He studied medicine, and afterwards history, at Edinburgh. He continued to study history in London, and at Berlin and Göttingen, graduating as doctor of laws at Göttingen in 1816. In 1820 he was sent by the Hamburg senate as resident minister to the Prussian court. In 1823 he became keeper of the Hamburg archives; an office in which he had the fullest opportunities for the laborious and critical research work upon which his reputation as an historian. rests. He retained this post until 1863, when a serious affection of the eyes compelled him to resign. In 1850 he represented Hamburg in the German parliament at Frankfurt, and his death took place at Hamburg on the 28th of November 1865.
Lappenberg's most important work is his Geschichte von England, which deals with the history of England from the earliest times to 1154, and was published in two volumes at Hamburg in 1834-1837. It has been translated into English by B Thorpe as History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (London. 1845, and again 1881), and History of England under the Norman Kings (Oxford, 1857), and has been condnued in three additional volumes from 1154 to 1509 by R Pauli.
His other works deal mainly with the history of Hamburg, and include:
See EH Meyer, Johann Martin Lappenherg (Hamburg, 1867); and R Pauli in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, Band xvii. (Leipzig, 1883).
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.