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[ CHAPTER IV ]

The Theoretical Foundations of German Historicism II: Leopold von Ranke

1.

Two misconceptions have marked the image of Ranke held by American historians, since history in the 1880’s became an academic discipline on purportedly Rankean principles. Ranke has been viewed as the prototype of the nontheoretical and, for many, the politically neutral historian. When his conservative prejudices have been recognized, he has nevertheless been given credit for the fact that these prejudices were not reflected in his historical narrative.¹

Graduate study in history developed in American universities at a time when philosophic naturalism and positivism dominated the intellectual scene. In their endeavor to give academic respectability to historical study, a few writers who had been influenced by Comte and Buckle, e.g., Andrew D. White, John Fiske, Henry and Brooks Adams, identified scientific history with the application to the historical process of general laws similar to those of the natural sciences. A far greater number of writers were conscious of the distinctions between historical narration which deals with unique situations and discourse in the natural sciences which aims at general and typical truths. Accordingly, they sought to explain the scientific character of historical writing and its method of establishing facts objectively, free from philosophical considerations. For this new school of historians Ranke was the “father of scientific history”² who, as H. B. Adams at Johns Hopkins University observed at the time, “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”).³

Ranke was thus identified in America with a concept of historical science that eliminated not only philosophical but also theoretical considerations. He was understood to have conceived historical science primarily as a technique that applied critical methods to the evaluation of sources. If carried out conscientiously, this approach by necessity would recognize only monographic studies as scientific. As Professor Emerton commented, after he proclaimed Ranke the founder of “the doctrine of the true historical method”: “If one must choose between a school of history whose main characteristic is the spirit, and one which rests upon the greatest attainable number of recorded facts, we cannot long hesitate.… Training has taken the place of brilliancy and the whole world is today reaping the benefit.”⁴ Similarly, George B. Adams told the American Historical Association, in a presidential address in 1908 in which he attempted to defend “our first leader” against the onslaught of the social scientists, that theoretical questions must be left to “poets, philosophers, and theologians.”⁵ The image of the nonphilosophical Ranke, concerned only with facts, rejecting all theory, was taken over by the “New Historians” who had repudiated the older “scientific” tradition and stressed the interaction of social factors in human history. Frederick Turner and J. H. Robinson attacked the Ranke whom the “scientific” school had created. The image of the naturalistic Ranke survived. Only a few years ago, as prominent a historian as Walter P. Webb observed that Ranke “was contemporary with Lyell and Wallace, Darwin and Renan, who were applying the analytical and critical method with startling results in their respective fields. He turned the lecture room into a laboratory, using documents instead of ‘bushels of clams.’ “⁶

To an extent, Ranke’s individualizing method did prepare the way for the type of unreflective, professional history-writing which marked not only American historiography at the end of the century, but had already manifested itself in many German historical and legal studies in the second part of the nineteenth century.⁷ Still, despite Ranke’s concern with the critical examination of sources, perhaps no German historian of the nineteenth century (with the possible exception of Droysen) paid as much attention to the theoretical foundations of his historical practice as did Ranke. Moreover, no one succeeded as completely in integrating his concept of the historical process and his theory of knowledge with his political views. The philosophic context of Ranke’s methodological consideration received little understanding in America, particularly at a time when his basic metaphysical and religious assumptions had become questionable, even in German thought. Indeed, little was left of Ranke’s heritage for broad groups of pedantic historians on both sides of the Atlantic, except a souless positivism which Ranke had always repudiated.

2.

One can question whether the new critical treatment of sources or the introduction of the seminar method into historical instructions was Ranke’s main contribution to German historiography. Ranke was not the first historian to apply the so-called “new” critical methods to the examination of historical sources. Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824) and August Böckh (1785-1867) had applied rigorous philological criticism to the examination of classical texts. Herbert Butterfield, in a recent chapter on the Göttingen School, has traced the eighteenth-century background of modern historiographical method.⁸ When Ranke applied critical methods to modern historical texts, he was consciously indebted to Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s critical approach to Roman history. Perhaps more significant for historical thought, if not also for historical practice, was Ranke’s development of the basic philosophical concepts of the Historical School during his editorship of the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift (Historical-Political Review) from 1832 to 1836.

Ranke published his first book, the Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples from 1494 to 1514, in 1824. In its famous technical appendix, “In Criticism of Modern Historians,” he applied the critical principles of G. B. Niebuhr to the discussion of modern sources. By that time, the line between a philosophical and an Historical School, which Savigny had defined so neatly, had already divided the University of Berlin into two hostile camps. The one centered around Hegel; the other included a broad group of jurists. Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, the founders of the Historical School, belonged to this second group as did Niebuhr, the philologists Bockh, Bopp, and Lachmann, and the theologian Schleiermacher. What divided the two schools was their different concept of truth and reality. Was the diversity in the phenomenal world merely a manifestation of an underlying rational principle, as Hegel maintained? If so, then truth could be attained only by reducing this diversity to rational concepts. Or was this diversity reality itself, and was any attempt to reduce it to a conceptual scheme a violation of the fullness and individuality inherent in life?

Both schools shared in the conviction that behind the phenomena of historical study there was a metaphysical reality, and that the aim of all study must be the apprehension of this reality. Niebuhr, Savigny, and Ranke agreed with Hegel that true philosophy and true history were basically one. They differed from Hegel in their conviction that this fundamental reality could be approached only through historical study, for it was much more complex, vitalistic, and elusive and possessed much greater room for spontaneity and uniqueness than Hegel’s panlogistic concept of the universe would permit. In brief, only history offered answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy. “History,” Savigny and Eichhorn observe in the Introduction to the first volume of the Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft (Journal for Historical Jurisprudence), “is by no means a mere collection of examples but is the only way to true knowledge (Erkenntnis) of our own condition (Zustand)” This, Savigny stresses, does not mean the superiority of the past over the present.⁹ Rather, the Historical School recognizes the value and autonomy of every age, and only stresses that the living connection, which links the present to the past, be recognized. In the area of law, this means that there is no abstract, philosophic law, no law of nature which can be codified; instead, every law is inseparably interwoven with the total historical development of a people. The jurist must eliminate those aspects of the law which have atrophied and no longer constitute a living part of the present.¹⁰ If Savigny thus recognizes the elements of change within tradition, at the same time he denies the possibility of progress. For history is neither static, nor is any epoch a steppingstone in a linear process of fulfillment. Rather, every age represents an end and a value in itself.

