STOBBE, JOHANN ERNST OTTO:
Christian historian of the Jews; born at Königsberg, East Prussia, June 28, 1831; died at Leipsic May 19, 1887. He studied philology and history, and later jurisprudence, at the university of his native town, graduating as LL.D. in 1853. During the following two years he continued his Germanic studies in Leipsic and Göttingen. In 1855 he became privat-docent at the University of Königsberg, where in 1856 he was appointed assistant professor and in the same year professor of German law. In 1859 he was called to Breslau and in 1872 to Leipsic to fill similar positions. In 1880 he received the title of "Geheimer Hofrat."
Among Stobbe's works that of special interest to Jewish readers is "Die Juden in Deutschland Während des Mittelalters," Brunswick, 1866. This work was the first to treat of the Jews in medieval Germany from a strictly constitutional standpoint, and was based on the author's thorough knowledge of the archival literature of that period. He especially traced, practically for the first time, the connection between the position of the Jews in the Byzantine empire and the position of those in the Carlovingian empire. The book, which has been taken as a standard for similar research, became very scarce, and was reprinted by the anastatic process in 1902.
Stobbe, though a Christian, was a member of the committee appointed by the Gemeindebund to collect materials for the history of the Jews of Germany (see Historische Commission). His other works are all of purely juristic and historical interest, the chief of them being the "Geschichte der Deutschen Rechtsquellen" (Brunswick, 1860-64), translated into Italian by E. Bollati (Florence, 1868).
