Franz Mone was a historian and archeologist. He attended the gymnasium at Bruchsal and in 1814 entered Heidelberg University, where in 1817 he was appointed tutor (Privatdozent) in history, in 1818 secretary of the university library, in 1819 extraordinary professor, in 1822 ordinary professor, and in 1825 head of the university library. From 1827 to 1831 he was professor at the Catholic University of Leuven

Catholic University of Leuven

The Catholic University of Leuven, or of Louvain, was the largest, oldest and most prominent university in Belgium. The university was founded in 1425 as the University of Leuven by John IV, Duke of Brabant and approved by a Papal bull by Pope Martin V.During France's occupation of Belgium in the...

. On his return to Baden he edited for a period the "Karlsruher Zeitung"; in 1835 he became archivist and director of the General National Archives in Karlsruhe, and retired in 1868.

Publications

• His works on early history (Urgeschichte des badischen Landes - Early history of the region of Baden; 2 vols., 1845; Untersuchungen über die gallisch Sprache, 1851, and Celtische Forschungen, 1857) have been criticised for a tendency to trace most phenomena to a Celtic origin.
• His works on literary history include:
  • Einleitung in das Nibelungenlied (Introduction to the Nibelungenlied
    Nibelungenlied
    The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
    
    , 1818);
  • Geschichte des Heidentums im nördlichen Europa (2 vols., 1822-3);
  • Otnit (1821);
  • Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur und Sprache (Sources and Research into the history of German language and literature, 1830)
  • Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Heldensage (Investigations into the history of German Heroic Sagas, 1836);
  • Uebersicht der niederländischen Volksliteratur älterer Zeit (1838).
• In the Anzeiger für Kunde des deutschen Mittelalters (1835-9), he calls attention to a mass of unknown materials.
• On the history of drama are his editions of Altdeutsche Schauspiele (1841) and Schauspiele des Mittelalters (2 vols., 1846).
• His works, Lateinische und griechische Messen (Latin and Greek masses, 1850) and Lateinische Hymnen (3 vols., 1853-5), advanced the knowledge of liturgy and ecclesiastical poetry, and offered liturgical documents not published elsewhere.
• On the history of his native region:
  • Badisches Archiv (2 vols., 1826-7);
  • Quellensammlung der badischen Landesgeschichte (4 vols., 1848–67);
  • the second volume of the Episcopatus Constantiensis of Trudpert Neugart
    Trudpert Neugart
    Trudpert Neugart was a Benedictine historian. Of middle-class origin, Neugart studied in the classical schools of the Benedictine Abbeys of St George and St...
    
    (1862)
  • the Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins (Journal of the History of the Upper Rhein; 21 vols., 1850–68), which was founded by Mone, and in which most of the articles during these early years were from his pen. It was continued subsequently by the General Archives and by the Historical Commission of Baden. In his works the economico-historical interest is always in the foreground.
• He was an earnest Catholic, and took part in the Baden ecclesiastical-political strife during the forties, publishing the two aggressive anonymous pamphlets, Die katholischen Zustände in Baden (Conditions for Catholics in Baden; 1841-3).