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Essay on The Professional Life and Writings of Leopold Von Ranke
In 1825 Leopold Ranke (1795-1885) came to Berlin as professor of history and inaugurated a new era in historiography. Ranke is undoubtedly the best-known historian since Gibbon not excepting Macaulay-and probably the foremost historian Germany has produced. The bibliography on Ranke is voluminous. Ranke and the Ranke method have been debated, lauded, and criticized for half a century. Leopold Ranke came from a well-to-do middle class family, his father being a lawyer; his childhood environment was one of strict, severe, joyless Lutheranism, but dignified and scholarly.
In 1814 soon after Napoleon's defeat, at the Battle of the Nations Ranke entered the University of Leipzig. Despite stirring and memorable historic events, young Ranke displayed no interest in history. His chief subjects were philology and theology, the latter confined largely to the Bible. He attended the philological lectures of Beck and Hermann, and also listened to lectures in philosophy. Kant Critique of Pure Reason, which young Ranke studied closely, left a deep impression; but the greatest influence was Fichte, for whose Addresses to the German Nation Ranke had a "boundless admiration." The young student also admired Goethe, then at the zenith of his fame, but did not imitate him, because, he said, "he really was too modern for me." Ranke also took up the study of Luther, mainly "in order to learn German from him." 1
All this time Ranke ignored history. He was repelled, he said, by "an endless number of barren notices." When Stenzel, the professor of history at Leipzig who later became jealous of Ranke, asked the young student whether he intended to devote himself to history, the reply was in the negative. Of historians, only Niebuhr made an impression on Ranke. Niebuhr Roman History made the young man feel that "even in this recent period there can also be historians." 2....
