Leopold vanRanke and Johann Gustav Droysen

Leopold vanRanke the father of historical science taught his students to use the historical materials at hand to provide a proper interpretation. Rarely has a phrase been so often quoted as Ranke's "wie es eigentlich gwesen [how it actually was] (Breisach, p. 233). Van Ranke brings together philologist, erudites, and legalh historians of his age to develop a methodology that would use substantial interpretation and traditional narrative history. He innovated as he taught taking his students to the archives which has only begun to open its doors to scholars. The use of these sources under critical safeguards seemed to guarnatee the objectivity of one segment of the historian's work, the establishment of facts (Breisach, p. 233) Briesach later states that his method was not exactly new it had been used by classical philologists with the maxim: check the source for trustworthiness and against its own context. It is for this that van Ranke is celebrated is celebrated as the pioneer of a critical historical science. He deserved that recognition also because he observed his own rules. As Briesach notes; "He refused, for example, to let his onw distaste for the French Revolution or of the papacy to sway his findings"(Briesach, p. 233)

Johann Gustav Droysen perceived the historian's job as creative thought. He abandoned the transcendent element of van Ranke's idea (that once facts are established they are synthesized by the historian through the use of Ahnen, read God) he saw all historical work as resulting from the encounter historians, whose lives are shaped elements of the past (the very conventions, institutions, customs, and modes of thoughts of their won society together with the physical remains of the past -documents, monuments, etc.) (Breisach 278-279) It is from these encounters a creative and critically controlled creation of the past would emerge.

Where Rankeans sought through critical and objective research to give accurate glimpses of the past and present reality, the positivists tried to explain the world by methods that forced them to see nature, intellect, and morality. Droysen objected to transforming the family, state, and nation into natural phenomena depriving them of their moral quality and purpose. For Droysen, the ethical constituted a separate and higher sphere of life, and historians of the family, nations, law, politics, economics, thought, and the arts had to understand that. Neither the world nor the methods for its exploration can be forced into a model of uniformity.

It is these two 19th century historians that have served as the basis of historical inquiry and thought for the last century and a half. While all their ideas are not currently used by historians. The foundation of historical inquiry remains a significant part of their contributions.

For more information about the foundation of Historiography see the Father of Historiography's work

The Book: Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, & Modern
Author: Ernst Breisach

The quotes above are from the second edition printed in 1993. Dr. Breisach had significantly altered the construction of his work in the second edition.