Adolph Lothar Bucher was born at Neustettin, on the 25th of October, 1817. When he was two years of age his family moved to Koeslin in Further Pomerania, where his father, a Saxon of the Electorate, and much respected as a philologist and geographer, was Professor and Pro-Rector of the Gymnasium or High School. Here the boy received his earliest instruction and his first conscious impressions of the world and life. The fact that his father was a friend of Ludwig Jahn’s must have had some influence on his riper youth. The subjects for which he showed the greatest aptitude at school were mathematics and natural philosophy; and as the time for choosing a profession drew near he first wished to become a sailor and afterwards an architect. His parents on the other hand preferred one of the learned professions; and he decided to adopt the study of the law, for which purpose he went to Berlin University. Here he found in progress the well known conflict between the historical and philosophical schools, between Savigny and Gans. He threw in his lot with the latter, and occupied himself diligently with the study of Hegel, their chief master. Subsequently, however, his inclination for philosophy cooled down, and he devoted himself exclusively to jurisprudence. From 1838 to 1843 he was engaged in the chief Provincial Court at Koeslin, and in the latter year was appointed Assessor in the Court at Stolp, which town returned him as its representative to the Prussian National Assembly in March, 1848, and a year later to the Parliament which had in the meantime been created. Up to 1840 there had practically been no public life in Prussia in the present sense of the words. The new representative from Further Pomerania was a jurist, whose education had been in the main confined to civil law, and who had had no experience whatever of affairs of State. Moreover he had read Rotteck and Welcker in his leisure hours, and had with his inborn thoroughness assimilated their views on history and politics. It was therefore almost a matter of course, particularly when the revolutionary spirit is taken into account, which at that time swept like a stormy west wind through the German States, shaking all the trees and loosening every joint, that Bucher should have taken his seat upon the Left benches and devoted his gifts as a jurist and as a speaker to the service of Radicalism. It should be observed however that he did not belong to the Waldeck party, which despised the rules of polite conduct, and just as little to those who delighted in the art of pathetic oratory. Speaking of him in his “_Denkwuerdigkeiten_” General von Brandt says: “I have never heard any one speak with more talent and moderation than Bucher on this occasion (the debate in Committee on the so-called _Habeas Corpus_ Act). His blond hair and dispassionate attitude reminded me strongly of pictures of St. Just. Bucher was a ruthless leveller of all existing institutions, rank and property.