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His40- N31

Leopold Von Ranke

Leopold von Ranke was born on Dec. 21, 1795, in the rural Thuringian town of Wiehe,
Thuringia, Saxony (Germany) and died on May 23, 1886, Berlin,Germany. The son of
an attorney, and a scion of an old Lutheran theological family. And later became a
German historian and one of the most prolific and universal modern historians of his
time. Whose scholarly method and way of teaching (he was the first to establish a
historical seminar) had a great influence on Western historiography. He was ennobled
with the addition of von to his name in 1865. He imparted his expertise and
methodology through the introduction of the seminar as an informal but intensive
teaching device. Ranke was born into a devout family of Lutheran pastors and
lawyers. After attending the renowned Protestant boarding school of Schulpforta, he
entered the University of Leipzig. He studied theology and the classics, concentrating
on philological work and the translation and exposition of texts. This approach he
later developed into a highly influential technique of philological and
historical textual criticism. His predilection for history arose from his studies of the
ancient writers, his indifference to the rationalistic theology still in vogue in Leipzig,
and his intense interest in Luther as a historical character. But he decided in favour of
history only in Frankfurt an der Oder, where he was a secondary school teacher from
1818 to 1825. Apart from the contemporary patriotic enthusiasm for German history,
his decision was influenced by Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s Roman history (which
inaugurated the modern scientific historical method), the historiographers of the
Middle Ages, and Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels, as well as by the
German Romantic poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who
regarded history as a chronicle of human progress. Yet Ranke’s strongest motive was
a religious one: influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, he sought to
comprehend God’s actions in history. Attempting to establish that God’s
omnipresence revealed itself in the “context of great historical events,” Ranke the
historian became both priest and teacher.
Although Ranke was born into the era of the French Revolution, his bourgeois, small-town, generally

well-ordered, and peaceful background and upbringing did not provide much contact with the violent

events of the times. After receiving his early education at local schools in Donndorf and Pforta, he

attended the University of Leipzig (1814-1818), where he continued his studies in ancient philology

and theology.

In the fall of 1818 Ranke accepted a teaching position at the gymnasium (high school) in Frankfurt
an der Oder. His teaching assignments in world history and ancient literature, for which he disdained
the use of handbooks and readily available prepared texts, as well as the contemporary events of the
period, led him to turn to original sources and to a concern for the empirical understanding of history
in its totality.

Education.
Ranke was born into a devout family of Lutheran pastors and lawyers. After attending
the renowned Protestant boarding school of Schulpforta, he entered the University of
Leipzig. He studied theology and the classics, concentrating on philological work and
the translation and exposition of texts. This approach he later developed into a highly
influential technique of philological and historical textual criticism.
His predilection for history arose from his studies of the ancient writers, his
indifference to the rationalistic theology still in vogue in Leipzig, and his intense
interest in Luther as a historical character. But he decided in favour of history only
in Frankfurt an der Oder, where he was a secondary school teacher from 1818 to
1825. Apart from the contemporary patriotic enthusiasm for German history, his
decision was influenced by Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s Roman history (which
inaugurated the modern scientific historical method), the historiographers of the
Middle Ages, and Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels, as well as by the
German Romantic poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who
regarded history as a chronicle of human progress. Yet Ranke’s strongest motive was
a religious one: influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, he sought to
comprehend God’s actions in history. Attempting to establish that God’s
omnipresence revealed itself in the “context of great historical events,” Ranke the
historian became both priest and teacher.

Ranke attended the famous Pforta private school and, after further study at
the Universities of Leipzig and Halle, he worked as a schoolmaster teaching
Greek and Roman classics at the Gymnasium in Frankfort-on-the-oder; this
post being one held within the Prussian system. It was only whilst employed
as a schoolmaster at Frankfurt that he began to consider attempting to
become seriously involved in historical studies initially with the view to
improving his knowledge of the classical ages in order to be a better teacher.

