Education:
Kreuzschule, Dresden; Leipzig, 1848-51; study at Bonn, 1851; Ph.D., Leipzig, 1854.
Professional Experience:
Extraordinarius, history, Kiel, 1863-6; prof. 1866-73; Königsberg, 1873-6; prof. classical philology, Jena, 1876-7; prof. history, Tübingen, 1877-87.
Publications:
Über die Fragmente des Pompeius Trogus und die Glaubwürdigkeit ihrer Gewährsmänner (Leipzig: Teubner, 1857); Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients: zur Würdigung von Bunsen’s Ägypten Band IV und VN (Leipzig: Teubner, 1858); De temporum notis quibus Eusebius utitur in chronicis canonibus (Kiel: Schwersins, 1868); Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients (Leipzig: Teubner, 1876); Untersuchungen über die Geschichte des Königreichs Osroëne (St. Petersburg,1887); Geschichte Irans und seiner Nachbarländer von Alexander dem Großen bis zum Untergang der Arsaciden ed. (Tübingen: H. Lauppe, 1888; Persian trans. Tehran, 1978); Kleine Schriften, ed. F. Rühl, 5 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1889-94); full bibliography in Kleine Schriften 5:718-68.
Notes:
Alfred Gutschmid while at Bonn was taught by the leading German classicists of his time and members of the Deutscher Verein, an association of liberal scholars led by Moriz Haupt (1808-74), Otto Jahn (1813-69), and Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), before the Saxon government arrested them, imprisoned them, and took away their chairs at Leipzig in 1851. Gutschmid was not arrested but left Leipzig and received his doctorate in absentia. These great figures impressed on Gutschmid the necessity of wide reading in source materials and the perspective of universal history of the larger Mediterranean area through the Middle Ages. After a series of stints at various German universities, he settled in at Tübingen where he studied early Egyptian history, gradually expanding to the Near and Middle East. He is chiefly remembered for his history of Iran, published posthumously by one of his students.
Sources:
B. Neise, BBJ 15 (1892) 76-81; F. Ruhl, ADB 49 (1904) 646-51; Hermann Bengtson, NDB 7 (1966) 348-8.