The issues between the two schools were well illustrated in the bitter controversy which developed between Leopold Ranke and Heinrich Leo, after the latter, a young disciple of Hegel, had reviewed Ranke’s first book and its Appendix.¹¹ It was not Ranke’s insistence upon methodological accuracy, however, which Leo challenged, but his view of history. Indeed, Leo based his criticism on grounds that Ranke would have accepted. He merely rejected the justice of these criticisms. Ranke’s style was poor, Leo complained; he had introduced sentimentality into his narration, and lacked critical judgment in the use of his sources.¹² The real controversy in the critical exchanges between the two men centered around their treatment of Machiavelli, and this involved two fundamental problems of a philosophic nature: (1) was it legitimate to apply ethical standards to the assessment of historical characters and (2) should historical personalities be studied for their own sake or in terms of their role in world history? Ranke, attempting to refrain from passing moral judgment upon Machiavelli, viewed the Florentine in terms of his time. He did recognize that there was something “shocking” (Entsetzliches) in Machiavelli’s teachings. However, Ranke held that The Prince had not been intended as a “general textbook” for practical politics. Rather, Machiavelli’s teachings were directed at a specific historic situation.¹³ Ranke shuddered at the idea of using them as general precepts of political action, as readers had done for centuries. But as the means used for a specific situation, he urged that they be understood. As pointed out in Ranke’s Preface to the Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples, the task of history is not “to judge the past” but the more humble one, “merely to show what really happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen).”¹⁴ We must “be just,” Ranke argues. “He (Machiavelli) sought Italy’s salvation. But conditions seemed so desperate to him that he was bold enough to prescribe poison … Cruel means” alone could save “an Italy corrupted to the core.”¹⁵

For Leo, on the other hand, the Florentine historian must be judged both by moral standards and as a world-historical person. In the Introduction to his translation of Machiavelli’s letters, Leo describes him as an amoral person who looked at good and evil as an outside observer and pursued the most perverted sensual pleasures without real personal engagement, “a mind torn loose from all that is eternal.”¹⁶ Machiavelli, Leo continues, knew that as one flatters French, Burgundian, or German princes with the hope of expelling the Turks from Europe, so Italian princes were flattered with the vision of cleansing the fatherland.¹⁷ Machiavelli’s patriotism was a mere device to obtain personal ends. But all of this is unimportant, Leo concludes, compared to the man’s “world historical significance” as the midwife of the new age of the modern state to whose basic principle he gave expression, without himself being conscious of his great task.¹⁸

Hence Ranke’s supposed criteria for judging the value of historical works solely in terms of the degree to which they represented “naked truth” appeared faulty to Leo. For truth, he holds, is found not in the representation of every detail, but in a context that takes growth into account. The true landscape painting is not one in which the painter has counted every blade of grass which changed before he had time to finish the painting, but one that places the living scene in front of the observer “without in the least sticking pedantically to details.” And history is like that. “Truth in history is the process of life and of the spirit. Historiographical truth consists exclusively in describing this process which is manifested in the events. This description need not betray the index finger of the philosopher although the true historian and the philosopher meet at every step.”¹⁹

However, to identify his concept of naked truth with “the silly notion of copying and making anatomical slides”²⁰ seems to Ranke a caricature of his procedure. Ranke believes that he, no less than Leo, sought general truth, but he argues that it can be apprehended only through the particular. By absorbing himself in the particular, he attempts to represent “the general straight away and without much circumlocution.” Only in its outward appearance is the individual phenomenon particular; within it, as Leibniz had already recognized, the individual event contains something deeper, “a general truth, significance, spirit.” This general truth cannot be grasped through extensive reasoning, but only in a more direct way, in a manner closer to that of the poet or the artist. “In and by means of the event, I have tried to portray the event’s course and spirit and to define its characteristic traits.… I know how little I have succeeded. But he should not scold me,” Ranke continues in reply to Leo, “whose thinking is restricted to perpetuating the generalizing formulas of the (Hegelian) school. I shall not scold him either. We are traveling on entirely different roads.”²¹

But if reality consists of a multiplicity of individual natures which can not be reduced to a common denominator, history seems to lose its meaning. While Ranke finds a common denominator in God, he rejects Hegel’s pantheism which identifies God with the total process of history. His is a Christian panentheism which sees God distinct from the world, but omnipotent in it. Hence Ranke defends his observation that “each time at the decisive moment something enters which we call chance (Zufall) or fate (Geschick) but which is God’s finger”²² from Leo’s charge of sentimentality and superstition. The presence of God alone prevents the alternative between the total determinism of fate and the “materialist notion that all is contingent.” God alone offers the bond of unity for Ranke—and for that matter for the Historical School in general—in a world where values and truths are related to historic individualities, rather than to universal human norms. Inherent in this type of historicism which Ranke espouses is always the threat that, if Christian faith is shaken, history will lose its meaning and present man with the anarchy of values.

Despite Ranke’s defense, Leo is not entirely incorrect in charging that the Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples resemble a heap of unassorted details. The historicist positions avowed by Ranke in his replies to Leo have found relatively little application in this work. Ranke has done little, in fact, to seek the general within the particular. One great idea gives the work a degree of inner unity, the concept of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples as a historic unity distinct from nations that compose them and distinct from Europe or Christendom as a whole. The book attempts to treat the emergence of the modern international system of the great powers in the two crucial decades between 1494 and 1514. As a recent American critic observes: “The use of the plural in the title was indicative of the uncorrelated multitude of events and developments, mostly matters of war and foreign policy, in which the book abounded. It resembled a wild garden before the gardener brought order, clarity, and form into its profuse growth.”²³ Nor did the Ottoman and Spanish Empires in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1827) or The Serbian Revolution (1829) exhibit any philosophic undertones or intent. Only when Ranke turned to the political issues of the day in the 1830’s did he further develop the philosophic view of history which he had vaguely indicated in his reply to Leo.