His first book, History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations, 1494-1514 (1824)
written at Frankfort, included an appended section entitled Zur Kritik neuerer
Geschictschreiber (critique of modern historical writing) that presented a
convincing criticism of contemporary historiography condemning its reliance
on tradition and proposed, instead, Ranke's own more objective method.
Ranke's aim was to reconstruct the unique periods of the past as they actually
were and to avoid injecting the history of former times with the spirit of the
present; this approach to historiography is known as historicism.
Ranke intended that his method would be applicable to modern history -
Barthold Niebuhr had already pioneered a scientific method of historical
investigation to be applied to ancient history. As a student Ranke had studied,
and been greatly impressed by Niebuhr's Roman History - he acknowledged a
debt to Niebuhr whose approach had been a source of backround inspiration.

Ranke distrusted historical textbooks and turned, at every convenient

opportunity, to the study of more original sources. This method Ranke later
developed to feature a primarily reliance on the "narratives of eye-witnesses
and the most genuine immediate documents." He considered that "the strict
presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive though they may be, is
undoubtedly the supreme law."

Ranke's Zur Kritik neuerer Geschictschreiber was favourably noticed by the

Prussian minister of education and, in 1825, he was rewarded with a
supernumerary professorship at the University of Berlin that initiated what
were to become more than fifty years of association between Ranke and that
University.
This appointment brought with it opportunities of access to the Prussian royal
library.

Further studies resulted in Ranke's second book on the Ottomans and the
Spanish monarchy and the quality of this work invited the continued favour of
the Prussian authority which agreed to facilitate Ranke's studies being further
undertaken in archives in Vienna. From these times (1827) Ranke was
enabled, by the support of Gentz, to gain the protection of the powerful
Austrian minister Metternich and this was to allow him very wide access to
archived materials and thereby to gain very valuable information from
Venetian and other sources located in Vienna.
Between 1828-31 Ranke pursued his lonely, sincere, and path-breaking
studies, in the Italian peninsula where Metternich's influence had the power to
open every door except those in the Vatican.
Most of these archived sources had not been seriously accessed by any
historical scholar in the past and Ranke's researches in Vienna and the Italian
peninsula provided the material for some of the most respected historical
writing of the age.

The Prussian authority sought to employ Ranke's talents, for a time, in the
editorship of the Historische-Politische-Zeitschrift, a periodical that was
intended to help to defend the Prussian Government against the rising tide of
liberal and democratic opinion. In this role, which lasted some four years,
Ranke produced some of the best political thought that had appeared in the
Germanies for a long time. Two famous essays The Great Powers, which
surveys great power rivalry, and A Political Conversation, which treats with the
nature of the state and its relationship with the citizen, date from this period.
A talent for historical and political scholarship proved, however, to be
somewhat ill matched to the intended task of impairing the effectiveness of the
expression of democratic aspirations.
Ranke was thus able to return to historical study and authorship.

His subsequent works cover the histories of the major European countries and
include the History of the Popes During the 16th and 17th Centuries (1834-
36), History of the Reformation in Germany (1839-47), Civil Wars and
Monarchy in France in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1852).

He was awarded the security, and much enhanced salary, of a full

professorship in Berlin in 1837 and was appointed as Prussian historiographer
by King Frederick William IV in 1841.

He died in May, 1886 at the age of 91; the last ten years of his life having
been given over to a Weltgeschichte (universal history) that Ranke had been
able to bring, over nine volumes, to the end of the 15th century at the time of
his death.

As a historian, Ranke attempted to put aside prevailing theories and

prejudices and by the scrupulous use of primary sources to present an
unvarnished picture of the facts. Nevertheless, because he viewed political
power as the principal agent in history he tended to emphasize political
history, dwelling upon the deeds of kings and leaders and ignoring economic
and social forces.
A famous educator, he introduced the seminar as a method of teaching
history and trained a generation of influential scholars. Since Ranke's time the
seminar method of teaching history has become very widely adopted.
At the time of his death Ranke was regarded as the foremost historian in the
world. Ranke's method of historicism has largely pioneered the modern
insistence on rigorously analyzing firsthand documentation. He has variously
been described as "The greatest German historian", "The father of the
objective writing of history", and "The founder of the science of history."
Ranke does occasionally adopt a literary approach in his writing of history that
tends to build up to a presentation of historical climaxes and also to build up
certain historical figures whose contributions are deemed to be particularly
significant. This adds to the readability and the drama of Ranke's works but it
may not be strictly true that such literary effectiveness is fully in line with
history "as it had really been."

