© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved.
A Political Professor: A New Biography of J.G. Droysen
Stanford University
Sheehan@stanford.edu
Johann Gustav Droysen: Ein Leben zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik. By Wilfried Nippel. Munich: C.H. Beck. 2008. 445 pp. 
29.90 (hardback).
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Like selecting a companion for a long and arduous journey, choosing the subject for a biography is full of risks. Someone who might seem congenial and compatible at the time of departure can turn out to be annoying, even insufferable before the trip is over. Something like this seems to have happened to Wilfried Nippel's relationship with Johann Gustav Droysen. At the outset, the two appeared to have a great deal in common: both did distinguished work on the history of the ancient world, shared an interest in problems of historical method, and recognized the important ties between history and politics. But the longer they were together, the more Droysen's habits of mind and character began to exasperate his biographer.
The result is a sustained critique of what Nippel, rather grandly, calls ‘the Droysen legends’. The original source of these legends was, of course, Droysen himself. They were embellished by