born Sept. 15, 1834, Dresden, Saxony
died April 28, 1896, Berlin
German historian and political writer.
Son of a Saxon general, Treitschke studied at Bonn and Leipzig and then taught history and politics at a number of German universities. A member of the Reichstag (187184), he advocated authoritarian rulers unchecked by a parliament and disparaged western European liberalism and American democracy. In 1886 he succeeded Leopold Ranke as official historiographer of Prussia. His major work is Treitschke's History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (187994).