The New International Encyclopædia/Holst, Hermann Eduard von

HOLST, Hermann Eduard von (1841-1904). A German-American historian and educator, born at Fellin, in Livonia, of German parentage. He studied at Dorpat from 1860 to 1863, and at Heidelberg from 1863 to 1865, and became a tutor at Saint Petersburg in 1866; but was excluded from the Russian dominions in the following year for publishing a pamphlet of which the Russian Government disapproved, and emigrated to America. Settling in New York, he taught modern languages for a time in a small private school, made a number of political speeches in the Presidential campaign of 1868, and was an assistant editor of Schem's Deutsch-Amerikanisches Konversations-Lexikon. He then returned to Germany, was professor of history in the University of Strassburg from 1872 to 1874, and in the University of Freiburg from 1874 to 1892, visited America in 1878-79 and in 1884, served for a number of years in the Baden Diet, for the last two sessions as vice-president, and in 1892 became head of the department of history in the newly founded University of Chicago. In 1900 ill health compelled his retirement, and he returned to his home in Freiburg. Von Holst's works are almost altogether on American topics. His Verfassung und Demokratie der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (5 vols., 1873-91), English translation by Lalor and Mason, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States (8 vols., 1870-92), is his best-known work, and contains a remarkably able presentation of the Federalist and anti-slavery view of American political history. Among his other publications are: Das Staatsrecht der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (1885), English translation, The Constitutional Law of the United States of America (1887); John C. Calhoun, in the “American Statesmen Series” (1882); John Brown (1888); and The French Revolution Tested by Mirabeau's Career (1894). Consult Hart, “Hermann von Holst,” in the Political Science Quarterly, vol. v. (New York, 1890).