Darwin Correspondence Project

Russian-born German writer and teacher of law. Son of the Hebraist and bookseller Adolf Asher and his wife, Anna Friedeberg; Adolf Asher collaborated extensively with the librarian of the British Museum, Anthony Panizzi. Trained as a typesetter and bookseller, and later studied history and law at Berlin and Heidelberg Universities. Privat-dozent and later professor of Roman law at Heidelberg. Worked as a nurse in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. After the war, lived in the Russian cities of Samara and Saratov, and studied the history and social, economic, and legal conditions of German colonies on the Volga. Later worked as an independent scholar in London and Paris.