Heinrich Karl Ludolf von Sybel (2 December 1817 – 1 August 1895) was a German historian and politician, who served in the Landtag of Prussia from 1862 to 1864 and from 1874 to 1880.

He was born in Düsseldorf, where his father held important posts in the public service under both the French and the Prussians; in 1831 he was raised to the hereditary nobility.

He had already made himself known by critical studies on the history of the Middle Ages, of which the most important was his Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (History of the First Crusade) (Düsseldorf, 1841; new ed., Leipzig, 1881), a work which, besides its merit as a valuable piece of historical investigation employing the critical methods he had learnt from Ranke, was also of some significance as a protest against the vaguely enthusiastic attitude encouraged by the Romantic school towards the Middle Ages.

The exhibition of the Holy Shroud at Trier had attracted enormous numbers of pilgrims, and so, indignant at what appeared to him a fake, he assisted in publishing an investigation into the authenticity of the celebrated relic.

In 1846 he was appointed professor at Marburg, and though this small university offered little scope for his activities as a teacher, a seat in the Hessian Landtag gave him his first experience of politics.

[citation needed] During the years that followed he was occupied with his major chronicle of the French Revolution, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit 1789–1800, for which he had made prolonged studies in the archives of Paris and other countries.

[3] In 1856, on the recommendation of Ranke, Sybel accepted the post of professor at Munich, where King Maximilian II of Bavaria, a generous patron of learning, hoped to establish a school of history.

Political differences soon interfered with his work; as a supporter of Prussia and a Protestant, especially as a militant champion against the Ultramontanes, he was from the first an object of suspicion to the Clerical party.

In several important debates he led the attack on the government, and opposed the policy of Bismarck, not only on finances but also on Polish and Danish affairs, in particular the impending crisis with Denmark over Schleswig and Holstein.

His last years were occupied with his great work, Die Begründung des deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm I (The Founding of the German Empire under William I)(Munich, 1889–1894), a work of great importance on German unification, for which he was allowed to use the Prussian state papers and was therefore able to write a history of the greatest events of his own time with full access to highly secret sources of information.