Written by Rudolf Vierhaus
Written by Rudolf Vierhaus

Leopold von Ranke

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Written by Rudolf Vierhaus

The search for objectivity.

But Ranke pleased no one; too devoted to the state for the liberals, he was not sufficiently dogmatic for the conservatives. He therefore returned to his historiographical work in which he thought he could more successfully attain his ideal of objectivity. From 1839 to 1847 the Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (History of the Reformation in Germany, 1845–47) appeared, the first scholarly treatment of that age. In 1847–48 there followed Neun Bücher preussischer Geschichte (Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg and History of Prussia, During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 1849), later expanded to 12 volumes; in 1852–61 the Französische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A History of France Principally During That Period, 1852); and, in 1859–69, the Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, 1875)—each consisting of several volumes that, although partly rendered obsolete by later research, are still worth reading today for their great narrative skill. In these works, too, Ranke deals with the leading European states at decisive stages of their development within the European system. Ranke typically restricts himself to the Latin and Germanic nations as the protagonists of cultural development, among whom—from the 16th century on—the Protestant states had increasingly assumed leadership; and just as typically, he focusses on political history; i.e., the foreign relations of states and their systems of government and administration. Because economic and social factors were barely reflected in the sources he used, appearing only dimly in the background as “forces” and “tendencies,” Ranke found it increasingly difficult to understand the modern age of incipient social change.

His books on the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Die deutschen Mächte und der Fürstenbund, 1871–72; Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege 1791 und 1792, 1875; Hardenberg und die Geschichte des preussischen Staates von 1793 bis 1813, 1877) are subtle accounts of complex political events but address themselves only indirectly to the central problems of a changing age. Like the Englische Geschichte, these books exhibit a certain bias against political and social change, especially the appearance of radical movements. In his lectures Ranke often dealt with the history of his time; they did not, apparently, differ in concept or emphasis from his books. History is regarded as a complex process of “historical life,” which assumes its most effective “real spiritual” form in the great states and their tensions. The historian, as objectively as possible, must describe “how it really was,” keeping the whole picture in mind while extracting the essence. Ranke was thus not an analyst but a “visual” historiographer. Aware of the limitations imposed by time and place on every historian, he attempted to achieve maximum objectivity principally by identifying himself not with a “party” but with the state. Yet his work demonstrates that his intellectual credo influenced his political views.

Ranke reached the peak of his fame as the most important living historian in the second half of the century. In 1865 he was ennobled and in 1882 made a privy counsellor. When Frederick William IV became mentally ill in 1857, Ranke finally withdrew from political life and, after his wife’s death (1871), from social life also. Rejecting liberal democratic nationalism and distrusting Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s policy because he believed that it jeopardized the continuity of German history and embraced cooperation with popular movements, Ranke nevertheless welcomed the foundation of the empire in 1871.

In the meantime, failing eyesight had turned him into a lonely scholar who depended on the help of assistants. Yet, despite this handicap, at the age of 82 he began what he claimed to be his greatest work, a “world history” (9 vol., 1881–88) leading up to the 15th century. Ranke thus fulfilled the task he had set himself as a young man: to tell the “story of universal history.” Not a work of critical research or of historical and philosophical speculation but a wide-ranging account of the evolution of culture from the Greeks to the Latin-Germanic nations, it is actually a history of Europe in which the non-European world appears at best only marginally. He wrote it in the conviction that the peaceful evolution of culture was definitively protected against the danger of revolution and that the conflict between popular sovereignty and the monarchy had been settled once and for all in favour of the latter.


Ranke’s concept and writing of history predominated in German historiography up to World War I and even after; it also influenced a great many distinguished foreign historians who studied in Germany. Unfortunately, many of Ranke’s disciples simply continued, canonized, and debased Ranke’s concepts, retaining all of their limitations without the universality of view that gave them meaning. Ranke’s own achievements, however, remain unquestioned. He contributed greatly to the progress of historiography: it became more self-assured in its method and proved itself capable of transforming the widely felt need for a historical understanding of the world (“historicism”) into an interpretation of the past based on scientific research.

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