he was magnanimous and disinterested, simple and honest. He had a kindling sympathy with everything lofty and generous, and framed his own conduct upon the highest principles. His chief defect was an over-sensitiveness, leading to peevish and unreasonable behaviour in his private and official relations, to hasty and unbalanced judgments of persons and things that had given him annoyance, and to a despondency and discouragement which frustrated the great good he might have effected as a philosophic critic of public affairs.
The principal authority for Niebuhr’s life is the Lebensnachrichten über B. G. Niebuhr, aus Briefen desselben und aus Erinnerungen einiger seiner nächsten Freunde, by Dorothea Hensler (3 vols., 1838–1839). In the English translation by Miss Winkworth (1852) a great deal of the correspondence is omitted, but the narrative is rendered more full, especially as concerns Niebuhr’s participation in public affairs. It also contains interesting communications from Bunsen and Professor Loebell, and select translations from the Kleine Schriften. See also J. Classen, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, eine Gedächtnisschrift (1876), and G. Eyssenhardt, B. G. Niebuhr (1886). The first edition of his Roman History was translated into English by F. A. Walter (1827), but was immediately superseded by the translation of the second edition by Julius Hare and Connop Thirwall, completed by William Smith and Leonhard Schmitz (last edition, 1847–1851). The History has been discussed and criticized in a great number of publications, the most important of which, perhaps, is Sir George Cornwall Lewis’s Essay on the Credibility of the Early Roman History. See further J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1908), iii., pp. 78-82.
NIEBUHR, KARSTEN (1733–1815), German traveller, was
born at Lüdingworth, Lauenburg, on the southern border of
Holstein, on the 17th of March 1733, the son of a small farmer.
He had little education, and for several years of his youth had
to do the work of a peasant. His bent was towards mathematics,
and he managed to obtain some lessons in surveying. It was
while he was working at this subject that one of his teachers, in
1760, proposed to him to join the expedition which was being sent
out by Frederick V. of Denmark for the scientific exploration
of Egypt, Arabia and Syria. To qualify himself for the work
of surveyor and geographer, he studied hard at mathematics
for a year and a half before the expedition set out, and also
managed to acquire some knowledge of Arabic. The expedition
sailed in January 1761, and, landing at Alexandria, ascended the
Nile. Proceeding to Suez, Niebuhr made a visit to Mount Sinai,
and in October 1762 the expedition sailed from Suez to Jeddah,
journeying thence overland to Mocha. Here in May 1763 the
philologist of the expedition, van Haven, died, and was followed
shortly after by the naturalist Forskål. Sana, the capital of
Yemen, was visited, but the remaining members of the expedition
suffered so much from the climate or from the mode of life that
they returned to Mocha. Niebuhr seems to have saved his own
life and restored his health by adopting the native habits as to
dress and food. From Mocha the ship was taken to Bombay,
the artist of the expedition dying on the passage, and the surgeon
soon after landing. Niebuhr was now the only surviving member
of the expedition. He stayed fourteen months at Bombay, and
then returned home by Muscat, Bushire, Shiraz and Persepolis,
visited the ruins of Babylon, and thence went to Bagdad, Mosul
and Aleppo. After a visit to Cyprus he made a tour through
Palestine, crossing Mount Taurus to Brussa, reaching Constantinople
in February 1767 and Copenhagen in the following
November. He married in 1773, and for some years held a post in
the Danish military service which enabled him to reside at
Copenhagen. In 1778, however, he accepted a position in the
civil service of Holstein, and went to reside at Meldorf, where he
died on the 26th of April 1815.