Ranke aimed at an universal or world view of history, but his basic mood was
nationalistic and conservative, accepting of monarchy and sincerely religious,
the massive changes after the French Revolution are hardly discussed. Ranke
seems to have seen the role of liberalism as being perhaps confined to the
calling of the attention of statesmen to wrongs that needed correction.

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.

Leopold von Ranke quotes

"You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the
contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to
that high office. It will merely tell how it really was."

"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."
https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/Leopold_von_Ranke.html..Accesed 3-16-2020
 https://archive.org/stream/inmemoriam00linciala#page/568/mode/2up

Leopold von Ranke

GERMAN HISTORIAN

WRITTEN BY: 

 Rudolf Vierhaus
See Article History

Leopold von Ranke, (born Dec. 21, 1795, Wiehe, Thuringia, Saxony [Germany]—
died May 23, 1886, Berlin), leading German historian of the 19th century, whose
scholarly method and way of teaching (he was the first to establish a historical
seminar) had a great influence on Western historiography. He was ennobled (with the
addition of von to his name) in 1865.
Education.
Ranke was born into a devout family of Lutheran pastors and lawyers. After attending
the renowned Protestant boarding school of Schulpforta, he entered the University of
Leipzig. He studied theology and the classics, concentrating on philological work and
the translation and exposition of texts. This approach he later developed into a highly
influential technique of philological and historical textual criticism.
His predilection for history arose from his studies of the ancient writers, his
indifference to the rationalistic theology still in vogue in Leipzig, and his intense
interest in Luther as a historical character. But he decided in favour of history only
in Frankfurt an der Oder, where he was a secondary school teacher from 1818 to
1825. Apart from the contemporary patriotic enthusiasm for German history, his
decision was influenced by Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s Roman history (which
inaugurated the modern scientific historical method), the historiographers of the
Middle Ages, and Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels, as well as by the
German Romantic poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who
regarded history as a chronicle of human progress. Yet Ranke’s strongest motive was
a religious one: influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, he sought to
comprehend God’s actions in history. Attempting to establish that God’s
omnipresence revealed itself in the “context of great historical events,” Ranke the
historian became both priest and teacher.
Early Career.
The typical features of Ranke’s historiographical work were his concern for
universality and his research into particular limited periods. In 1824 he produced his
maiden work, the Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis
1514 (History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514), which treats the
struggle waged between the French and the Habsburgs for Italy as the phase that
ushered in the new era. The appended treatise, Zur Kritik
neuerer Geschichtsschreiber, in which he showed that the critical analysis of tradition
is the historian’s basic task, is the more important work. As a result of these
publications, he was appointed associate professor in 1825 at the University of Berlin,
where he taught as full professor from 1834 to 1871. Many of the students in his
famous seminars were to become prominent historians, continuing his method of
research and training in other universities. In his next book, Ranke, utilizing the
extremely important reports of the Venetian ambassadors, dealt with the rivalry
between the Ottoman Empire and Spain in the Mediterranean (Fürsten und Völker
von Süd-Europa im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert); from 1834 to 1836, he
published Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im sechzehnten und
siebzehnten Jahrhundert (changed to Die römischen Päpste in den letzen vier
Jahrhunderten in later editions)—a book that ranks even today as a masterpiece of
narrative history. Rising above religious partisanship, Ranke in this work depicts the
papacy not just as an ecclesiastical institution but above all as a worldly power.
Before this work appeared, Ranke the historian had been drawn briefly into
contemporary history and politics. A disillusioning experience, it produced, however,
a few short writings in which he expressed his scholarly and
political convictions more directly than in his major works. Disregarding his real
talents and misjudging the contemporaneous political dissensions, which in 1830 were
intensified by the liberal July revolution in France, he undertook to edit a periodical
defending Prussian policy and its rejection of liberal and democratic thinking. Only
two volumes of the Historisch-politische Zeitschrift were published from 1832 to
1836, most of the articles being written by Ranke himself. While he tried to explain
the conflicts of the times from a historical—and for him that meant nonpartisan—
viewpoint, in essence he sought to prove that the French revolutionary development
could not and should not be repeated in Germany. Ranke believed that history evolves
in the separate development of individual men, peoples, and states, which
together constitute the process of culture. The history of Europe from the late 15th
century onward—in which each people, though sharing one cultural tradition, was
free to develop its own concept of the state—seemed to him to confirm his thesis.
Ranke dismissed abstract, universally valid principles as requirements for the
establishment of social and national order; he felt that social and political principles
must vary according to the characteristics of different peoples. To him the individual
entities of greatest historical importance were states, the “spiritual entities, original
creations of the human mind—even ‘thoughts of God.’ ” Their essential task was to
evolve independently and, in the process, to create institutions and constitutions
adapted to their times.
In this respect Ranke’s thinking is related to the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel’s theory
that what is real is also rational; yet, in Ranke’s view, it is not reason that justifies
what is real but historical continuity. This continuity is the prerequisite for the
development of a culture and also for understanding historical reality. Hence, it is the
historian’s duty to understand the essence of “historicism”: that history determines
each event but does not justify it. In practice, however, Ranke endorsed the social and
political order of his time—the European system of states, the German Federation
with its numerous monarchies, and Prussia before the 1848 revolution, with its
powerful monarchy and bureaucracy, its highly developed educational system, and its
rejection of liberal and democratic trends—as resulting from the European cultural
process, a process that, according to him, would be demolished by democratic
revolution.
 Leopold von Ranke
QUICK FACTS