3.

Ranke systematically approached the theoretical problems underlying his historical practice only during the four years of his editorship of the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, between 1832 and 1836. Otherwise, he offered little of a theoretical nature, except for random remarks strewn through his histories and correspondence. One notable exception was the brief introduction to the lectures “About the Epochs of Modern History,” which he read to King Maximilian of Bavaria in 1854.²⁴ But in the essays of the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, as well as his lecture notes²⁵ and his inaugural address, “On the Affinities and Differences Between History and Politics,”²⁶ from that period, Ranke developed the most systematic and coherent exposition of historicist principles in nineteenth-century historiography. For the most part it was in direct defense of Prussian institutions of the Restoration period and of his own predilections.

The Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift was founded under the initiative of Count von Bernstorff, the then foreign minister. In founding it, von Bernstorff had had two purposes in mind. He wished to provide an organ for the defense of the policies of an enlightened Prussian bureaucracy against its numerous liberal critics on the left. But he also wished to distinguish the positions of the Prussian governments from that of the reactionary right. In the fall of 1831 this latter group, which included distinguished men such as Radowitz, von Raumer, and the Gerlachs, had founded the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt (Berlin Political Weekly) to propagate the feudal doctrines of the late Karl Ludwig von Haller.²⁷ The men associated with this weekly publication considered enlightened despotism a forerunner of liberalism. They distrusted the Prussian bureaucracy. Their ideal of government was a pre-absolutistic Mecklenburg type of constitution in which political power was preserved or restored to the aristocratic and noble classes within society. Von Bernstorff and the men he consulted in this enterprise, particularly Savigny and Johann Albrecht Eichhorn,²⁸ von Bernstorff s principal adviser, as well as the Hamburg publisher Perthes, represented a more enlightened position. They recognized the rising role of the middle classes and the need for Prussia to assume active leadership in satisfying the national and economic demands of this class. At the same time, von Bernstorff and his friends wished to do this within the framework of the existing political structure of Prussia and Germany through the agency of a benevolent and relatively progressive Prussian bureaucracy and with a minimum of concessions to political liberalism. These men, accustomed to royal absolutism and used to obedience rather than to deliberation, probably underestimated the force of liberal and national feeling, as well as the entrenched opposition of the vested interests of the old regime.

Ranke’s own political inclinations fitted well into this program. He had been relatively unaffected by the nationalist enthusiasm of the Wars of Liberation. His deep Lutheran piety was not narrow in a confessional sense. Nevertheless, it strengthened his respect for the established wordly authorities, the Obrigkeit, as part of God’s design. He was not yet as doctrinaire in his conservative views as he would become in later years. Although he had been a close friend of Savigny, Niebuhr, and Schleiermacher since his arrival at the University of Berlin in 1825, he had been much closer to the liberal circle around Varnhagen von Ense during the first three years of his stay in Berlin than he liked to admit later.²⁹ Having been granted the complete freedom of expression in the review which he had requested, including the privilege not to have to submit the journal to censorship, Ranke conceived his task as one of keeping equal distance between the extremes of the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt and of liberalism. Later, he commented on this episode: “I had been so bold as to undertake to defend a third orientation midway between the points of view that confronted each other in every public and private discussion. This new orientation, which adhered to a status quo which rests on the past, aimed at opening up a future in which one would be able to do justice to new ideas, too, as long as they contained truth.”³⁰ Whether Ranke made his distance from the reactionaries clear is doubtful. In the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, his criticisms almost entirely were directed at the liberals. Ranke seems to have disappointed Perthes, who withdrew his sponsorship from the journal after the appearance of the first volume in 1832.³¹ Instead, Ranke found himself encouraged by the very conservative Ancillon who succeeded von Bernstorff as foreign minister during that year.³²

Thus almost all that appeared in the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift related to the critique of liberalism and of its theoretical foundations. But Ranke did not content himself with stressing the need of an historical approach for an understanding of the empirical functioning of political forces. Rather, in his contributions to the review, as well as in lectures on the methods and scope of historical study written at this time, he stresses the role of history as a guide to philosophical truth. Through history he seeks to uncover the metaphysical realities underlying the state which could provide the basis of a conservative theory of politics.

Three notions recur throughout his essays and lectures of the period and give them a high degree of unity. The first is the argument against the application of abstract principles to politics, and the identification of “theory” with liberalism and the ideas of the French Revolution. The second is the idea that, although all existence can be understood only in terms of its history, behind the ephemeral appearance of every particular phenomenon there is concealed a general truth. A final idea is that the states existing in history are the concrete expressions of underlying ideas.

1. Ranke’s warning in the Introduction to the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift that political and social institutions must not be approached from the standpoint of abstract theory, but be viewed in terms of their concrete existence, is understandable on methodological grounds as an almost indisputable maxim of historical study. So is his demand that political and social values must be understood within the context of the institutions within which they operate. “It is so seldom,” he observes, “that an undertaking or an institution is examined in terms of the conditions proper to it, usually one is satisfied with applying the measuring stick of theory.”³³ The historian as historian must suspend judgment. “A pure judgment is possible only if one judges any person in terms of that person’s own standpoint and of his inherent aims.”³⁴ But it is harder to follow Ranke when he, like Herder, Humboldt, and Savigny before him, holds that the principles and ideals that have guided societies or individuals possess objective value. Ranke does not regard them as value-free historical data which have no ethical significance for the scholar. For him all products of history and everything that operates within the context of a historical society are concrete, objective values. Such a position involves an extreme optimism regarding history and nature which Ranke shared with other adherents of the Historical School and with many thinkers in the Romantic tradition. It assumes that there is no real evil in nature. But in stressing that all historical phenomena possesses objective value it contains the seeds of a radical ethical relativism.

