ALFRED VON

See also:

• ALFRED VON REUMONT (1808-1887)

REUMONT (1808-1887)  , German scholar and diplomatist, the son of Gerhard Reumont (1765-1829), was born on the 15th of August 18o8 and was named Alfred after the English king, Alfred the Great . Educated at the universities of Bonn and Heidelberg, he obtained a position in Florence through the influence of an Englishman, William Craufurd, but soon he entered the Prussian diplomatic service and was employed in Florence, in Constantinople and in Rome . He also spent some time in the Foreign Office in Berlin . From 1851 to 186o he represented his country in Florence . Reumont was the friend and'adviser of Frederick William IV . In 1879 he founded the A achener Geschichtsverein, and having spent his concluding years at Bonn and at Aix-la-Chapelle, he died in the latter city on the 27th of April 1887 . Reumont's numerous writings deal mainly with Italy, in which country he passed many years of his life . On the history of Florence and of Tuscany he wrote Tavole cronologiche e sincrone della storia fiorentina (184T ; Supplement, 1875) ; Geschichte Toscanas seit dem Ende des florentinischen Freistaats (Gotha, 1876-77) ; and Lorenzo de' Medici (Leipzig, 1874, and again 1883) . This last book has been translated into English by R . Harrison (1876) . He remembered his connexion with Florence when he wrote Romische Briefe von einem Florentiner (Leipzig, 1840-44), and his residence in Rome was also responsible for his Geschichte der Stadt Rom (3 vols., 1867-70) . Turning his attention to the history of Naples, he wrote Die Carafe von Maddaloni: Neapel unter spanischer Herrschaft (1851; Eng. trans., 1854), and more general works on Italian history are: Beitrage zur italienischen Geschichte (6 vols., Berlin, 1853-57), and Charakterbilder aus der neueren Geschichte Italiens (1886) .

More strictly

biographical in their nature are: Die Jugend Caterinas de' Medici (1854), which has been translated into French by A . Baschet (1866) ; -Die Grafin von Albany (186o) and a life of his close friend Capponi, Gino Capponi, ein Zeit- and Lebensbild (Gotha, 188o) . His Ganganelli: Papst Clemens XIV., seine Briefe and seine Zeit (Berlin, 1847) is valuable for the relations between this pope and the Jesuits . Other works which may be mentioned are Zeitgenossen, Biografien and Charakteristiken (Berlin, 1862); Bibliografia del lavori pubblicati in Germania sulla storia d'Italia (Berlin, 1863) ; Biographische Denkblbtter nosh personlichen Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1878) ; and Saggi di storia e letteratura (Florence, 1880) . Reumont's other important work, one which he was peculiarly fitted to write, was his Aus Friedrich Wilhelms IV. gesunden and kranken Tagen (Leipzig, 1885) . See H . Huffer, Alfred von Reumont (Cologne, 1904) ; and the same writer's article in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Band xxviii . (1889) .