‘History seeks to show the past as it essentially
happened’
Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886)
1. Enlightenment and History in Germany
Specificity of German Aufklärung
Religion continues to play an important role
No challenges to political order
2. Restoration and History in Europe (and Germany)
Questioning of `Enlightenment’/Aufklärung
Romantisicm*
`Discovery’ of nation as key force in history (e.g. Johann G. Fichte,
1762-1814)
Attempts to give history a more rigorous character – influence of
state
3. The relationship between professional scholarship and
nationalism
Celebration of Middle Ages as high point of German past
(Monumenta Germaniae historica)
Revolution from above – 1810 foundation of Berlin University – aims
to combine teaching and research – influence on Ranke of Barthold
Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831); and the historian of Rome August Böck
(1785-1867)
Ideologies underpinning history first half of 19C still engage with
Enlightenment
Enlightenment thought holds that historical development will lead
to perpetual peace: a world confederation of republican
governments. This belief gives way to nationalism
Future no longer perceived in terms of peaceful coexistence
between nations but marked by conflict in the form of war
4. Major influences according to Ranke specialist Georg Iggers
Lutheran background
Classical humanist education
*
On Ranke & Romanticism: Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen, `Leopold Ranke’s
Archival Turn: Location and Evidence in Modern Historiography’, Modern
Intellectual History, 5:3 (2008), 454-453; Christopher John Murray, Encyclopedia
of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850, Vol. 3, New York, 2004, `Ranke, Leopold Von’;
Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: the 'Objectivity' Question and the American
Historical Profession, Cambridge,1988; Hayden , Metahistory, Baltimore MD, 1973
German Romanticism and idealistic philosophy dominated
intellectual milieu
Politics of the Restoration
Philology
Wilhelm von Humboldt (university/educational reform) - Alexander
von Humboldt
Two major influences on Ranke’s thinking at University of Berlin: a)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831); b) German Historical
School
Historicism (Historismus): aims to study all civilizations in terms of
their own values; refuses to apply universal norms in assessment of
historical situations
5. Ranke’s Conception of History
a) `The strict presentation of the facts, no matter how conditional and
unattractive they might be is undoubtedly the supreme law’. (History
of the Latin and German Peoples, 1494-1514, 1824)
b) `History has had assigned to it the office of judging the past and of
instructing the present to the benefit of future ages. To such high office
the present work does not presume; it seeks to only show the past as it
essentially happened’. (wie es eigentlich gewesen) (The Latin and German
Peoples, 1824)
c) `First of all philosophy reminds us of the claim of the Supreme Idea.
History, on the other hand, reminds us of the conditions of existence’.
(manuscript Idee der Universalhistorie, 1830)
d) `The historians task ... is at once art and science. It has to fulfill all
the demands of criticism and scholarship to the same degree as a
philosophical work; but at the same time it is supposed to give the
same pleasure to the educated mind as the most perfect literary
creation.’ (Wissenschaft und Kunst)
e) `It is not necessary for us to prove at length that the eternal dwells
in the individual. This is the religious foundation on which our efforts rest. We
believe that there is nothing without God, and nothing lives except
through God.’ (On the Character of Historical Science)
f) ‘It would be impossible not to have one’s own opinion in the midst of
all the struggles of power and of ideas which bear within them
decisions of the greatest magnitude. Even so, the essence of impartiality
can be preserved. For this consists merely in recognizing the positions
occupied by the acting forces and in respecting the unique relationships,
which characterize each of them. One observes how these forces appear in
their distinctive identity, confront and struggle with one another; the events
and the fates, which dominate the world, take place in this opposition.
Objectivity is also always impartiality’. (Die deutschen Maechte und der
Fuerstenbund. Deutsche Geschichte von 1780-1790)
g) ‘I would maintain ... that every epoch is immediate to God, and that
its value in no way depends on what may have eventuated from it, but
rather in it existence alone, its own unique particularity’. (Lectures
delivered to King Maximilian of Bavaria, 1854)
h) `World history does not present a chaotic tumult ... there were
forces, and indeed life-giving, creative forces, and moral energies which
reveal themselves to us in abstract terms; but one can behold them and
observe them.’ (‘The Great Powers’, 1833)
6. Critics of Ranke have raised questions about ...
the critical method itself – is historical knowledge possible without
concepts? Is ‘divination’/`intuitive grasp’ objective?
Eurocentrism – Ranke not as impartial as he claimed
Rankean history is just political history - Great Men represent Spirit
of an age
Ranke’s influence dwarfed other kinds of contemporary history (e.g.
cultural history)
Ranke implied that war is ‘natural’ activity allowing states to grow
and prosper
Works:
1817 Luther 1859-66
Fragment History of
England,
1824 Histories Principally in
of the Latin the 16th and
and Germanic 17th Centuries
Nations: In
Criticism of 1854 ‘On the
Modern Epochs in
Historians. A Modern
Supplement History’,
lectures
1827 Princes delivered
and Nations of before King
Southern Maximilian II of
Europe, vol.1 Bavaria
1829 The 1867 Collected
Serbian Works, vol.I
Revolution
1868 On
1832-1836 ed., German
Historisch- History, From
Politische the Religious
Zeitschrift Peace to the
Thirty Year
1834 Princes War
and Nations of
Southern 1869 History
Europe, vol. II; of Wallenstein
History of the
Popes, vol I 1871-1872
The German
1836 Princes Powers and
and Nations of the
Southern Fürstenbund
Europe, vol. II,
III 1875 Origin
and Beginning
1837 On the of the
History of Revolutionary
Italian Poetry Wars 1791 and
1792
1839-47
German 1877
History in the Hardenberg
Era of and the
Reformation History of the
Prussian State
1844 On the from 1793 to
Assembly of 1813
the French
Notables in 1886 World
1787 History: the
Roman
1847 -1848 Republic and
Nine Books on its World Rule,
Prussian vols I, II
History
1852-61
History of
France,
Principally in
the 16th and
17th Centuries
