Biography

He was born at Gießen

Gießen

Gießen, also spelt Giessen is a town in the German federal state of Hesse, capital of both the district of Gießen and the administrative region of Gießen...

, the son of Joseph Hillebrand

Joseph Hillebrand

Joseph Hillebrand was a German novelist, philosopher and historian of literature.-Biography:...

, a literary historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and writer on philosophic subjects.

Karl Hillebrand became involved, as a student in Heidelberg, in the Baden revolutionary movement, and was imprisoned in Rastatt

Rastatt

Rastatt is a city and baroque residence in the District of Rastatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the Murg river, above its junction with the Rhine and has a population of around 50'000...

 in 1849. He succeeded in escaping and lived for a time in Strassburg, Paris — where for several months he was Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...

's secretary — and Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

. He continued his studies, and after obtaining the doctor's degree at the Sorbonne

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

, he was appointed teacher of German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 in the Ecole militaire at St Cyr, and shortly afterwards, professor of foreign literatures at Douai.

On the outbreak of the Franco-German War, he resigned his professorship and acted for a time as correspondent to The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

in Italy. He then settled in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, where he died on the 19th of October 1884.

Writings

Hillebrand wrote with facility and elegance in French, English and Italian, besides his own language. His essays, collected under the title Zeiten, Völker and Menschen (Berlin, 1874-1885), show clear discernment, a finely balanced cosmopolitan judgment and grace of style.

He undertook to write the Geschichte Frankreichs von der Thronbesteigung Ludwig Philipps bis zum Fall Napoleons III, but only two volumes were completed (to 1848) (2nd ed., 1881-1882). In French he published Des conditions de la bonne comedie (1863), La Prusse contemporaine (1867), Etudes italiennes (1868), and a translation of O. Müller

Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller , was a German scholar and Philodorian, or admirer of ancient Sparta, who introduced the modern study of Greek mythology.-Biography:...

's Griechische Literaturgeschichte (3rd ed., 1883).

In English, he published Public Instruction in the United States (1869) and his Royal Institution Lectures on German Thought during the Last Two Hundred Years (1880). He also edited a collection of essays dealing with Italy, under the title Italia (4 vols, Leipzig, 1874-1877).