“ He studied philology at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen and Berlin, and in 1843 he began to work upon the Monumenta Germaniae historica. In 1855 he was appointed archivist at Breslau; in 1862 he became professor of history at Heidelberg, and ten years later professor at Berlin, where he was a member of the directing body of the Monumenta and a member of the Academy. ”