Niebuhr was an accurate and careful observer, had the instincts of the scholar, was animated by a high moral purpose, and was rigorously conscientious and anxiously truthful in recording the results of his observation. His works have long been classics on the geography, the people, the antiquities and the archaeology of much of the district of Arabia which he traversed. His first volume, Beschreibung von Arabien, was published at Copenhagen in 1772, the Danish government defraying the expenses of the abundant illustrations. This was followed in 1774–1778 by two other volumes, Reisebeschreibung von Arabien und anderen umliegenden Ländern. The fourth volume was not published till 1837, long after his death, under the editorship of Niebuhr’s daughter. He also undertook the task of bringing out the work of his friend Forskål, the naturalist of the expedition, under the titles of Descriptiones animalium, Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, and Icones rerum naturalium (Copenhagen, 1775–1776). To a German periodical, the Deutsches Museum, Niebuhr contributed papers on the interior of Africa, the political and military condition of the Turkish empire, and other subjects.
French and Dutch translations of his narratives were published during his lifetime, and a condensed English translation, by Robert Heron, of the first three volumes in Edinburgh (1792). His son Barthold (see above) published a short Life at Kiel in 1817; an English version was issued in 1838 in the Lives of Eminent Men, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. See D. G. Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia (“Story of Exploration” series) (1904).
NIEDERBRONN, a town of Germany, in the imperial province
Alsace-Lorraine, on the Falkensteiner Bach, situated under the
eastern slope of the Vosges, 12 m. N.W. from Hagenau by rail.
Pop. (1905) 3120. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman
Catholic church, a convent of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer,
and a high-grade and other schools. Niederbronn is one of the
best-known watering-places in the Vosges. Its brine springs,
with a hydropathic establishment attached, are specific in cases
of gout, obesity and liver disorders. Here, on the 26th of July
1870, the first engagement between the Germans and the French
in the Franco-German war took place. There are several ruined
castles in the neighbourhood, the most noteworthy of which is one
on the Wesenburg (1415 ft. high) erected in the 14th century.
Various Celtic and Roman antiquities have been found around
Niederbronn.
See Kuhn, Les Eaux de Niederbronn (3rd ed., Strassburg, 1860); Mathis, Aus Niederbronns alten Zeiten (Strassburg, 1901); and Kirstein, Das Wasgaubad Niederbronn (Strassburg, 1902).
NIEDERLAHNSTEIN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hesse-Nassau, situated on the right bank of the Rhine
at the confluence of Lahn, 3 m. S.E. from Coblenz by the railway
to Ems, and at the junction of lines to Hochheim and Cologne.
Pop. (1905) 4351. It has two Roman Catholic churches. The
chief industries are the making of machinery and shipbuilding.
Niederlahnstein obtained civic rights in 1332, and was until 1803
on the territory of the electors of Trier. Here on the 1st of
January 1814 a part of the Russian army crossed the Rhine.
In the vicinity are the Johanniskirche, a Romanesque church
restored in 1857, and the Allerheiligenberg, whereon stands a
chapel, once a famous place of pilgrimage.
NIEDER-SELTERS, a village of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hesse-Nassau, situated in a well-wooded country on
the Ems, 12 m. S.E. from Limburg by the railway to Frankfort-on-Main.
Pop. (1900) 1339. Here are the springs of the famous
Selters or Seltzer water, employed as specific in cases of catarrh
of the respiratory organs, the stomach and bladder. Until 1866
the springs belonged to the duke of Nassau; since this date they
have been the property of Prussia. They became famous in the
earlier part of the 19th century, although they had been known
many years previously.
See Grossmann, Die Heilquellen des Taunus (Wiesbaden, 1887).
NIEDERWALD, a broad hill in Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hesse-Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine,
between that river and the Wisper, opposite Bingen, forming
the south-western apex of the Taunus range. Its summit is
clothed with dense forests of oak and beech, while its southern
and western sides, which descend sharply to Rüdesheim and
Assmannshausen on the Rhine, are covered with vineyards, and
produce some of the finest wines of the district. At the edge of
the forest, on the crest of the hill above Rüdesheim, stands the
gigantic “Germania” statue, the national monument of the war
of 1870–71, which was unveiled on the 28th of September 1883
by the emperor William I., in the presence of all the rulers in
Germany or their representatives. It was designed by Johannes
Schilling, and the bronze figure of Germania is 33 ft. high; the