Once we assume, as Ranke did, that all institutions or ideas that have roots in history are valuable, a basis for judging political decisions is established. Not that the historian can measure political decisions by abstract, universal ethical standards, but he can unearth the extent to which such acts followed the historical lines of development of a state. “True politics,” Ranke observes, “constantly keeps in mind what constitutes practical interests, what is necessary, and what can be carried out.” Such politics does “not surrender its part at any moment for the sake of possibly deceptive prospects. Rather such politics aims at tranquil progress (Fortgang) and gradual but certain development.”³⁵ This type of true politics proceeds on the basis of positively existing and dominant trends. It eschews innovation and planned reform. For nothing is more urgent for our time “than to remind ourselves of the difference between regular (gesetzmässig) progress and impatient, disruptive innovation, between intelligent preservation (of existing institutions) and the onesided defense of antiquated forms which have become lifeless.”

Even if Ranke knew that statesmen could not be guided by ethical doctrine in following the practical and necessary interests of the state, he was nevertheless sublimely confident that the statesman’s pursuit of such historic necessities would not conflict with the “immutable, eternal principles.” For “men of insight knew at all periods of history what was good and great, what was permitted and right, what constituted progress and what decay. In its broad outlines it is inscribed within the human breast. Simple reflection suffices for us to understand it.”³⁶

It is an obvious conclusion from this concept of historical growth that liberal institutions, developed abroad, were not applicable in Germany. For, as Ranke observes: “… every people has its own politics.”³⁷ The task of Germans is to create a genuinely German state which corresponds to the spirit of the nation.³⁸ France had shown the ill effects of drafting foreign, British, and especially North American political ideas onto her traditional institutions.³⁹ The danger of the French Revolution had lain less in the strength of French arms than in the spread of “doctrines of seemingly universal validity.”⁴⁰ Behind the diversity of states and national character, Ranke sees a divine purpose: through the diverse nations, God gave expression to the “idea of mankind.” The idea of the state finds its expression in the various states. If there were only one possible and right form of the state, then the only meaningful form of government would be a universal monarchy. However, this is not the case. The task of every great people, “the condition of its existence (was) to provide the human spirit with a new form of expression, to articulate this expression in its own new forms and to reveal it anew. This is the task God has given it.” Everything great in Germany since the French Enlightenment, had been achieved not in imitation, but in opposition to French forms and ideas.⁴¹

This position is not very different from Humboldt’s. Even certain political demands made by Ranke for his immediate time were similar. With Humboldt he saw the danger of creating a unitary German state wherein provinces and states would lose their individual character.⁴² Closer bonds needed to be drawn, particularly in regard to defense and commercial relations and notably the control of the press, without creating a uniformity of institutions. For Germany existed in diversity. “Who will ever be able to define in concepts or put into words what is German?”⁴³ “It is as if they wished to depict the genus but destroy the species. The genus appears only in the species. It possesses no other way of manifesting itself.” To destroy the differences would be to kill the living reality.⁴⁴ Ranke differs from Humboldt in his far less critical identification of the then existing German governments with the historical trends. Hence his portrayal of Germany as forming “one family” with its legitimate princes.⁴⁵ Unlike either Haller on the right or liberals such as Stein or Humboldt, Ranke does not question the centralizing reforms of the eighteenth-century enlightened despots in Germany. He accepts unconditionally the bureaucratic structure of Prussia, and observes that the military power upon which” Prussia’s prestige rests “requires that its needs be met without any reductions or interruptions; it requires unity and strict subordination.”⁴⁶ He opposes a constitution for Prussia, and argues against a Prussian Parliament representing the estates (Ständeversammlung)⁴⁷ for which Stein and Humboldt had called.

Completely missing from his essays is the demand for greater local self-administration, characteristic of liberal and even conservative political programs of the time. Ranke nowhere acknowledges the rights of individuals against the state which Humboldt and Haller had defended from opposing political positions. Absent in his concept of Prussia is both the conservative view of “liberties” (Libertäten) and the liberal idea of the integrity of the individual. Although Ranke recognizes that the Carlsbad Decrees, adopted by the German states in 1819 to suppress “demagogic” agitation, following the murder of Kotzebue, were emergency measures too stringent to be maintained as permanent legislation, he nevertheless justifies press censorship. Certainly, he admits scholars must have full freedom to investigate truth, but the communication of scientific truth must be distinguished from that of political opinions. The political press, when left uncontrolled, has circulated not only “doctrines and ideas,” but has stirred up passions and represented diverse interests “so that immediately strong opposition is organized against the supreme authority, creating a conflict of parties. It is questionable, he continues, whether this situation which points at a pluralistic society is in accord with the “general welfare.” The defenders of freedom of the press “would have to prove that such a condition is at all desirable for the lives of nations; that it is also useful and beneficial to young states still in the process of formation.”⁴⁸

These diverging concepts regarding the structure of the Prussian state, held by men like Haller, Ranke, or Wilhelm von Humboldt, point at a basic dilemma inherent in the historicist orientation. It had been a fundamental assumption of the Historical School that political and other values could be clearly and indisputably recognized within the historical context in which they operated. The ethics to be followed by the Prussian state was determined by Prussia’s nature and history as a state. This implied, of course, that every state or nation was an organic body with one tradition. If this tradition could be identified, then one could separate the extraneous elements from the state. But what happened if within the same social group there were several, diverging traditions? The naive assumption that the dominant political forces were the sole ones with roots in history, and hence the only ones that could claim to be legitimate, proved to be much more problematic than Ranke realized. No significant thinker held this position unconditionally. Ranke drew the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate rulers common to conservative thought. In recognizing the reality of change, he admitted that there were elements in existing states which were antiquated and lifeless.⁴⁹ Moreover, one government might combine two conflicting forces. In Ranke’s opinion, this had been the case in the Charte of the French Restoration which had wedded the two irreconcilable principles of monarchy and constitutional government.⁵⁰

