Lang is best known through his Memoiren, which appeared at Brunswick in two parts in 1842, and were republished in 1881 in a second edition. They contain much of interest for the history of the period, but have to be used with the greatest caution on account of their pronounced tendency to satire. Lang’s character, as can be gathered especially from a consideration of his behaviour at Munich, is darkened by many shadows. He did not scruple, for instance, to strike out of the lists of witnesses to medieval charters, before publishing them, the names of families which he disliked.
Of his very numerous literary productions the following may be mentioned: Beiträge zur Kenntnis der natürlichen und politischen Verfassung des oettingischen Vaterlandes (1786); Ein Votum über den Wucher von einem Manne sine voto (1791); Historische Entwicklung der deutschen Steuerverfassungen (1793); Historische Prüfung des vermeintlichen Alters der deutschen Landstände (1796); Neuere Geschichte des Fürstentums Bayreuth (1486–1603) (1798–1811); Tabellen über Flächeninhalt &c. und bevorstehende Verluste der deutschen Reichsstände. (On the occasion of the congress of Rastadt, 1798); Der Minister Graf von Montgelas (1814); Geschichte der Jesuiten in Bayern (1819); and Bayerns Gauen (Nuremberg, 1830).
See K. Th. v. Heigel, Augsburger allgemeine Zeitung for 1878, p. 1969 et seq., 1986 et seq. (Beilage of the 14th and 15th of May); F. Muncker, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. xvii. (1883); F. X. v. Wegele, Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie (1885). (J. Hn.)
LANGDELL, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (1826–1906),
American jurist, was born in New Boston, Hillsborough county,
New Hampshire, on the 22nd of May 1826, of English and
Scotch-Irish ancestry. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy
in 1845–1848, at Harvard College in 1848–1850 and in the
Harvard Law School in 1851–1854. He practised law in 1854–1870
in New York City, but he was almost unknown when, in
January 1870, he was appointed Dane professor of law (and soon
afterwards Dean of the Law Faculty) of Harvard University,
to succeed Theophilus Parsons, to whose Treatise on the Law of
Contracts (1853) he had contributed as a student. He resigned
the deanship in 1895, in 1900 became Dane professor emeritus,
and on the 6th of July 1906 died in Cambridge. He received
the degree of LL.D. in 1875; in 1903 a chair in the law school
was named in his honour; and after his death one of the school’s
buildings was named Langdell Hall. He made the Harvard
Law School a success by remodelling its administration and by
introducing the “case” system of instruction.
Langdell wrote Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts (1870, the first book used in the “case” system; enlarged, 1877); Cases on Sales (1872); Summary of Equity Pleading (1877, 2nd ed., 1883); Cases in Equity Pleading (1883); and Brief Survey of Equity Jurisdiction (1905).
LANGDON, JOHN (1741–1819), American statesman, was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 25th of June 1741. After an apprenticeship in a counting-house, he led a seafaring life for several years, and became a shipowner and merchant. In December 1774, as a militia captain he assisted in the capture of Fort William and Mary at New Castle, New Hampshire, one of the first overt acts of the American colonists against the property of the crown. He was elected to the House of Representatives of the last Royal Assembly of New Hampshire and then to the second Continental Congress in 1775, and was a member of the first Naval Committee of the latter, but he resigned in 1776, and in June 1776 became Congress’s agent of prizes in New Hampshire and in 1778 continental (naval) agent of Congress in this state, where he supervised the building of John Paul Jones’s “Ranger” (completed in June 1777), the “America,” launched in 1782, and other vessels. He was a judge of the New Hampshire Court of Common Pleas in 1776–1777, a member (and speaker) of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1776 until 1782, a member of the state Constitutional Convention of 1778 and of the state Senate in 1784–1785, and in 1783–1784 was again a member of Congress. He contributed largely to raise troops in 1777 to meet Burgoyne; and he served as a captain at Bennington and at Saratoga. He was president of New Hampshire in 1785–1786 and in 1788–1789; a member of the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1787, where he voted against granting to Congress the power of issuing paper money; a member of the state convention which ratified the Federal Constitution for New Hampshire; a member of the United States Senate in 1789–1801, and its president pro tem. during the first Congress and the second session of the second Congress; a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1801–1805 and its speaker in 1803–1805; and governor of the state in 1805–1809 and in 1810–1812. He received nine electoral votes for the vice-presidency in 1808, and in 1812 was an elector on the Madison ticket. He died in Portsmouth on the 18th of September 1819. He was an able leader during the Revolutionary period, when his wealth and social position were of great assistance to the patriot party. In the later years of his life in New Hampshire he was the most prominent of the local Republican leaders and built up his party by partisan appointments. He refused the naval portfolio in Jefferson’s cabinet.
