Waitz, GEORG, historian, born at Flensburg, 9th October 1813, studied law and history at Kiel and Berlin, became professor at Kiel in 1842, member of the German National Assembly in 1848, and professor at Göttingen in 1849, where he formed an active school of young historians who devoted themselves especially to medieval Germany. In 1875 he became member of the Academy in Berlin, and director of the reorganised Monumenta Germaniae historica, and died 24th May 1886. To native acuteness of intellect Waitz added laborious industry, with the consequence that the permanent value of his work remains secure.
Here may merely be named Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (vols. i.-viii. Kiel, 1843-78), Schleswig-Holsteins Geschichte (2 vols. 1851-54), Ueber das Leben und die Lehre des Ulfila (1840), and Grundzüge der Politik (1862). Many papers of his appeared in the Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte (established 1860). Other works were on Dahlmann's Quellenkunde zur deutschen Geschichte (edd. 3-5), and an edition of Caroline Scholing's Letters (1871). See Steindorff, Bibliographische Uebersicht über Georg Waitz's Werke (1886), and Kluckhohn, Zur Erinnerung an Georg Waitz (1887).