BORN

December 21, 1795

Wiehe, Germany

DIED

May 23, 1886 (aged 90)

Berlin, Germany

SUBJECTS OF STUDY

 historiography
CITE
 Contributor:Rudolf Vierhaus

 Article Title:Leopold von Ranke

 Website Name:Encyclopædia Britannica
 Publisher:Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
 Date Published:December 17, 2019
 URL:https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-von-Ranke

 Access Date:March 15, 2020

Leopold von Ranke Facts

Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) was a German historian and one of the most prolific and
universal modern historians of his time. He imparted his expertise and methodology through
the introduction of the seminar as an informal but intensive teaching device.
Leopold von Ranke was born on Dec. 21, 1795, in the rural Thuringian town of Wiehe, which then
belonged to electoral Saxony. Although Ranke was born into the era of the French Revolution, his
bourgeois, small-town, generally well-ordered, and peaceful background and upbringing did not
provide much contact with the violent events of the times. After receiving his early education at local
schools in Donndorf and Pforta, he attended the University of Leipzig (1814-1818), where he
continued his studies in ancient philology and theology.
In the fall of 1818 Ranke accepted a teaching position at the gymnasium (high school) in Frankfurt
an der Oder. His teaching assignments in world history and ancient literature, for which he disdained
the use of handbooks and readily available prepared texts, as well as the contemporary events of the
period, led him to turn to original sources and to a concern for the empirical understanding of history
in its totality.
Making use of materials from the Westermannsche Library in Frankfurt and from the Royal Library
in Berlin, Ranke produced his first work, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen
Völker (1824; Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples), which earned him a professorial
appointment at the University of Berlin in 1825, where he was to remain for the rest of his life except
for extended research trips abroad.
Although this first work was still lacking in style, organization, and mastery of its overflowing detail,
it had particular significance because it contained a technical appendix in which Ranke established
his program of critical scholarship—"to show what actually happened"—by analyzing the sources
used, by determining their originality and likely veracity, and by evaluating in the same light the
writings of previous historians "who appear to be the most celebrated" and who have been considered
"the foundation of all the later works on the beginning of modern history." His scathing criticism of
such historians led him to accept only contemporary documents, such as letters from ambassadors
and others immediately involved in the course of historical events, as admissible primary evidence.
With Ranke's move to Berlin, the manuscripts of Venetian ministerial reports of the Reformation
period became available to him and served as the basis for his second work, Fürsten und Völker von
Süd-Europa (1827; Princes and Peoples of Southern Europe), which was republished in his complete
works as Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (vols. 35 and
36; The Ottomans and the Spanish Monarchy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries).