His elder brother, Woodbury Langdon (1739–1805), was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1779–1780, a member of the executive council of New Hampshire in 1781–1784, judge of the Supreme Court of the state in 1782 and in 1786–1790 (although he had had no legal training), and a state senator in 1784–1785.
Alfred Langdon Elwyn has edited Letters by Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Others, Written During and After the Revolution, to John Langdon of New Hampshire (Philadelphia, 1880), a book of great interest and value. See a biographical sketch of John Langdon by Charles R. Corning in the New England Magazine, vol. xxii. (Boston, 1897).
LANGE, ANNE FRANÇOISE ELIZABETH (1772–1816), French actress, was born in Genoa on the 17th of September 1772, the daughter of a musician and an actress at the Comédie Italienne. She made her first appearance on the stage at Tours in 1787 and a successful début at the Comédie Française in 1788 in L’Écossaise and L’Oracle. She followed Talma and the others in 1791 to the Rue Richelieu, but returned after a few months to the Comédie Française. Here her talent and beauty gave her an enormous success in François de Neuchâteau’s Pamela, the performance of which brought upon the theatre the vials of wrath of the Committee of Safety. With the author and the other members of the caste, she was arrested and imprisoned. After the 9th Thermidor she rejoined her comrades at the Feydeau, but retired on the 16th of December 1797, reappearing only for a few performances in 1807. She had, meantime, married the son of a rich Belgian named Simons. She died on the 25th of May 1816.
LANGE, ERNST PHILIPP KARL (1813–1899), German
novelist, who wrote under the pseudonym Philipp Galen, was born at Potsdam on the 21st of December 1813. He studied medicine at Berlin (1835–1840), and on taking his degree, in 1840, entered the Prussian army as surgeon. In this capacity he saw service in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign of 1849. He settled at Bielefeld as medical practitioner and here issued
his first novel, Der Inselkönig (1852, 3rd ed., 1858), which enjoyed considerable popularity. In Bielefeld he continued to work at
his profession and to write, until his retirement, with the rank
of Oberstabsarzt (surgeon-general) to Potsdam in 1878; there
he died on the 20th of February 1899. Lange’s novels are
distinguished by local colouring and pretty, though not powerful,
descriptions of manners and customs. He particularly favoured
scenes of English life, though he had never been in that country,
and on the whole he succeeded well in his descriptions. Chief
among his novels are, Der Irre von St James (1853, 5th ed.,
1871), and Emery Glandon (3rd ed., Leip., 1865), while of those
dealing with the Schleswig-Holstein campaign Andreas Burns
(1856) and Die Tochter des Diplomaten (1865) commanded
considerable attention.
His Gesammelte Schriften appeared in 36 vols. (1857–1866).
LANGE, FRIEDRICH ALBERT (1828–1875), German philosopher and sociologist, was born on the 28th of September 1828, at Wald, near Solingen, the son of the theologian, J. P. Lange (q.v.). He was educated at Duisburg, Zürich and Bonn, where he distinguished himself by gymnastics as much as by study. In 1852 he became schoolmaster at Cologne; in 1855 privatdozent in philosophy at Bonn; in 1858 schoolmaster
