There are few historians in modern historiography who have been more influential than Leopold von Ranke. Such was the "revolution" caused by his works and the treatment given to the sources that some scholars have set in 1824, with the publication of History of the Latin and Germanic peoples from 1494 to 1514 , the beginning of modern scientific history. His life is closely linked to the academic world and to the hitherto unknown historical and diplomatic archives.
Leopold Ranke was born on December 21, 1795 in Wiehe, a town near Halle in Saxon Thuringia. His father was a lawyer, although he came from a family of Lutheran ministers. As a child he witnessed the Napoleonic victories at Jena and Austerlitz, whose battlefields were close to his home. He attended high school at Schulpforta, one of the most prestigious schools in Germany, where he delved into ancient languages and literature. Later he attended the University of Leizpig, impregnated at that time with a humanist and Protestant spirit, where he continued his studies on classical philology, theology and humanities.
At the age of 23 he began his teaching career as a professor of classical languages in Frankfurt an der Oder where he came into contact with the great German intellectuals of the time. There he taught classes for seven years until the success of his first work History of the Latin and Germanic peoples from 1494 to 1514, published in 1824, led to his appointment as extraordinary professor at the University of Berlin the following year. The importance of this work does not lie so much in its content as in the new technical appendix that it incorporates. With him, Leopold von Ranke, influenced by the historical thought of Niebhur, enunciates the guiding principles of his working method that are summarized in the prologue of the work:“It has been said that history has the mission of judging the past and instruct the present for the benefit of the future. Ambitious mission, in truth, that this essay of ours does not claim. Our claim is more modest:we simply try to expose how things actually happened ”.
In 1827 he published The Ottomans and the Spanish Monarchy of the 16th and 17th Centuries , which was intended to be the first volume of a series of studies under the heading “Princes and peoples of Southern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries ”. The prestige gained from his first two works led the Prussian government to finance trips to major European courts to investigate his archives, including Venetian diplomatic documents. During the time he stayed in Vienna he wrote History of Revolutions in Serbia . He returned to Berlin in 1831 and took up residence there, only interrupted by his long trips abroad in search of new research sources, until his death.
Appointed ordinary professor at the University of Berlin in 1834, a year later he began to prepare what is perhaps his most important work, History of the Popes (published 1837). At first it was intended to continue the series of “Princes and peoples “But he ultimately opted to release it as an independent studio. The interest of the German historian, after a brief introduction on the Church during the Middle Ages, focuses on the papacies of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Papal States were established and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movements appeared. In the prologue of the work, von Ranke explains the reasons that have led him to publish it:“What is it, certainly, that today can be of interest to the papal power? No relationship with us as it has no significant influence; neither concern on our part, since the times in which we could fear something have passed and we feel safe. We can only be interested in its historical development and its action on universal history ”.
The criticism he received from some Protestant sector, which accused him of being too benevolent towards the Papacy, led him to publish, between 1839 and 1843, the History of Germany in times of the Reformation . The main source of information that he used to prepare it were the files of the Imperial Diet and the reports sent by its members to their respective States, documents that until then had been little studied. The repercussion of this work in Germany was spectacular and Prussia, which at that time was beginning to emerge as a European power, appointed him "historian of the kingdom" in 1841 and commissioned him to write a history of the Prussian nation, which von Ranke concluded in 1848.
In the 1950s and 1960s he wrote histories about France and England, thanks to the contacts and information obtained on his trips to the courts of both countries. The first of them, written between 1852 and 1861, has as its starting point the beginning of the 16th century, when the transition between medieval and modern France contemplates the consolidation of a solid monarchical system, begun centuries ago by Philip II (Philip Augustus ). In the History of England von Ranke is more interested in the functioning of the parliamentary monarchy and the two revolutions of the 17th century. These two works will be the last that he writes on the great European powers during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1865 he added to his surname the particle (of nobility) "von".
