Francis Lieber (German: [ˈliːbɐ]; born Franz Lieber; 18 March 1798 – 2 October 1872) was a German and American jurist and political philosopher. He is best known for the Lieber Code, the first modern codification of the customary law and the laws of war for battlefield conduct, which served as a basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and for the later Geneva Conventions. He was also a pioneer in the fields of law, political science, and sociology in the United States.
Born in Berlin, Prussia, to a Jewish merchant family, Lieber served in the Prussian Army during the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon Bonaparte. He obtained a doctorate from the University of Jena in 1820. A republican, he volunteered to fight on the Greek side in the Greek War of Independence in 1821. After experiencing repression in Prussia for his political views, he emigrated to the United States in 1827. During his early years in America, he worked a number of jobs, including swimming and gymnastics instructor, editor of the first editions of the Encyclopaedia Americana, journalist, and translator.
Lieber wrote a plan of education for the newly founded Girard College and lectured at New York University before becoming a tenured professor of history and political economy at the University of South Carolina in 1835. In 1857, he joined the faculty at Columbia University where he assumed the chair of history and political science in 1858. He transferred to Columbia Law School in 1865 where he taught until his death in 1872.
Lieber was commissioned by the U.S. Army to write the Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field (General Orders No. 100, 24 April 1863), the Lieber Code of military law that governed the battlefield conduct of the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The Lieber Code was the first codification of the customary law and the laws of war governing the battlefield conduct of an army in the field, and later was a basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and for the Geneva Conventions.
Franz Lieber was born the tenth of twelve children to a wealthy Jewish merchant family in Berlin, then the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia. The year of his birth (1798 or 1800) has been debated because he lied about his age in order to enlist. Lieber joined the Colberg Regiment of the Prussian Army in 1815 during the Napoleonic Wars, and was wounded in Namur, Belgium during the Battle of Waterloo. He was treated in a military hospital in Huy, which was then part of the Netherlands but which is today Belgium. He rejoined his regiment after recovering from his wounds, but developed a typhoid fever and was subsequently treated at military hospitals in Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne.
After the war, he was a high school student at Graues Kloster in Berlin. He became politically active during this time period, was arrested by Prussian authorities, and held for pretrial detention in Spandau prison from July to November 1819. Returning to Berlin after the Napoleonic wars (post 1815), he passed the entrance exams for the University of Berlin. However, he was denied admission because of his membership in the Berliner Burschenschaft, which opposed the Prussian monarchy. Moving to Jena, Lieber entered the University of Jena in 1820 and within four months finished writing a dissertation in the field of mathematics. As the Prussian authorities caught up with him, Lieber left Jena for Dresden to study topography with Major Decker (briefly). In Prussia, Lieber was imprisoned and repeatedly questioned for his republican views.
In 1821, Lieber briefly fought in the Greek War of Independence, but became dissolutioned due to the religious violence and war crimes committed by the Greek rebels.
He then spent one year, 1822–1823, in Rome tutoring the son of the Prussian ambassador, historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr. While there, Lieber wrote about his experiences in Greece. The result was published in Leipzig in 1823 and also in Amsterdam under the title The German Anacharsis. Lieber returned to Germany on a royal pardon, but was soon imprisoned once again, this time at Köpenick. He was in pretrial detention at Köpenick from August 1824 to April 1825.
At Köpenick, Lieber wrote a collection of poems entitled Wein- und Wonne-Lieder (Songs of Wine and Bliss), which on his release, with Niebuhr's help, were published in Berlin in 1824 under the pen name of "Franz Arnold". Lieber fled to England in 1825, and supported himself for a year in London by giving lessons and contributing to German periodicals. In London he met American writer and critic John Neal, who was studying gymnastics from Carl Voelker and intent on bringing the movement to the US. Neal published articles in The Yankee and the American Journal of Education about Lieber's work, and recommending him as "qualified, almost beyond example" as a teacher of gymnastics, and "the chief personage with professor Jahn himself". Lieber also wrote a tract on the Lancasterian system of instruction, and met his future wife, Mathilda Oppenheimer. He left England upon receiving an offer to manage a gymnasium and swimming program in Boston.
Lieber moved to Boston in 1827. He came with recommendations from Jahn, as well as from General Pfuel who ran a swimming program in Berlin. Lieber was also acquainted with the outgoing gymnasium administrator, Charles Follen, both believing thoroughly in the importance of training the body along with the mind. Follen had established the pioneer gymnasium in 1826. Lieber's Boston swimming school of 1827, a new departure in the educational field in the United States, became such a feature that John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, went to see it. The gymnasium had a difficult time once the novelty had worn off and in the face of caricatures in the newspapers. It closed its doors after two years.
In Boston, Lieber edited an Encyclopaedia Americana, after conceiving of the idea of translating the Brockhaus encyclopedia into English. It was published in Philadelphia in 13 volumes, between the years 1829 and 1833. At this time, he also made translations of a French work on the revolution of July 1830 and of Feuerbach's life of Kaspar Hauser. He was also a confidant to Alexis de Tocqueville on the customs of the American people. Lieber was a nationalist, a supporter of free trade, and an opponent of slavery, though "[h]is reservations about slavery were ... ambiguous", and he later owned slaves. "He was distinctly hostile to abolition", which ended his friendship with Charles Sumner until the war "broke out and they found themselves both strong supporters of Lincoln".
In 1832, he received a commission from the trustees of the newly founded Girard College to form a plan of education. This was published at Philadelphia in 1834. He resided in Philadelphia from 1833 until 1835. He soon became a professor of history and political economics at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), where he owned slaves until his departure in 1856. During his 20 years at the college, he produced some of his most important works. Such writers and jurists as Mittermaier, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Édouard René de Laboulaye, Joseph Story and James Kent, recognized in him a kindred mind. The spirit of Lieber's work is indicated in his favorite motto, Nullum jus sine officio, nullum officium sine jure ("No right without its duties, no duty without its rights").
From 1856 until 1865, he was professor of history and political science at Columbia College (later Columbia University) in New York City. He chose his own title and became the first academic identified as a political scientist in the United States. In 1860, he also became professor of political science at Columbia Law School, a post he held until his death. His inaugural address as professor at Columbia, on "Individualism and Socialism or Communism", was published by the college.
Lieber sided with the North during the American Civil War, even though he had been a prominent resident of South Carolina. Indeed, Lieber was even a slave owner himself, and his brothers-in-law, members of the powerful Oppenheimer (de) family dynasty, owned plantations and slaves in Puerto Rico. However, in 1851, Lieber delivered an address in South Carolina warning the southern states against secession. One of his sons, geologist Oscar Montgomery Lieber (see below), joined the Confederate army and died at the Battle of Eltham's Landing. A second son, Hamilton, who had fought for the Union, lost an arm.