Travels and Research

The limited collection in Berlin whetted Ranke's appetite to investigate other European libraries and
archives, especially those of Italy. Armed with a travel stipend from the Prussian government, he
proceeded at first to Vienna, where a large part of the Venetian archives had been housed after the
Austrian occupation of Venetia. A letter of introduction brought acquaintance with Friedrich von
Gentz, who, through intercession with Prince Metternich, not only opened the Viennese archives to
Ranke but also brought him into immediate contact with the day-to-day politics of the Hapsburg
court. During his stay in Vienna he wrote Die serbische Revolution (1829), republished in an
expanded version as Serbien und die Türkei im 19. Jahrhundert (1879; Serbia and Turkey in the 19th
Century).
In 1828 Ranke traveled to Italy, where he spent 3 successful years of study visiting various public
and private libraries and archives, although the Vatican Library remained closed to him. During this
period he wrote a treatise, Venice in the Sixteenth Century (published 1878), and collected material
for what is generally considered his masterpiece, Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im
16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1834-1836; The Roman Popes, Their Church and State in the 16th and
17th Centuries).
Returning from Italy in 1831, Ranke soon became involved in the publication of a journal designed
to combat French liberal influence, which had alarmed the Prussian government in the aftermath of
the revolutionary events of 1830. Although the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, with Ranke as editor
and chief contributor, contained some of the best political thought published in Germany during this
time, it lacked the polemical quality and anticipated success of a political fighting journal and was
discontinued in 1836. In the same year Ranke was appointed full professor and devoted the rest of his
life to the task of teaching and scholarly work. A Protestant counterpart to his History of the
Popes was published as Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839-1847; German
History during the Era of the Reformation), which was largely based on the reports of the Imperial
Diet in Frankfurt.

Last Works
With the following works Ranke rounded out his historical treatment of the major powers: Neun
Bücher preussischer Geschichte (1847-1848; Nine Books of Prussian History); Französische
Geschichte, vornehmlich im 16. and 17. Jahrhundert (1852-1861; French History, Primarily in the
16th and 17th Centuries); and Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1859-
1868; English History, Primarily in the 16th and 17th Centuries). Other works, dealing mainly with
German and Prussian history during the 18th century, followed in the 1870s.
During the last years of his life Ranke, now in his 80s and because of failing sight requiring the
services of readers and secretaries, embarked upon the composition of his Weltgeschichte (1883-
1888; World History), published in nine volumes. The last two were published posthumously from
manuscripts of his lectures. He died in Berlin on May 23, 1886.
The complete work of Ranke is difficult to assess. Not many of his works achieved the artistic high
point of The Roman Popesor its appeal for the general reader. Yet there is hardly a chapter in his
total enormous production which could be considered without value. His harmonious nature shunned
emotion and violent passion, and he can be faulted less for what he wrote than for what he left
unwritten. His approach to history emphasized the politics of the courts and of great men but
neglected the common people and events of everyday life; he limited his investigation to the political
history of the states in their universal setting. Ranke combined, as few others, the qualities of the
trailblazing scholar and the devoted, conscientious, and innovative teacher.

Further Reading on Leopold von Ranke

Considerable biographical information is in T. H. Von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative
Years (1950). A comprehensive and fair study which emphasizes an evaluation of Ranke's major
works and provides a useful bibliography is G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth
Century (1913; rev. ed. 1952); it also discusses Ranke's critics and pupils and provides a chapter on
the Prussian school of historical scholarship that paralleled Ranke's career. An assessment critical of
Ranke as historian appears in James W. Thompson, A History of Historical Writing, vol. 2 (1942).
Historian Pieter Geyl discusses Ranke in his Debates with Historians (1955; rev. ed. 1958). Carlo
Antoni, From History to Sociology: The Transition in German Historical Thinking (1940; trans.
1959), and Ferdinand Schevill, Six Historians (1956), contain chapters on Ranke. For general
background see Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of
Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (1968).

Additional Biography Sources

Krieger, Leonard, Ranke: the meaning of history, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1977.https://biography.yourdictionary.com/leopold-von-rankeeopold von Ranke. (n.d.). In YourDictionary.
Retrieved from https://biography.yourdictionary.com/leopold-von-rankeopold von Ranke. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved
from https://biography.yourdictionary.com/leopold-von-rankLeopold von Ranke. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved from
https://biography.yourdictionary.com/leopold-von-rankeLeopold von Ranke. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved from
https://biography.yourdictionary.com/leopold-von-rankeLeopold von Ranke. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved from
https://biography.yourdictionary.com/leopold-von-rankeLeopold von Ranke. (n.d.). In YourDictionary. Retrieved from
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