Leopold von Ranke

Leopold von Ranke (21 December 1795 – 23 May 1886) was a German historian and a founder of modern source-based history. He was able to implement the seminar teaching method in his classroom and focused on archival research and analysis of historical documents. Building on the methods of the Göttingen School of History, Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources (empiricism), an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics (Außenpolitik).

• A collection of national histories, whether on a larger or a smaller scale, is not what we mean by Universal History, for in such a work the general connection of things is liable to be obscured. To recognise this connection, to trace the sequence of those great events which link all nations together and control their destinies, is the task which the science of Universal History undertakes.
  • Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks, ed. G. W. Prothero (1884), p. xi

• But historical development does not rest on the tendency towards civilisation alone. It arises also from impulses of a very different kind, especially from the rivalry of nations engaged in conflict with each other for the possession of the soil or for political supremacy. It is in and through this conflict, affecting as it does all the domain of culture, that the great empires of history are formed. In their unceasing struggle for dominion the peculiar characteristics of each nation are modified by universal tendencies, but at the same time resist and react upon them.
  • Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks, ed. G. W. Prothero (1884), p. xii

• Universal History would degenerate into mere theory and speculation if it were to desert the firm ground of national history, but just as little can it afford to cling to this ground alone. The history of each separate nation throws light on the history of humanity at large; but there is a general historical life, which moves progressively from one nation or group of nations to another. In the conflict between the different national groups Universal History comes into being, while, at the same time, the sense of nationality is aroused, for nations do not draw their impulses to growth from themselves alone. Nationalities so powerful and distinct as the English or the Italian are not so much the offspring of the soil and the race as of the great events through which they have passed.
  • Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks, ed. G. W. Prothero (1884), pp. xii-xiii

• To history has been attributed the function to judge the past, to instruct ourselves for the advantage of the future. Such a lofty function the present work does not attempt. It aims merely to show how it actually took place.
  • ‘Gesch. der Röm. und Germ. Völker’, p. vii, quoted in Edward Gaylord Bourne, ‘Leopold Von Ranke’, The Sewanee Review, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Aug., 1896), p. 390

• Rigorous presentation of the facts, however conditional and lacking in beauty they may be, is without question the supreme law.
  • ‘Gesch. der Röm. und Germ. Völker’, p. vii, quoted in Edward Gaylord Bourne, ‘Leopold Von Ranke’, The Sewanee Review, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Aug., 1896), p. 390

• The ultimate aim of historical writing is the bringing before us the whole truth.
  • Statement quoted in Edward Gaylord Bourne, ‘Leopold Von Ranke’, The Sewanee Review, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Aug., 1896), p. 392

• You are in the first place a Christian: I am in the first place a historian. There is a gulf between us.
  • Quoted in Acton : Study of history , quoted from Lal, K. S. (2001). Historical essays. New Delhi: Radha.(43)

• Ranke has not only written a larger number of mostly excellent books than any man that ever lived, but he has taken pains from the first to explain how the thing is done. He attained a position unparalleled in literature, less by the display of extraordinary faculties than by perfect mastery of the secret of his craft, and that secret he has always made it his business to impart. For his most eminent predecessors, history was applied politics, fluid law, religion exemplified, or the school of patriotism. Ranke was the first German to pursue it for no purpose but its own. He tried to make the generality of educated men understand how it came about that the world of the fifteenth century was changed into the Europe of the nineteenth. His own definite persuasions regarding church and king were not suffered to permeate his books. It was meritorious in Böckh, but not heroic, to contain his feelings about the Attic treasure and the setting of Arcturus; but Ranke was concerned with all the materials of abiding conflict, with every cause for which he cared and men are willing to kill or die.
  • Lord Acton, 'German Schools of History', Historical Essays & Studies, eds. John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence (1907), p. 352

• What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion.
  • Lord Acton, private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 192

• Sagacity in judging the value of testimony is his only supreme quality.
  • Lord Acton, private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 192

• While an admirable critic of sources, Niebuhr read into his version of Roman history a variety of moral and philosophical views unwarranted by the existing evidence... Ranke, on the other hand, determined to hold strictly to the facts of history, to preach no sermon, to point no moral, to adorn no tale, but to tell the simple historic truth. His sole ambition was to narrate things as they really were "wie es eigentlich gewesen". Truth and objectivity were Ranke's highest aims. In his view, history is not for entertainment or edification, but for instruction... He did not believe in the historian's province to point out divine providence in human history.
  • H. B. Adams, ‘Leopold von Ranke’, Papers Of The American Historical Association: Volume III (1889), pp. 104–105

• That history became "scientific" in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was probably due as much to the influence of Ranke as to the influence of natural science.
  • Carl Becker, ‘Some Aspects of the Influence of Social Problems and Ideas Upon the Study and Writing of History’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 18, No. 5 (March 1913), p. 657

