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Hans Prutz

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HANS PRUTZ (1843-), German historian, son of Robert Eduard Prutz (1816-1872), the essayist and historian; was born at Jena on the 10th of May 1843, and was educated at the universities of Jena and Berlin. In 1865 appeared his monograph on Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, which was followed by three volumes on the emperor Frederick Barbarossa ( Kaiser Friedrich I., Danzig, 1871-1874). Meanwhile from 1863 to 1873 he was teaching in secondary schools. In 1874 he received a government commission to undertake explorations in Syria, particularly at Tyre, and as a result he published in 1876 Aus Phonicien, a collection of historical and geographical sketches. In the same year appeared his first work on the Crusades, Quellenbeitrage zur Geschichte der Kreuzzage, and a series of monographs on the same subject culminated in 1883 in the notable Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzuge. Then turning to a wider theme Prutz contributed to Oncken's university history the two volumes on the political history of Europe during the middle ages ( Staatengeschichte des Abendlandes im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1885-1887). In 1888 he reverted to a subject which he had touched upon in his Geheimlehre and Geheimstatuten des Tempelherrenordens (Danzig, 1879), and wrote the history of the rise and fall of the Templars ( Entwickelung and Untergang des Tempelherrenordens ), which is noticed in the article Templars. His Preussische Geschichte (4 vols., Stuttgart, 1899-1902), which is perhaps his most notable work, is an attempt to apply scientific rather than patriotic canons to a subject which has been mainly in the hands of historians with a patriotic bias. He also wrote Aus des Grossen Kurfarsten letzten Jahren (Berlin, 1897) and Bismarcks Bildung, ihre Quellen and ihre Ausserungen (Berlin, 1904). In 1902 Prutz resigned the chair of history in the university of Konigsberg, which he had held since 1877, and took up his residence at Munich.