What Ranke did not recognize was that the historian could trace the historical background of the values and institutions of a society and that he could describe the conflicting forces in a society at a given moment; however, when he identified certain forces as those which alone represented the historical direction of the nation, he was making an arbitrary choice. Even if he could exclude revolutionary attempts to remodel society as inorganic and unhistorical, he would still be confronting a pluralism of traditions and of interests. The pious distinction made by the writers in the tradition of the Historical School since Burke, between deliberate attempts at directing social change and natural, organic growth, is a doubtful one. In the face of the conflicting interests, traditions, and values which exist in any society, the statesman is forced to guide the state consciously in a definite direction. He can not merely follow the direction of history, as Ranke had hopefully assumed, but must decide whether to champion the maintenance of Prussian state power, the restoration or preservation of feudal privileges, or the extension of representative institutions.

2. As we have already observed, Ranke’s empiricism has often been misunderstood, and not only in the United States. Empiricism refers to a methodological position, as well as to a philosophical concept of reality. The empiricist insists that knowledge can be gained only through sense data and through inductions resulting from these data. Empiricism generally implies a philosophically nominalist position. For the most part, empiricists hold that phenomena alone are real or that knowledge cannot go beyond phenomena. In the philosophic sense, Ranke was no empiricist. His position was much closer to philosophic realism.⁵¹ Just as he saw a deeper reality behind historical phenomena, so he saw in phenomena merely the concrete expressions of metaphysical forces. In the methodological sense, Ranke was an empiricist only to a limited degree. Despite his insistence upon the objective, critical observation of the particular event as the beginning of all historical study, Ranke never found in such data the only means of obtaining knowledge. Rather, the intuitive understanding of these data was to open up the possibility of attaining glimpses of the reality underlying the ephemeral appearance of the world of senses. Ranke’s desires for objectivity must be therefore understood not merely as a call for the exclusion of one’s own subjective desires and prejudices from historical cognition. Ranke agreed with the empiricists that the object of the historian’s research must be to establish what had actually been (wie es eigentlich gewesen), but for him this historical reality was not exhausted by historical events. Rather, Ranke assumed that there was an objective order behind these events. “The historian is merely the organ of the general spirit which speaks through him and takes on real form (sich selber Vergegenwärtigt).’⁵² His impartiality (Unpartheilichkeit) consisted less in not approaching the great “struggles of might and ideas” without an opinion of his own, but “only in this, that he recognizes the positions occupied by the active forces (in history) and does justice to the relationships peculiar to each. He sees these (forces) appear in their particular selves, confront each other and struggle. In such conflicts the events and fates that dominate the world are carried out.”⁵³ In fact, Ranke is not very far removed from Hegel.⁵⁴ What distinguishes the two men sharply is Ranke’s insistence that knowledge of the objective order can be gained only through thorough study of the individual event, which must never be approached with abstract concepts, and his conviction that the plan of the universe is beyond man’s grasp, that man can only intuitively suspect (ahnden) its outlines. “For although every spirit (geistiges Wesen) stands in relationship to God, the human spirit is not identical with God.” As Ranke quotes St. Augustine: “The Human spirit gives witness of the Light but is not the Light. The true Light is the Word, which is God and has created all.”⁵⁵

In the lectures which he delivered in 1831 on the “idea of Universal History,” Ranke developed his thoughts regarding the methods and intent of historiography. History as a science shares with philosophy the task to grasp “the core of Existence”; it resembles art in its manner of “reproducing life that has vanished.” It differs from art in referring to a “real” rather than an “ideal,” to a subject matter which requires an empirical approach. Historical thinking requires elements of both philosophical and artistic thought directed toward a “real” subject matter.⁵⁶

The most significant difference between philosophy and history is in approach. The philosopher approaches reality from the perspective of general concepts. He attempts to subsume all of life under a “unifying concept” (Eiriheitsbegriff), to schematize life and history. The historian proceeds from the “condition of existence” (Bedingung der Existenz).⁵⁷ For the philosopher the individual matters only as a part of the whole; for the historian the individual is of interest. Both sciences have disputed the sole truth of their approach. The historians have questioned the possibility of nonhistorical truth. They have considered philosophical cognition to be timebound.

(History) does not want to recognize philosophy as something Absolute (Unbedingt) but only as an appearance in time. History assumes that the history of philosophy is the most exact form of philosophy; that absolute truth cognizable by mankind is found in the theories which appear in various ages, no matter how contradictory these theories may be. History goes one step further and assumes that philosophy, especially when it attempts to define doctrines is merely the expression in linguistic form of national cognition (nazionalen Erkenntnis). The historian denies that philosophy has any absolute validity.⁵⁸

Ranke is quite aware of the radically relativistic possibilities inherent here in the historical approach. But he does not draw radically relativistic conclusions. As he writes: “When the philosopher regards history from the perspective of his field, he looks for the infinite only in progress, development and totality. The historian, on the other hand, finds an infinity in every existence, an eternal element coming from God in every being, and this eternal element is its principle of life. For this reason,” Ranke notes, “the historian inclines to turn to the individual. He makes the particular interest count. He recognizes the beneficient and enduring. He opposes disintegrating change. He acknowledges a portion of truth even in error.”

But can we be convinced that existence really has a divine basis? “It is not necessary to prove elaborately the presence of an eternal element within the individual,” Ranke replies. For our endeavors rest on this religious foundation. We believe that nothing can exist without God or live without Him. Although we have emancipated ourselves from certain narrow theological notions, we nevertheless acknowledge that all our efforts derive from a higher, a religious source.”⁵⁹ But Ranke never asks himself what remains, once the religious foundations in which he believes so fervently have been destroyed by doubt?

