Ernst Strehlke (September 27, 1834, in Berlin – March 23, 1869, Berlin) was a German historian and archivist. He dedicated his rather short life to the history of the Teutonic Order.[1]
Strehlke was born on September 27, 1834, in Berlin as the second son of Friedrich Strehlke, a professor at the Köllnisches Gymnasium, and his wife Antonie, nee Weiß. After his father was appointed director of the Danzig Petrischule in 1838, Strehlke attended his father's school and the Academic Gymnasium Danzig. There he encountered Theodor Hirsch, who awakened his interest in the history of Prussia. When Hirsch was commissioned by the Danzig Magistrate to reorganize the Danzig City Archives, he involved Strehlke in the work while he was still a student. [2]
Starting in 1852, Strehlke studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. He attended lectures by philosophers Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg and Karl Werder, philologists August Boeckh, Carl Eduard Geppert, Moriz Haupt, and Martin Hertz, historians Ernst Curtius, Siegfried Hirsch, Rudolf Köpke, Leopold von Ranke, and Wilhelm Wattenbach, Germanists Friedrich von der Hagen and Hans Ferdinand Maßmann, legal scholars Heinrich Eduard Dirksen, Rudolf von Gneist, Adolf Helfferich, and Carl Gustav Homeyer, as well as geographer Carl Ritter. During his studies, Strehlke served as an amanuensis at the library of the Prussian War Academy. Due to the onset of lung disease, he abandoned his desire to become a teacher. His treatise on Henry III titled Gesta Henrici III imperatoris won an award in 1854. In 1856, he obtained his PhD in Berlin with an inaugural dissertation on this ruler.
He devoted himself to the unfinished work of Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz on the medieval art monuments of Southern Italy and assisted Ferdinand von Quast in its publication. The extensive project was financed by Schulz's brother, Karl Wilhelm. Strehlke alone handled the selection and criticism of the document book, which included 484 documents. He also contributed some drawings for the woodcuts printed in the text volumes. However, his name was missing from the title page of the work, which was published in Easter 1860 and to which he had devoted his youthful enthusiasm during the years 1856-1860: Denkmäler der Kunst des Mittelalters in Unteritalien von Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz. Nach dem Tode des Verfassers herausgegeben von Ferdinand von Quast (Dresden 1860, 4 volumes of text and document book in large quarto, along with an atlas of 100 copperplate engravings in the largest folio).
In 1860, Strehlke joined the Royal Secret State Archives. After becoming a secret archive secretary in the fall of 1861, he initially compiled the register of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. In addition, he compiled the repertory of the documents of the Oberpräsidium of the Province of Posen, from which the State Archives of Posen emerged. After an unsuccessful convalescent leave at Lake Geneva, he was sent to the archives of the Foreign Ministry in 1864, where he found his main task as cataloger of the Teutonic Order sources.
Strehlke's lasting achievement lies in the publication of the historical sources for the Deutschordensstaat. In Volume 1, the previously fragmented printed verse chronicle by Nikolaus von Jeroschin is compiled. Volume 2 contains the Livonian chronicle by Hermann von Wartberge, discovered by Strehlke in Danzig. In Volume 3, the newly discovered Thorner Annals, along with the chronicle by Johann von Posilge and Detmar's 'Lübische Chronik', are published. Volume 4 was published posthumously and includes the 'Banderia Prutenorum' by Jan Długosz. Finally, Volume 5 consists of records on the history of the Diocese of Pomesania.