1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Haxthausen, August Franz Ludwig Maria von

HAXTHAUSEN, AUGUST FRANZ LUDWIG MARIA, Freiherr von (1792–1866), German political economist, was born near Paderborn in Westphalia on the 3rd of February 1792. Having studied at the school of mining at Klausthal, and having served in the Hanoverian army, he entered the university of Göttingen in 1815. Finishing his course there in 1818 he was engaged in managing his estates and in studying the land laws. The result of his studies appeared in 1829 when he published Über die Agrarverfassung in den Fürstentümern Paderborn und Corvey, a work which attracted much attention and which procured for its author a commission to investigate and report upon the land laws of the Prussian provinces with a view to a new code. After nine years of labour he published in 1839 an exhaustive treatise, Die ländliche Verfassung in der Provinz Preussen, and in 1843, at the request of the emperor Nicholas, he undertook a similar work for Russia, the fruits of his investigations in that country being contained in his Studien über die innern Zustände des Volkslebens, und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Russlands (Hanover, 1847–1852). He received various honours, was a member of the combined diet in Berlin in 1847 and 1848, and afterwards of the Prussian upper house. Haxthausen died at Hanover on the 31st of December 1866.

In addition to the works already mentioned he wrote Die ländliche Verfassung Russlands (Leipzig, 1866). His Studien has been translated into French and into English by R. Farie as The Russian Empire (1856). Other works of his which have appeared in English are: Transcaucasia; Sketches of the Nations and Races between the Black Sea and the Caspian (1854), and The Tribes of the Caucasus (1855). Haxthausen edited Das konstitutionelle Prinzip (Leipzig, 1864), a collection of political writings by various authors, which has been translated into French (1865).