From this belief in the metaphysical foundations of historical reality, Ranke draws several methodological demands. The first is the “pure love of truth.” Because we acknowledge “a higher reality” in the event, the situation, or the person that we wish to understand, we must have respect for what actually happened. But this does not mean “that we should stop with the appearances.” For “then we would grasp only something external although our own principle directs us to what is within.”⁶⁰ From this arises the need for a thorough, penetrating study based upon sources, without which we are incapable of historical cognition. For historical understanding is not a mechanical act of which everyone is equally capable. Here the differences between Ranke’s epistemology and that of empiricism becomes very clear. For the “essence” (Wesen) and “content” (Inhalt) of the appearances which the historian studies are spiritual unities (geistige Einheiten) which can be grasped only by spiritual apperception (geistige Apperception).⁶¹ But apperception is not an empirical act of description or explanation. Rather, it involves a degree of genius present to an extent in everyone, but in very unequal degree.⁶² There follow the remaining demands for a universal interest on the part of the historian, a concern with establishing causal relationships, impartiality, and the search of the total context. Ranke regards it as “certain” that behind the outward appearance of the historical events, persons, and institutions studied, there is always a totality (Totalität, Totales), an integrated, spiritual reality.

The whole (Totale) is as certain as is its every outward expression at every moment. We must dedicate our full attention to it.… (If we are studying) a people, we are not interested in all the individual details through which it expresses itself as a living thing. Rather its idea speaks to us through its development as a whole, its deeds, its institutions, its literature.⁶³

The task of understanding must always begin with thorough immersion in the subject matter, “exact research, step by step apprehension, and study of the documents.” Having been immersed in the subject matter, we may then approach the spiritual essence through an act of intuition (Divination). Certainly, man knows too little to be able to unfathom the meaning of world history.

“I consider it impossible to solve the problem completely,” Ranke observes. “Only God knows world history. We only perceive its contradictions. As an Indian poet put it, its ‘harmony is known only to the gods but unknown to man’. We can only approach it intuitively and from a distance. Nevertheless we can perceive unity, continuity (Fortgang) and development.”⁶⁴ “Thus,” Ranke concludes, “our paths as historians lead us to the problems of philosophy. If philosophy were what it should be and history were perfectly clear and complete, the two disciplines would be in complete agreement.”⁶⁵

3. On the basis of this concept of history, Ranke is able to construct a metaphysics of politics. This view of history is striking in its radical optimism. Although Ranke rejects the Hegelian notion that historical development can be explained in rational terms, he is no less confident that history is a meaningful process. In one sense, his optimism goes considerably further than that of Hegel. For Hegel sees in all history, past and present, the signs of man’s irrationality and imperfection which has not yet been overcome. For Ranke, however, “every epoch is immediate to God.”⁶⁶ This optimism expresses itself in several ways. History for Ranke is meaningful. Despite his recognition that man at any time could only see small perspectives of the total reality, Ranke was never bothered by the doubts of objective knowledge which troubled later historians. Admittedly, on the basis of religious faith, he assumes that there were meaningful units (geistige Einheiten) in history, something which did not follow from empirical inquiry. He further assumes that these meaningful units, individuals, institutions, states, and nations, are not merely ethically neutral, but as expressions of the will of God represent positive values. From this he draws the conclusion that states are such meaningful units, ends in themselves, and that in following their vital interests, they can only do good.

The belief held by Ranke that there is an ethical order in the universe which applies to the political realm, too, coincides with the faith of most of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But what is almost entirely missing in Ranke, despite his pronounced Christianity, and for that matter is absent in most Romantic thought, is the recognition of an element of evil in man and in human institutions.⁶⁷ The biblical prophets, as well as Stoic, Christian, and Enlightenment natural law thinkers, have always seen a dualism between the ethical law and the positive reality. This conflict requires the active intervention of ethical man in order to bring human institutions in harmony with the demands of justice, even if the limitations of human nature permits only an approximation of this ideal. For Ranke there is operative within the political world an automatic harmony which restores the rightful order if it has been disturbed. Thus, in the famous essay, “The Great Powers,” he describes a balance of power among the great states as a central instrument in the European order, incapable of destruction by the urges of hegemony of any great power. “It is true that the commotions in the world now and again destroy this system of law and order,” as French ambitions had done. “But after they have subsided, this system is reconstituted, and all efforts aim at making it perfect once more.”⁶⁸ The struggle of the powers is not merely a meaningless clash of power.

World history does not present such a chaotic tumult, warring, and planless succession of states and peoples as appears at first sight. Nor does history deal only with the often dubious advancement of civilization. There are forces and indeed spiritual, life-giving, creative forces, nay life itself and there are moral energies, whose development we see. They cannot be defined or put in abstract terms, but one can behold them and observe them. One can develop a sympathy for their existence. They unfold, capture the world, appear in manifold expressions, dispute with and check and overpower one another. In their interaction and succession, in their life, in their decline or rejuvenation, which then encompasses an ever greater fullness, higher importance and wider extent, lies the secret of world history.⁶⁹

This leads Ranke to the concept of the spiritual character of power, a theme recurring throughout his writings, but most systematically developed in the “Political Dialogue” in the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift. The state must not be conceived as the state in the abstract, but as the concretely existing, specific state in its historical development. The state is not merely an empirical concentration of power; it possesses a “positive spiritual content,” an idea which cannot be expressed in general, abstract terms because it relates specifically to the particular state. This “idea that inspires and dominates the whole”⁷⁰ shapes the state into an organic unit, completely different from all other states. “There is an element which makes a state not a subdivision of general categories, but a living thing, an individual, a unique self.”⁷¹ This uniqueness, of course, prevents the successful transplantation of alien institutions or ideas. The state is real in its concrete particular existence; at the same time, it contains in its fundamental idea an element which is general, which transcends the transitory reality of the concrete state, but which can express itself only in the concrete state. The state, in Ranke’s terms, is thus “real-and-spiritual” (real-geistig) in its “unimagined uniqueness.”⁷² Thus every independent state has special tendencies of its own, determined by the idea derived from God. In the states themselves, Ranke writes, “instead of the passing conglomerations which the contractual theory of the state creates like cloud formations, I perceive spiritual substances, original creations of the human mind—I might say, thoughts of God.”⁷³

