Leopold von Ranke was born 200 years ago.
Leopold von Ranke was born 200 years ago.
On the 21st December 1795 in Wiehe/Unstrut, Leopold was born into an old Lutheran theologian family. Having attended school in Schulpforta, studied in Leipzig and Halle, and taught in a grammar school in Frankfurt an der Oder, he was offered a professorship in history at the Berlin University in 1825, then a chair in 1834, where he taught until 1871 and had amongst his students a large number of well known historians.
This important, very effective and for that very reason controversial historian was given titles such as 'The greatest German historian', 'The father of the objective writing of history', and 'The founder of the science of history'. The authoritative criticism of sources which he mainly developed is still valid today as a method of working in history, even if he did limit himself to official documents and with this the perspective of those in power, which has since been expanded critically to include, for example, social and cultural sources and lines of questioning.
Numerous weighty publications on the 100th anniversary of his death in 1986 cover the unbroken desire for debate on the individuals’ thoughts during the Romantic period which he transferred to the world of politics, and the relative worth contained within it. As maxim for the historicism represented by him, Ranke formulated his view in an incontrovertible way: ‘From the particular, one can carefully and boldly move up to the general; from general theories, there is no way of looking at the particular.’ With individuality as the aim of discovery of the ‘godly ideas’ in the world of intellectuals, and objectivity as the task of the historian, Ranke educated his students with particular fondness on the basis of medieval sources, whilst his own writings concerned themselves exclusively with the modern period. Even in his first work in 1824, he wrote provocatively that he did not want to judge the past, but simply wanted to show how it was, provocatively because with this he was turning against the current interests of the ideas of enlightenment, but at the same time he tried to do no less than to explain the idea of World History.
We admire Ranke’s methodological and presentational achievements which were true to their sources, but have to go along new paths without dismissing his ideas. As ever, Ranke polarizes opinions, for example Thomas Nipperdey noted in 1986 that, ‘Ranke’s idea of objectivity’ was even today ‘a strong theory’. To what extent Ranke’s literary qualities continue to carry weight, as also with the Berlin ancient historian Theodor Mommsen, can be seen for example in the new editions of his German history at the time of the Reformation, his history of the Roman Popes, and his French and English histories. Ranke aimed at world history, but his basic mood was nationalistic and conservative, the massive changes after the French Revolution are hardly discussed, and his books on Prussian history contained, with no intention for it to be used for propaganda purposes, the seeds for a Prussian national German picture of history. This legacy compels one to critical reflection, but at the same time it points to a flourishing time in historical research at the Berlin University, started by Ranke, which above all Max Lenz and Friedrich Meinecke were able to continue.
Ranke himself was well aware of the dynamics of his time. In 1875 he wrote to his brother: ‘With trains and telegraphic communications all empires and states are brought together into the closest and quickest contact…On the whole globe, there are no longer any total divisions. Who still speaks of compassion? It goes without saying that this is what we demand.’ The perception of time as a blissful utopia when looking back? On the 8.8.1885, the mayor of Berlin, Max von Forckenbeck visited Ranke in his flat in the Luisenstrasse, in order to make him a freeman of the city. They talked about general political and municipal affairs, but scarcely had the delegation gone, when Ranke observed: ‘and now back to the empire of Otto III, with whose end I was occupied, when the mayor came.’ In the last years of his life, Ranke received numerous honours, many honorary doctorates confirmed his international reputation and he was, amongst other honours, made chancellor of the order ‘pour le mérite’. From 1871, he devoted himself to the publication of his various works (54 volumes).
On the 23rd May 1886, von Ranke died in Berlin. His grave in the Sophien cemetery, which is still kept nowadays, was decorated with a medallion portrait of him. His personal legacy remained in Germany, his library taken to Syracuse in the state of New York. The Humboldt University remembered him on his 200th birthday as an influential and controversial founder of the modern German history of science who is kept alive by these controversies. The methodologically strict training of his classes and lectures remains even today as an obligation for research which desires quality.