Burkhard Gotthelf Struve

Burkhard Gotthelf Struve (26 May 1671 - 25 May 1738) was a scholarly German librarian who became a polymath-historian based, for most of his academic career, at the University of Jena.

Life Struve was born in Weimar, his mother's second son. His father, who also had a family from a previous marriage, was a lawyer and at the time of his birth a Privy counciller (Hofrat) at the court in Weimar, Georg Adam Struve. Three centuries later, it offers intriguing contemporary insights, without being filtered through the prism of nineteenth century nationalism and Prussian hegemony, into the nature of the German self-identity in the Holy Roman Empire.

The work is ambitious in scope, covering in four volumes the history of the German lands from the pre-Roman period to the eighteenth century. The first volume covers the pre-Roman years "in the free German land" ("das freye Teutsch-Land"). It is relatively generalised and short, comprising just 58 paragraphs, and it leans heavily on Tacitus. The second volume deals with the period under Roman rule, starting with the invasions of Julius Caesar and lamenting the failure of the Germans to hang together, which is a recurring theme throughout the four volumes. The third volume covers the emergence and dominance of the Franks, and the fourth volume covers the imperial centuries, beginning with Otto I.