Two important implications follow from the above: the spiritualization of power and struggle, and the subordination of the interests of the individual to the state. The activities of the state are determined by its idea, according to Ranke. This idea finds itself in conflict and ultimately involves the clash of military power. The state originated through struggle; its existence and development are inextricably connected with struggle. “The world, as we know, has been parceled out. To be somebody, you have to rise by your own efforts. You must achieve genuine independence. Your rights will not be voluntarily ceded to you. You must fight for them.” But is it not brute force alone that matters then, Karl asks Friedrich in the Political Dialogue. No, Friedrich replies. The foundations of the European community are there and remain, although this community requires “moral energy” to attain “universal significance.” As confident as Hegel in the victory of good through the struggle of arms in the course of history, Ranke has Friedrich observe: “But seriously, you will be able to name few significant wars for which it could not be proved that genuine moral energy achieved the final victory.”⁷⁴ In one important sense, Ranke’s state is limited in its ambition: his recognition of a European community and of the role of all the great powers to maintain this community and contribute to the fullness and variety of the European family.

Thus, for Ranke, a state can only develop fully to the extent that it is independent of other states. Considerations of foreign policy and military strength are primary to the state. Its “supreme law” must be to subordinate its internal life to these needs.⁷⁵ Opinions in regard to the internal structure of the state must fall behind considerations of foreign policy. Differences of domestic politics must be transcended in public discussion, as they were before the French Revolution, and “politics again relegated to the field of power and foreign affairs where it belongs.”⁷⁶

The individual is thus clearly subordinated to the needs of the state. States as ideas of God are ends in themselves. “It would be ridiculous to explain them as so many institutions for the safeguarding of interests of individuals who may have banded together for the protection of their private property.”⁷⁷ Individuals have their existence only in the state. In the good (rechten) state “purely private life” does not exist for the individual citizen. “Our activities belong primarily to our community.”⁷⁸

Liberty in the sense in which liberals or democrats have traditionally understood the term therefore needs redefinition for Ranke. For Friedrich, in the Political Dialogue, man is wholly a “political creature” whose personality is formed and develops in relation to the community. The state is a “spiritual unity” whose fundamental idea “permeates every individual, so that he feels in himself some of its spiritual force, that he considers himself a member of the whole with love for it, and that the feeling of belonging to the community is stronger than the feeling of provincial, local, or individual isolation.”⁷⁹ In this sense, the state resembles a family, and “what belongs together by nature does not need a social contract. Among parents and children, among brothers and members of the same family, no compact is needed.”⁸⁰ Hence there is also no need for written guarantees of individual rights. In every healthy state liberty is identical with obedience. “Compulsion will be transformed on a higher level into voluntary individual initiative. Duty will become liberty.” Once this is attained, the state can achieve what must always be the supreme aim of its domestic policy: social cohesion on the basis of the voluntary cooperation of its citizens.⁸¹

In its organization the good state was understood by Ranke as a monarchy in which “the right man is placed in the right place.”⁸² To demand participation of the governed in the affairs of government, or to consider the governing class as a group alien to those they rule, is to misunderstand the role of the division of labor in a society. The rulers represent a “selection of the most skillful in the whole nation, who have cultivated their ability for this task.”⁸³

Underlying Ranke’s monarchical conviction is the optimistic idea that, left to herself, “nature, which is always complete, guarantees that these (capable men) are always there. All that matters is to find them.”⁸⁴ Considering “the human inclination to abuse power,” Karl asks whether the power of the government should not be limited. To Friedrich, who admits that this form of government can degenerate in a thousand ways, this seems unnecessary. The state will not only abstain from regulating those spheres of life in which “nothing is more desired than spontaneity of expression,” but it seems obvious to Friedrich that this type of government is “founded in the nature of things, required by the idea of our monarchies.”⁸⁵

One cannot help sensing a very deep contradiction in Ranke’s argumentation in the Political Dialogue. On the one hand, Ranke’s purpose is to describe not the “best state,” but “merely to understand the one before our eyes.”⁸⁶ On the other hand, he is constantly seeking the good state, the natural state. If all the existing states are of divine origin, should not, as Carl asks, “all states be equally perfect?” In other words, should not the North American Republic, the French July Monarchy, as the product of historical forces, be of equal value with the Prussian Monarchy. If Ranke were consistent in his demand that the historian or political thinker should find the state in history rather than apply abstract criteria to it, he should have had Friedrich reply to Carl in the affirmative. Instead, he now distinguishes between the “idea” of the state “to which we ascribe divine origin” and “its realization, its concrete form in the world.”⁸⁷ Thus there are healthy and sick states. By the former type, which he compares to a body “in possession of all its powers and all its limbs,” he obviously does not mean the libertarian state that limits the sphere of political power.

Indeed, Ranke’s study of the state seems to have little to do with the concretely existing historical states. He tends not to study states in terms of their functions, the operation of power within them, or the conflict of interests. As Professor Theodore H. Von Laue observes, for Ranke practical politics involves the training of civil servants and the experts of government.⁸⁸ Political theory deals with “the state,” but the state is an abstract, standing separate and above the actual activities of real governments. Conceived as a metaphysical reality, it could be used to demand the supremacy of the monarchy over the individual. Narrowly conceived in political and military terms, divorced from the total pattern of social, economic, and intellectual forces, Ranke’s concept of the state seems to apply to the absolute’ monarchies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries much more closely than to states in general.

Certainly, Ranke is justified in rejecting the metaphysics of individual rights. But in its place, he substitutes a metaphysics of state rights. Despite his emphasis upon the individual character of states as the products of history, in practice all of his states are surprisingly alike. As Ernst Schulin points out, in a recent study on the place of the Orient in Hegel’s and Ranke’s concept of world history, Ranke seems far less capable of describing the individual characteristics of a people than Hegel.⁸⁹ In practice, all Ranke’s states are guided by the abstract demands of a raison d’etat relatively uneffected by internal developments. In this close identification of the state with foreign policy, Ranke’s concept of the state appears more abstract and rigid than those of Savigny or Wilhelm von Humboldt. Viewing political power in this manner, Ranke also has little understanding for the new forces that operated in European society since the French Revolution.