Von Ranke devoted the last years of his life to teaching, to the publication of new works such as Contributions to the history of Germany , Wallenstein's story or The origins of the wars of the Revolution, and to the elaboration of a universal history that would be his legacy. He died on May 23, 1886 in Berlin leaving this last work unfinished.
Leopold von Ranke is considered the founder of scientific history in Germany and of historicism:all the great German historians of the 19th century were, sooner or later, his disciples. Although his approaches were not completely new, since the Göttingen school had already enunciated some of the principles developed by the German historian at the end of the 18th century, it would be he who perfected and generalized them. His works contributed decisively to promoting a method of critical study based on written sources, giving priority to documents that provide reliable information about the institutions analyzed and that facilitate the understanding of the reasons that prompted the actors to act in a way or another.
Leopold von Ranke's extensive production highlights a constant reproduced in each of his books:the rigorous treatment of the sources that he consulted and on which he based his studies of the. Von Ranke, a pure historian who dedicated his entire life to this discipline, imposed a method of analysis of the sources that, although today seems normal to us, at that time represented a giant advance for historiography; Until then, historians had used the works of other historians as their main sources, and his work was limited to correcting the errors of his predecessors.
The ideal of the German historian requires, however, that he seek at all times “the facts themselves in their human comprehensibility, in their unity and in their fullness ”. For him, the strict presentation of the facts is a supreme law of history:that they are multiple or infinitely varied does not mean that their study should be abandoned. This method privileged the authority of the testimony closest to the events as an accurate means of knowing the truth of the original meaning of the text. The truth, he affirms, resides “behind the forms of life as spirit, idea, principle ”. Therefore, the mission of history will be to understand these facts and, most importantly, to explain them through rigorous fidelity to the events. Otherwise, scientific history is impossible.
The quote (“wie es eigentlich gewesen ”) condenses the idea that Leopolod von Ranke had about the objective of the study of history. Although his interpretation is not exempt from controversy, it is generally considered that with that phrase he intended the historian not to judge the past, but to limit himself to recounting what happened at a given past moment, that is, to describe the facts as "they happened". really”, without being influenced by opinions, value judgments or any element that denotes any type of preference. However, he also maintained a broader vision, in which the German historian would expand the field of study to capture and reflect the feelings that were behind the decisions of those who adopted them.
Once the facts are established, when they safely emerge from the documents, the investigator can and should begin the reconstruction of reality. For behind the acts and their authors, the events and the characters, the action of the great historical powers that influence and guide the actions of men is projected. For von Ranke the individual means the variety of reality. The problem of history, after the critical analysis of the documentation, materializes in configuring the different currents that emanate from the "trends". Historical knowledge implies the search for unity in the course of time, for which unique phenomena must be combined with general trend lines.
For von Ranke, history is the work of “individualities”, understood not so much as “great men” but as nations, past eras and, especially, States. This is how he manifests it in the History of the Popes :“There is no doubt that it is always the forces of the living spirit that move the world on its hinges. Prepared by preceding centuries, they rise at the opportune time, conjured by powerful individuals, from the unfathomable depths of the human spirit ”. Each of these “individuality” has its own intrinsic peculiarity and conflicts with the others. Their survival or disappearance, in harmony with biological organisms, depends largely on their ability to adapt and their potential. States are presented as the main protagonists of history:hence the German historian prioritizes the study of political history and religious history over other approaches.
But we must not forget the importance of man, specifically statesmen, in von Ranke's work. He thus expresses it in his Universal History: “It is not the general tendencies that decide in the process of history:great personalities are always necessary to assert them ”. The decisions of these preeminent figures decisively condition the course of events and the German historian gives special relevance to his actions. And in the midst of all the factors that make up von Ranke's thought, in which men, states and peoples interact, a common denominator emerges:God, who cares to give meaning to history. In the words of the German historian, “But I affirm:every age is in direct relationship with God and its value lies, not in what results from it, but in its own existence, in its own self ”.