Puffendorf. SAMUEL, BARON VON PUFFENDORF (or Pufendorf), writer on jurisprudence, was born on 8th January 1632, at Chemnitz, in Saxony. He began the study of theology at Leipzig, but in 1656 went to Jena to study national law and mathematics. Whilst acting as tutor to the sons of the Swedish ambassador at Copenhagen war broke out (1658) between Denmark and Sweden, and Puffendorf was thrown into prison. During the eight months he was kept there he thought out his Elementa Jurisprudentiae Universalis. It was dedicated to the Elector Palatine, who appointed Puffendorf to the professorship of the Law of Nature and Nations at Heidelberg. He next exposed the absurdities of the constitution of the Germanic empire in De Statu Reipublicæ Germanicæ (1667), which raised a storm of controversy. In 1670 he was called to fill the chair of the Law of Nations at Lund, and there wrote the work on which his fame now rests, De Jure Naturæ et Gentium (1672), a work based upon the system of Grotius (q.v.), but completed and extended in the line of Hobbes' speculations. Some years later the king of Sweden made him his historiographer, with the dignity of a councillor of state. In his official character he published a dry history of Sweden, from the expedition of Gustavus Adolphus into Germany to the death of Queen Christine. In 1688 the Elector of Brandenburg invited him to Berlin to write the history of the life and reign of the Great Elector. He died in that city on 26th October 1694.
See Lorimer, Institutes of Law of Nations (vol. i. 1883); H. von Treitschke, in Preussische Jahrbücher (1875); and Droysen, Abhandlungen zur neueren Geschichte (1876).