After 1836, Ranke wrote little relating to historical or political theory, except for random remarks scattered throughout his writings. Two notable exceptions remain: the lecture to King Maximilian in 1854 wherein he rejected the existence of linear, moral progress and spoke of the immediacy of all epochs before God, and the “Political Memoranda”⁹⁰ in which he counseled King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia on revolutionary events’ between 1848 and 1851. These memorandums show little change in Ranke’s political views,⁹¹ although he now considered a constitution to be inevitable. Afraid of the danger of social upheaval, which he saw hidden behind universal suffrage that had been granted in 1848, he urged the introduction of a limited suffrage and the maintenance of ultimate political control in royal hands. The Prussian Army alone had prevented the revolution from succeeding. King and Army for him were the only stable forces in Germany. “Only when destructive parliamentary majorities will have won control of the army will the revolution have finally triumphed in Germany. Only then will a constituent assembly exercise the same rights as the French Assembly did it in 1789.”⁹² Behind ministerial responsibility, there lurked the threat of rule by “artisans and day laborers.”⁹³ Afraid of the spread of French ideas, he still saw the need for a common German press law.⁹⁴ He was unwilling to support the extension of political rights; nevertheless, he recognized the social obligations of the state. Not from humanitarian or moral considerations, but from the standpoint of the military needs of the Prussian state that needed workers to serve in its army, Ranke advocated the right to work.

It is conceivable that the state might employ in peace time under military discipline at least those workers fit for military service. Just as once the military was transformed from an inchoate mass of volunteers into a disciplined army, the activities of unskilled laborers now need to be organized. One can form labor brigades for those public works that still need to be undertaken, such as building projects, flood control, soil reclamation, etc. On the other hand, only limited political rights can be granted to the non-political classes.⁹⁵

Ranke followed Bismarck’s policies with little enthusiasm. Even after 1849, he still hoped for a strengthened Bund under joint Prussian and Austrian leadership which would permit political diversity, and not threaten the traditional pluralism that he considered so important to the cultural development of German nationality. Bismarck’s concession to the liberals disturbed him even more deeply, although he never opposed it openly. When he hailed Bismarck after his break with the National Liberals in 1879, it was not because he saw in him the founder of the German Empire, but rather the man who defended Europe from social revolution.⁹⁶

Despite the lack of theoretical formulations after 1836, Ranke’s prolific historical writings nevertheless reflect the ideas presented in the essays of the period from 1831 to 1836. Although he closely relied upon the documents, his histories are not highly specialized monographs. He seeks to trace dominant trends that he, however, generally defines in narrowly political terms. Using official sources, Ranke tends to judge events from the standpoint of governments. Thus, as Eduard Fueter has pointed out, in the discussion of the English Revolutions in the seventeenth century, he appears to ignore the great economic transformations without which the events of the time cannot be understood, because these changes were not recorded in diplomatic papers.⁹⁷

Rudolf Vierhaus has disputed this view. In a recent study, Vierhaus has sought to defend Ranke against the frequent accusations that he neglected the role of the social and economic forces in history and had no understanding for the great emerging social forces of the nineteenth century.⁹⁸ Ranke, Vierhaus argues, had no narrow political concept of society for which only the cultured elite composing the Obrigkeit were significant. “Any reading of his works leaves … the impression that Ranke did not ignore (wegretouchiert) the masses but took them seriously as an important factor of historical movement.” Ranke “wrote no line without being conscious that historical life is not only determined by the thoughts and deeds of the few great men but just as much by the interests, needs, abilities, fears and desires of the many.”⁹⁹ Vierhaus rightly points out that Ranke was not entirely blind to social and class conflict. Nevertheless, Vierhaus’s documentation does not really change the traditional image of Ranke. Indeed, in the 1830’s, in his diary Ranke himself suggested that a world history be written which would emphasize the growth of population and stress economic and cultural activities; colonization, knightdom, the building of churches, art, and religion in the Middle Ages; agriculture and public works in the eighteenth century and the “tremendous development of industry and highways” in the nineteenth century. However, this was an isolated remark.¹⁰⁰

As Hans Schleier notes, the attempts to recount the instances of Ranke’s preoccupation with economic and social questions only underline how marginal these problems were to Ranke’s historiography, and how little he understood the social forces of the nineteenth century.¹⁰¹ Vierhaus himself admits how poorly informed Ranke was about the economic conditions of the working class and how little understanding he had for the social questions of his time.¹⁰² Ranke, analagous to many of his contemporaries, saw the vision of an amorphous mass threatening all culture and civilization, and he failed to appreciate the significance of industry. He saw many social changes, of which the rise of the “third estate” was the most important to take place. The central social problem for Ranke was, Vierhaus admits, a political one, that of fitting the bourgeoisie into the framework of the old state, at the same time excluding the masses who lacked all prerequisites for political responsibility.¹⁰³ Ranke’s concept of the state remained a static one. The continental monarchical great power, as it had arisen in the struggle between princes and estates and the religious civil wars between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, remained for him the model by which the states that existed in history were to be judged.¹⁰⁴ This concept of the state reflected Ranke’s attachment to legitimacy, his religiosity, and the impact of the political thought of German Idealism on his thinking. But this viewpoint of the state remained inadequate for an understanding of the preabsolutistic state or of the political forces that emerged in the nineteenth century.

It is to his credit that in an age of rising nationalistic sentiment in historiography, Ranke did not sacrifice his belief in a European community. For him, state and nation were never identical, although he recognized the tendency of nations to form states and realized the strength which nineteenth-century states had gained from the rise of national feeling. Ranke studied all major states, which he described as the Germano-Romanic world, in terms of their interaction within this broader European context.