Leopold von Ranke

Leopold von Ranke (December 21, 1795 – May 23, 1886) was one of the greatest German historians of the 19th century, and is frequently considered one of the founders of modern source-based history. Ranke set the tone for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources, an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics and a commitment to writing history "as it essentially [was]" in his own words: "[…] not the duty to judge the past, nor to instruct one's contemporaries with an eye to the future, but rather merely to show how it actually was".

Ranke was born in Wiehe, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. He was educated partly at home and partly in the Gymnasium. His early years engendered a life-long love of ancient Greek and Latin and of the Lutheran Church. In 1814, Ranke entered the University of Leipzig, where his subjects were Classics and Lutheran theology. At Leipzig, Ranke became an expert in Philology and translation of the ancient authors into German. As a student, Ranke's favorite authors were Thucydides, Livy, I. Kant, F. Schelling, and F. Schlegel. Ranke showed little interest in the work of modern history because of his dissatisfaction with what he regarded as history books that were merely a collection of facts lumped together by modern historians.

In 1817-1825 Ranke worked as a Classics teacher at the Gymnasium in Frankfurt. During this time, Ranke became interested in History in part because of his desire to be involved in the developing field of a more professionalized history and in part because of his desire to find the hand of God in the workings of history.

Beginning with his first book in 1824, History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, Ranke used an unusually wide variety of sources for a historian of the age, including "memoirs, diaries, personal and formal missives, government documents, diplomatic dispatches and first-hand accounts of eye-witnesses." He emphasized mundane documents instead of old and exotic literature.

Ranke began his book with the statement that he would show the unity of the experiences of the "Teutonic" nations of Scandinavia, England and Germany and the "Latin" nations of Italy, Spain and France through the great "respirations" of the great migration, the Crusades and colonization bound all of the nations together to produce modern European civilization. The book is best remembered for Ranke's comment that "History has had assigned to it the office of judging the past and of instructing the account for the benefit of future ages. To show high offices the present work does not presume: it seeks only to show what actually happened". Ranke's statement that history should embrace the principle of "show what actually happened" is taken by many historians as their guiding principle. Ranke went on to write that the historian must seek for the "Holy hieroglyph" that is God's hand in history by keeping an "eye for the universal" whilst taking "joy in the particular".

Following the success of Geschichte History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, Ranke was given a position in the University of Berlin. At the university, Ranke supported the professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny who emphasized the varieties of different periods of history Also during his time, Ranke became the first historian to utilize the forty-seven volumes that comprised the diplomatic archives of 16^th - 17^th c. Ranke came to prefer dealing with primary sources as opposed to secondary sources during this time.

Starting in 1831, Ranke founded and edited the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift journal, in which he claimed that every state is given a special moral character from God and individuals should strive to best fulfill the "idea" of their state. Thus, Ranke urged his readers to stay loyal to the Prussian state and reject the ideas of the French Revolution, which he claimed were meant for France, not Prussia.

In 1834-1836 Ranke produced the multi-volume History of the Popes, their Church and State. As a Protestant, Ranke was barred from viewing the Vatican archives, but on the basis of private papers, Ranke was able to explain the history of the Papacy in the 16th c. In this book, Ranke coined the term the Counter Reformation and offered colorful portrayals of Popes Paul IV and Pius V. Ranke has been generally praised by historians for placing the situation of the Catholic Church in the context of the 16th c. and for his treatment of the complex interaction of the political and religious issues in the 16th c. He followed this book up with multi-volume History of the Reformation in Germany in 1845-1847. Ranke used the ninety-six volumes from ambassadors to explain the Reformation in Germany as the result of both politics and religion. In 1849, Ranke published History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, where Ranke examined the state from the Middle Ages to the reign of Frederick the Great. Many Prussian nationalists were offended by Ranke's portrayal of Prussia as a typical German medium-sized state rather as a Great Power.

In a series of lectures, Ranke argued that "every age is next to God," by which he meant that every period of history is unique and must be understood in its own context. Ranke rejected the teleological approach to history where every period is inferior to the period that follows. In Ranke's view, the historian had to understand a period on its own terms, and seek to find only the general ideas which animated every period of history. For Ranke, history was not to be an account of man's "progress" because, "After Plato, there can be no more Plato." Moreover, for Ranke Christianity was morally most superior and could not be improved upon. Ultimately, "History is no criminal court."

In 1871, Ranke continued to write on a variety of subjects relating to German history. Starting in 1880, Ranke began a huge six-volume work on World History, which began with ancient Egypt and the Israelites. By the time of Ranke's death in Berlin (1886), he had only reached the 12th century. Subsequently his assistants used his notes to take the series up to 1453.

At the core of his method, Ranke did not believe that general theories could cut across time and space. He made statements about the time using quotations from primary sources. He said, "My understanding of 'leading ideas' is simply that they are the dominant tendencies in each century. These tendencies, however, can only be described; they can not, in the last resort, be summed up in a concept." In the 19th century, Ranke's work was very popular and his ideas about how an historian should operate were much copied.