Editing Barthold Georg Niebuhr (section)

==Education==
Niebuhr was born in [[Copenhagen]], the son of [[Carsten Niebuhr]], a prominent German geographer resident in that city. His father provided his early education.<ref name=ea>{{Cite Americana|wstitle= Niebuhr, Barthold Georg}}</ref> By 1794 the precocious young Niebuhr had already become an accomplished classical scholar who read several languages. That year he entered the [[University of Kiel]], where he studied law and philosophy.<ref name=nie>{{Cite NIE|wstitle= Niebuhr, Barthold Georg}}</ref> There he formed an important friendship with Madame Hensler, the widowed daughter-in-law of one of the professors, six years older than himself. He also made the acquaintance of her sister, Amelie Behrens, whom he subsequently married.<ref name=eb9>
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In 1796 he left Kiel to become private secretary to the Danish finance minister, [[Ernst Heinrich von Schimmelmann|Count Schimmelmann]], but in 1798 he gave up this appointment and travelled in Great Britain, spending a year at [[Edinburgh]] studying agriculture and physics.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=668}} Of his stay in Great Britain, he said "my early residence in England gave me one important key to Roman history. It is necessary to know civil life by personal observation in order to understand such states as those of antiquity. I never could have understood a number of things in the history of Rome without having observed England."<ref name=eb9/>

In 1799 he returned to Denmark, where he entered the state service; in 1800 he married Amalie Behrens (1773–1815) and settled at Copenhagen. In 1804 he became chief director of the national bank.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=668}} After the death of his first wife, Niebuhr married (1816) Margarete Henslen (1787–1831), with whom he had one son, Marcus, and three daughters, Amalie, Lucia and Cornelia.<ref name=ndb>G. Walther, 'Niebuhr, Barthold Georg', ''Neue Deutsche Biographie'' Vol. 19 (1999), [https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118587773.html#ndbcontent pp. 219-21] (Deutsche Biographie, Online-Version).</ref>