Albert Sorel

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Albert Sorel

Albert Sorel (born August 13, 1842 in Honfleur , Calvados , † June 29, 1906 in Paris ) was a French writer and historian .

He was employed in the Foreign Ministry in 1866 , accompanied the government to Tours and Bordeaux in 1870, became Professor of Diplomatic History in Paris in 1872 and Secretary General of the Presidium of the Senate and the Saint-Cyr Military School in 1876 (1898). He was a member of the Académie Française since 1894 and the Académie des sciences morales et politiques . In 1889 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1901 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

As a historian, he described the development of his country, which he regarded as la France généreuse . Despite the politically exaggerated nationalization to which Sorel was also subject, he soberly named political mistakes in French foreign policy in the 19th century.

The last volumes of L'Europe et la Révolution française provided the scientific underpinning of the thesis, which was indispensable for France's world position at the time, that France was never the aggressor, not even under Napoleon . Sorel also perpetuates the matter-of-factness with which in France the setbacks that Napoleon suffered and in the course of which Paris was occupied twice by the armies of the so often attacked states, as an "invasion", as the "attack of hostile hordes" and called a terrible injustice.

He also strengthens the view that it is an undeserved fortune for foreign countries when they come under French rule. Tolstoy often made fun of this in his great novel War and Peace .

Works

In addition to many articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes and other magazines, he wrote the novels La grande falaise (1872) and Le Docteur Egra (1873) as well as the historical works:

  • Le traité de Paris du 20 nov. 1815 (1873);
  • Histoire diplomatique de la guerre franco-allemande (1875, 2 vols.);
  • Laquestion d'Orient au XVIII. siècle (1878);
  • Essais d'histoire et de critique (1882);
  • L'Europe et la Révolution française (1885–1904, 8 vols. + Supplement);
  • Montesquieu (1887)

and in association with Funck-Brentano:

  • Précis du droit des gens (2nd edition 1887).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Sorel obituary in the 1907 yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 229.
personal data
SURNAME Sorel, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Honfleur , Calvados
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1906
Place of death Paris