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And Nineteenth-Century German Historians and the Scholarly Community ULRICH MUHLACK Universal History and National History. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century German Historians and the Scholarly Community in BENEDIKT STUCHTEY AND PETER WENDE (eds.), British and German Historiography 1750-1950. Traditions, Perceptions and Transfers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 25–48 ISBN: 978 0 19 920235 5 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 2 Universal History and National History Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century German Historians and the Scholarly Community ULRICH MUHLACK This essay examines the position occupied by German histo- rians within the international community of historians in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is interested less in drawing up a comparative balance sheet of achievements or in the numerous 'transfers' that took place between German and non-German history, than in the subjective side. It looks at how German historians saw their place in the international scholarly community of their discipline, in other words, at their awareness of their position. A universal community of historians can exist only if history claims to present universal truth. Anyone who feels committed to this claim belongs to that community, regard- less of where he comes from. This community is the place that brings like-minded people together. It is the public to which they appeal, and the authority to which they submit. This sort of community came into being when the founda- tions of modern historical scholarship were laid in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was firmly established by the eighteenth century. It was part of the res publica litter- aria created by the Humanists, essentially going back to the tradition of the great historians of classical Antiquity, and long used Latin as the lingua franca of scholarship. From the Trans. Angela Davies, GHIL. ULRICH MUHLACK beginning of modern historiography, however, specific national traditions emerged, as demonstrated by the increase in the number of history books written in the vernacular. But essentially, these differences remained within the framework of common goals: nationality was subordinated to universal- ity, the fatherland to the international community. During the period covered by this essay, this changed deci- sively in response to two opposing developments. First, since the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, when modern historical thought culminated in so- called historicism, the discipline's development into a human science ( Verwissenschaftlichung) had taken off in an unprecedented way, enormously enhancing its claim to universality. History became a professionally organized, independent discipline everywhere. The fact that the first international conference of historians was held at the end of the nineteenth century is consistent with this development. Secondly, at that time history entered into the service of the modern national idea which, permeating all areas oflife, was of a different quality from all earlier forms of national think- ing. The result was a strict polarization: universality and nationality diverged, as did the international community and the fatherland. As Leopold von Ranke wrote in his Entwurf zu einer Geschichte der Wissenschaft in Deutschland in 1859, history acquired 'a national and general character at the same time'.1 This essay explores the problem of how German historians coped with this dualism. At first glance it seems that they could simply sidestep the dilemma through ingenuity: scholarly universality and German nationality could simply be equated. To make this possible, three things had to coincide: the obvious leader- ship of German scholars in the renewal of history, their national pride produced by this, coming together with the idea, which had been current since the mid-eighteenth century, of a German cultural nation. This is not the place to recapitulate the development of modern German historicism and the history of its interna- 1 Leopold von Ranke, Zur eigenen Lebensge.schiclzte, ed. Alfred Dove (Leopold von Ranke, Siimmtliclze Werlce, liii-liv) (Leipzig, 1890), 685. Universal History and National History tional triumph. Suffice it to say that the French Revolution also revolutionized historical thinking in Germany, that this revolutionary change gradually spread to all the disciplines which today would be called the humanities, the social sciences, and the cultural sciences, including, ultimately, also history in the narrow sense, and that these develop- ments were accompanied by the establishment of new forms of historical teaching and research at the German universi- ties. Suffice it to say, too, that not only German but also contemporary non-German voices testified to the fact that German historiography had, for the time being, taken the lead internationally-as demonstrated by Lord Acton's famous essay 'German Schools of History', published in the English Historical Review which began in 1886, modelled on the Historische Zeitschrift. 2 In order to assess the impact of this on the self-confidence of German scholars, we need to look back further. Lord Acton, who acknowledged German supremacy in the nine- teenth century, said simply: 'Before this century the Germans had scarcely reached the common level even in the storage of erudition.'3 This is confirmed by the contempo- rary German writers whose opinions Franz von Wegele summarized in his Geschichte der Deutschen Historiographie of 1885,4 and it explains the resentment or feeling of inferiority which German historians of the early modern period felt when confronted by foreign work. From the period of Humanism to the Enlightenment, German texts reverber- ated with complaints about the inferiority of German histo- riography, even if it was only that their authors felt that they had to defend themselves against allegedly unjustified • Reprinted in J. E. E. D. Acton, Histurical Essays and Studies (London, 1907), 344-g2. Similarly J. Monod, 'Du progres des etudes historiques en France depuis le XVIe siecle', &uue histurique, 1 (1876), 5-38, at 27 ff. 3 Acton, Histurical Essays, 344 f. { Franz X. von Wegele, Geschiclite der Deutschen Histuriographie seit dem Auftreten des Humanismus (Geschichte der Wissenschaften in Deutschland. Neuere Zeit 20; Munich, 1885). In the foreword he spoke of the 'wretched state' of historiography 'during that period' (p. v). In the passage cited Lord Acton referred to Wegele and criticized the structure of his history of historiography: 'Nine-tenths of his volume are devoted to the brave men who lived before Agamemnon, and the chapter on the rise of historical science, the only one which is meant for mankind, begins at page 975, and is the last' (Acton, Histurical Essays, 344). ULRICH MUHLACK attacks by foreign writers.5 All their efforts were directed towards imitating the work of the great foreign historians: first the Italians, then the French, and finally the British. This aspiration on the part of German historians lasted well into the nineteenth century, the heyday of German histori- cism. In 1867 the highest praise which Rudolf Köpke could give his teacher Ranke, at that time at the height of his fame, was to say that he 'certainly bears comparison with the great men of other nations'.6 Continuous comparison with British or French historiography kept alive the centuries-old trauma of intellectual inferiority.7 But at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, this resentment gave way to a feeling of self-confidence which developed into the conviction of a national mission. This change originated in a discussion about the place of German literature in Johann Gottfried Herder's Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanitat (1793-7). In the 5 Cf. also Johann Christoph Gatterer, 'Vom historischen Plan, und der darauf sich gnindenden Zusammenfiigung der Erzahlungen' (1767), in Horst Walter Blanke and Dirk Fleischer (eds.), Theoretiker der deutsd1en Aufkliirungshistorie, ii (Fundamenta Historica 1, pt. 2; Stuttgart, 1990), 621-62, at 621 f. and 630. Gatterer admitted that 'the muse which governs history has not been particularly kind to our German geniuses', but rejected the 'criticism which foreigners make ... of our nation', that 'its class of historical writers consists merely of translators and compil- ers'. 6 Rudolf Kopke, 'Ranke-Fest' (1867), in id., Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte, Politik und Literatur, ed. F. G. Kiessling (Berlin, 1872), 78o-g1, at 781. Similarly Wilhelm Giesebrecht, 'Die Entwicklung der modernen deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft: Habilitationsrede gehalten zu Konigsberg am 19. April 1858', Historische l:eitschrift, 1 (1859), 1-17, at 2: 'It is often said that we Germans have only recently produced a historical literature that can match up to that of the English and the French.' i This experience or memory is also reflected in
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