HORMAYR, Joseph, Baron von, German statesman and historian, was born at Innsbruck, January 20th 1781, and died at Munich, November 5th, 1848. After studying law for several years (1794-1797) in his native town, and attaining the rank of major in the Tyrol land wehr, the young man, who had the advantage of being the grandson of Joseph von Hormayr (1705- 1781), chancellor of Tyrol, obtained a post in the foreign office at Vienna (1801), from which he rose in 1803 to be court secretary and director of the secret archives of the kingdom and court. During the insurrection by which in 1809 the Tyrolese sought to throw off the B ιvarian supremacy confirmed by the treaty of Pressburg, Hormayr was the mainstay of the Austrian party, and assumed the administration of everything save the military arrangements; but, returning home without the prestige and protection of success, he fell into disfavour both witlι the emperor Francis I. and the prime minister Metternich, and at length in 1813 he was arrested and imprisoned. In 1816 some amends were made to him by iιis appointment as historiographer royal; but so little was he satisfied with the general policy and conduct of the Austrian court that in 1828 he accepted an invitation to the Bavarian capital, where he became ministerial councillor in the department of foreign affairs. In 1832 he was appointed Bavarian minister at Hanover, and from 1839 to 1846 he held tin same position at Bremen. The last two years of his life were spent at Munich as superintendent of the national archives. Hormayr’s literary activity was closely conditioned by the circumstances of his political career: while the access which he enjoyed to original documents gave value to his treatment of the past, his record or criticism of contemporary events ...