Pöhlmann, Robert

Born Oct. 31, 1852, in Nuremberg; died Sept. 27, 1914, in Munich. German historian of antiquity. Professor in Erlangen (from 1884) and Munich (from 1901).

Pohlmann did research on economic history and especially the social struggle in Greece and Rome. He tried to show that it was this struggle which led to the downfall of classical civilization. Proceeding from an extremely modernist position, he identified the social ideas and social struggle in ancient times with the struggle of the modern proletariat. He viewed Homeric society as a feudal economy with large individual holdings and Greece from the fifth century B.C. to the beginning of the Common Era as a developed capitalist state.