and we are told that he was the first (Scandinavian) to settle East Anglia. Guthrum is perhaps to be identified with Gormr (= Guthrum) hinn heimski or hinn riki of the Scandinavian sagas, the foster-father of Hör∂aknutr, the father of Gorm the old. There is a treaty known as the peace of Alfred and Guthrum.
GUTSCHMID, ALFRED, Baron von (1835-1887), German historian and Orientalist, was born on the 1st of July at Loschwitz (Dresden). After holding chairs at Kiel (1866), Königsberg (1873), and Jena (1876), he was finally appointed professor of history at Tübingen, where he died on the 2nd of March 1887. He devoted himself to the study of Eastern language and history in its pre-Greek and Hellenistic periods and contributed largely to the literature of the subject.
Works.—Über die Fragmente des Pompeius Trogus (supplementary vol. of Jahrbücher für klass. Phil., 1857); Die makedonische Anagraphe (1864); Beiträge zur Gesch. des alten Orients (Leipzig, 1858); Neue Beiträge zur Gesch. des alt. Or., vol. i., Die Assyriologie in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1876); Die Glaubwürdigkeit der armenischen Gesch. des Moses von Khoren (1877); Untersuchungen über die syrische Epitome des eusebischen Canones (1886); Untersuch. über die Gesch. des Königreichs Osraëne (1887); Gesch. Irans (Alexander the Great to the fall of the Arsacidae) (Tübingen, 1887). He wrote on Persia and Phoenicia in the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. A collection of minor works entitled Kleine Schriften was published by F. Rühl at Leipzig (1889-1894, 5 vols.), with complete list of his writings. See article by Rühl in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlix. (1904).
GUTS-MUTHS, JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH (1759-1839), German teacher and the principal founder of the German school system of gymnastics, was born at Quedlinburg on the 9th of August 1759. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native town and at Halle University; and in 1785 he went to Schnepfenthal, where he taught geography and gymnastics. His method of teaching gymnastics was expounded by him in various handbooks; and it was chiefly through them that gymnastics very soon came to occupy such an important position in the school system of Germany. He also did much to introduce a better method of instruction in geography. He died on the 21st of May 1839.
His principal works are Gymnastik für die Jugend (1793); Spiele zur Übung und Erholung des Körpers und Geistes für die Jugend (1796); Turnbuch (1817); Handbuch der Geographie (1810); and a number of books constituting a Bibliothek für Pädagogik, Schulwesen, und die gesammte pädagogische Literatur Deutschlands. He also contributed to the Vollständiges Handbuch der neuesten Erdbeschreibung, and along with Jacobi published Deutsches Land und deutsches Volk, the first part, Deutsches Land, being written by him.