Julius_Von_Mohl

Julius Von Mohl (1800-1876), German Orientalist, brother of Hugo von Mohl, was born at Stuttgart on the 25th of October 1800. Having studied theology at Tubingen (1818-1823), he abandoned the idea of entering the Lutheran ministry, and in 1823 went to Paris, at that time, under Silvestre De Sacy, the great European school of Eastern letters. From 1826 to 1833 he was nominally professor at Tubingen, but had permission to continue his studies abroad, and he passed some years in London and in Oxford. In 1826 he was charged by the French government with the preparation of an edition of the Shah Nama (Livre des rois), the first volume of which appeared in 1838, while the seventh and last was left unfinished at his death, being completed by Barbier de Meynard. Discerning this to be his life's work, he resigned his chair at Tubingen in 1834, and settled permanently in Paris. In 1844 he was nominated to the academy of inscriptions, and in 1847 he became professor of Persian at the College de France. But his knowledge and interest extended to all departments of Oriental learning. He served for many years as secretary, and then as president of the Societe Asiatique. His annual reports on Oriental science, presented to the society from 1840 to 1867, and collected after his death in Paris on the 3rd of January 1876, under the title Vingt-sept ans d'histoire des etudes orientales (Paris, 1879), are an admirable history of the progress of Eastern learning during these years. Concerning the discoveries at Nineveh he wrote Lettres de M. Botta sur les decouvertes a Khorsabad (1845). He also published anonymously, in conjunction with Justus Olshausen (r800-1882), Fragments relatifs a la religion de Zoroastre (Paris, 1829); Confucii Chi-king sive liber carminum, ex latina P. Lacharmi interpretatione  (Stuttgart, 1830); and an edition of Y-King, Antiquissimus Sinarum liber, ex interpretatione P. Regis (Stuttgart, 1834-1839).

His wife Mary (1793-1883), daughter of Charles Clarke, had passed a great part of her early life in Paris, where she was very intimate with Madame Recamier, before their marriage in 1847, and for nearly forty years her house was one of the most popular intellectual centres in Paris. Madame Mohl's friends included a large number of Englishmen and Englishwomen. She died in Paris on the 14th of May 1883. Madame Mohl wrote Madame Recamier, with a Sketch of the History of Society in France  (London, 1862).

See Kathleen O'Meara, Madame Mohl, her Salon and Friends  (1885); and M. C. M. Simpson, Letters and Recollections of Julius and Mary Mohl (1887).

Mohl's elder brother, Robert Von Mohl (1799-1875), was a well-known jurist and statesman. From 1824 to 1845 he was professor of political sciences at the university of Tubingen, losing his position because of some frank criticisms which brought him under the displeasure of the authorities of Wurttemberg. In 1847 he was a member of the parliament of Wurttemberg, and in the same year he was appointed professor of law at Heidelberg; in 1848 he was a member of the German parliament which met at Frankfort, and for a few months he was minister of justice. His later public life was passed in the service of the grand-duke of Baden, whom he represented as ambassador in Munich from 1867 to 1871. He died in Berlin on the 5th of November 1875. Among his numerous writings may be mentioned, Die deutsche Polizeiwissenschaft nach den Grundsdtzen des Rechtsstaats (Tubingen, 183 2-1834, and again 1866); Geschichte and Literatur der Staatswissenschaften (Erlangen, 1855-1858); Encyklopddie der Staatswissenschaften (Tubingen, 1859, again 1881); and Staatsrecht, V olkerrecht and Politik (Tubingen, 1860-1869).

See Mohl's own Lebenserinnerungen (Leipzig, 1901); and H. Schulze, Robert von Mohl, Ein Erinnerungsblatt (Heidelberg, 1886). Another brother, Moritz Von Mohl (1802-1888), entered official life at an early age and was a member of the Frankfort parliament, and later of the parliament of Wurttemberg and of the imperial Reichstag. He was a voluminous writer on economic and political questions.