• No one else has been able to speak with equal authority on the history of so many nations, Grote wrote nothing on the history of Rome, Mommsen has written nothing on the history of Greece. Ranke was equally at home in the Germany of the Reformation, in the France of Louis XIV., and in the England of Charles I. and Cromwell.
  • Samuel Rawson Gardiner, 'Leopold von Ranke', The Academy, No. 734 (29 May 1886), p. 380

• Ranke is cold and unenthusiastic; and, in judging individuals, it is well to be cold and unenthusiastic. But is there no room for warmth of feeling in recounting the efforts and the struggles of the race? Is it not possible to do for history what Darwin has done for science? Ranke, at all events, did not do it. He knew of the influence upon individuals of great waves of feeling and opinion; but he does not seek for the law of human progress which underlies them. He does not rejoice in that progress, or grieve at failure. Hence, perhaps, in part his preference for writing the history of many nations during the same period, rather than the history of one nation consecutively. To say this, however, is only to say that there is no finality in scientific progress. Whatever shape the histories of the future may take, they will assuredly be built on the foundations which Ranke has laid down with unerring hand.
  • Samuel Rawson Gardiner, 'Leopold von Ranke', The Academy, No. 734 (29 May 1886), p. 381

• [T]he history of German historical thought since Ranke's time has to a large extent been nothing but the spiritual and philosophical (weltanschauliche) debate about his legacy.
  • Walther Hofer, Geschichte zwischen Philosophie und Politik. Studien zur Problematik des modernen Geschichtsdenkens (1956), p. 47, quoted in Georg G. Iggers, ‘The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought’, History and Theory, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1962), p. 37

• Beyond question even Von Ranke, the leading exponent of colorless history, did not succeed in being wholly objective; much of his work was unconsciously written from the standpoint of the conservative reaction of his time in Prussia.
  • Allan Nevins, The Gateway of History (1938), p. 43

• Ranke developed no further the implications of his theory than to ensure a reproduction of a living past, as perfect as with the sources at his disposal and the political instincts of his time it was possible to secure... [Ranke was] concrete, definite, searching for minute details, maintaining his own objectivity by insisting upon the subjectivity of the materials he handles.
  • James T. Shotwell, ‘The Interpretation of History’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (July 1913), p. 703

• Leopold von Ranke is not only beyond all comparison the greatest historical scholar alive, but one of the very greatest historians that ever lived. Unrivalled stores of knowledge, depth of research, intimate acquaintance with the most recondite sources, have been, in his case, supplemented by everything which could be conferred by a long life, continuous study, close association with the great political actors and thinkers of the greatest part of the most eventful century of the world's history.
  • William Stubbs, 'On the Present State and Prospects of Historical Study' (20 May 1876), Seventeen Lectures On the Study of Medieval and Modern History and Kindred Subjects Delivered at Oxford, Under Statutory Obligation in the Years 1867—1884 (1887), p. 65

• Ranke did not stop at concrete description but attempted to pierce the deepest and most mysterious movements of life.
  • Heinrich von Sybel, ‘Gedachtnisrede auf Leopold von Ranke’, Historische Zeitschrift, LVI (1886), p. 463, quoted in Georg G. Iggers, ‘The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought’, History and Theory, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1962), p. 29

• Though standards vary, greatness remains; indeed it is the true mark of greatness that it can survive changing standards. Shakespeare was great to Johnson; great to Coleridge; is great to us. Ranke was a historian of the same grandeur – great to his contemporaries, still great after the passage of a century; if not the greatest of historians, securely within the first half-dozen. Great as a scholar, great as a master of narrative, Ranke has the special claim of having achieved something more than his work; he founded a school, the school of scientific historians, which has dominated all historical thinking since his time, even when in reaction against it.
  • A. J. P. Taylor, 'Ranke', Europe: Grandeur and Decline (1967), p. 113

• [T]he chief criticism against Ranke and the Ranke school of “objective” and “scientific” history is its total unphilosophicalness. Far from being scientific, Ranke was profoundly biassed; we have seen that he observed God’s handiwork in all history; he made no attempt at formulating a genuine philosophy or psychology.
  • James Westfall Thompson, A History of Historical Writing: Volume II (1942), p. 185

• The lectures of Ranke, the most eminent of German historians, I could not follow. He had a habit of becoming so absorbed in his subject, as to slide down in his chair, hold his finger up toward the ceiling, and then, with his eye fastened on the tip of it, to go mumbling through a kind of rhapsody, which most of my German fellow-students confessed they could not understand. It was a comical sight: half a dozen students crowding around his desk, listening as priests might listen to the sibyl on her tripod, the other students being scattered through the room, in various stages of discouragement.
  • Andrew Dickson White, Autobiography: Volume I (1906), p. 39