HISTORIOGRAPHY VENICE STREAM Ranke and the Idea of Empiricist History.

positivism positivistic thinking empiricism empiricist history scientific history Geisteswissenschaften ( the human and social sciences as opposed to the natural sciences. In German - and French - it is possible to speak of the of `the literary sciences’ which sounds odd in English, where `science’ has much closer connections with the `hard’ sciences and suggests a methodology of testing, proof, and rigorous empirical research) Aufklaerung Romanticism Bildung philology historicism ( historismus )

`History seeks to show the past as it essentially happened’. Leopold von Ranke ( )

`History’ should embrace the principle of wie es eigentlich gewesen ist how it actually has been - ? how it actually was - ? how it essentially was - ? the historian should seek out the essence of things? the essence of things = the meaning of events and happenings?

Johann Gottlieb Fichte ( ) `Discovery’ of the nation as a key force in history.

Romanticism … the past as both comfort (a place to be at home in) and danger … (terror, awe, and the sublime).

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) Quentin Durward pub ; film starring Robert Taylor, 1955

Wilhelm von Humboldt ( )

Alexander von Humboldt ( ( )

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( )

The proverb tells us that poets are born. Not only in the arts, but even in some scholarly fields, young men develop into full bloom, or at least show their original energy. Musicians and mathematicians have the expectation of attaining eminence in early years. But a historian must be old, not only because of the immeasurable extent of his field of study, but because of the insight into the historical process which a long life confers, especially under changing conditions. It would hardly be bearable for him to have only a short span of experience. For his personal development requires that great events complete their course before his eyes, that others collapse, that new forms be attempted. Diary entries by von Ranke, made January 1877, six years after retirement, nine years before death.

Leopold von Ranke in 1877

Barthold George Niebuhr ( ). From 1810 Historiographer Royal and Professor at Berlin University. His first lecture course was on the history of Rome, which formed the basis of his Römische Geschichte, first two vols published in Lectures on the History of Rome from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire (first English edn, 1827)

Von Ranke in early middle age. Must a historian be old? Can s/he be middle aged? Or even young?