Leopold von Ranke

‘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
• 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 Fragment
1824 Histories of the Latin and Germanic Nations: In Criticism of Modern Historians. A Supplement
1827 Princes and Nations of Southern Europe, vol.1
1829 The Serbian Revolution
1832-1836 ed., Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift
1834 Princes and Nations of Southern Europe, vol. II; History of the Popes, vol I
1836 Princes and Nations of Southern Europe, vol. II, III
1837 On the History of Italian Poetry
1839-47 German History in the Era of Reformation
1844 On the Assembly of the French Notables in 1787
1847 -1848 Nine Books on Prussian History
1852-61 History of France, Principally in the 16th and 17th Centuries
1859-66 History of England, Principally in the 16th and 17th Centuries
1854 ‘On the Epochs in Modern History’, lectures delivered before King Maximilian II of Bavaria
1867 Collected Works, vol.I
1868 On German History, From the Religious Peace to the Thirty Year War
1869 History of Wallenstein
1871-1872 The German Powers and the Fürstenbund
1875 Origin and Beginning of the Revolutionary Wars 1791 and 1792
1877 Hardenberg and the History of the Prussian State from 1793 to 1813
1886 World History: the Roman Republic and its World Rule, vols I, II