Gustav von Ewers
|
|
Gustav von Ewers (1781 - 1830) was a German legal historian and the founder of legal history as a scholarly discipline.
Gustav Ewers was a farmer’s son from Amelunxen/Wesen in Westphalia who studied first Theology and then Staatswissenschaften at the University of Göttingen. He then gained first employment, customary for a graduate from poor background, as a private, which brought him to the Russian province of Livonia, where he should remain for the rest of his life. While teaching, he pursued his scholarly interests, especially regarding Russian political and legal history, which became one of his main fields – indeed, a field of which he is often regarded the founder. Based on his publications, he received in 1810 a call to the Chair of History, Statistics, and Geography of the Russian State at the University of Tartu in what is today Estonia. He occupied that chair until in 1826, when he transferred to the Law Faculty. In 1816, Ewers declined a call to the Chair of Staatswirtschaft (state management) at the newly-founded University of Berlin. In the same year, he had become Prorector; in 1818, Rector, to which he was re-elected every year until his death in 1830.