Leopold von Ranke Quotes (1795-1886)

“It is Cromwell's chief merit to have ruled the British kingdoms for a succession of years on a uniform principle, and to have united their forces in common efforts. It is true that this was not the final award of history: things were yet to arrange themselves in a very different fashion. But it was necessary perhaps that the main outlines should be shaped by the absolute authority of a single will, in order that in the future a free life might develop within them.”

“Ranke has not only written a larger number of mostly excellent books than any man that ever lived, but he has taken pains from the first to explain how the thing is done. He attained a position unparalleled in literature, less by the display of extraordinary faculties than by perfect mastery of the secret of his craft, and that secret he has always made it his business to impart. For his most eminent predecessors, history was applied politics, fluid law, religion exemplified, or the school of patriotism. Ranke was the first German to pursue it for no purpose but its own. He tried to make the generality of educated men understand how it came about that the world of the fifteenth century was changed into the Europe of the nineteenth. His own definite persuasions regarding church and king were not suffered to permeate his books. It was meritorious in Böckh, but not heroic, to contain his feelings about the Attic treasure and the setting of Arcturus; but Ranke was concerned with all the materials of abiding conflict, with every cause for which he cared and men are willing to kill or die.”

“While an admirable critic of sources, Niebuhr read into his version of Roman history a variety of moral and philosophical views unwarranted by the existing evidence... Ranke, on the other hand, determined to hold strictly to the facts of history, to preach no sermon, to point no moral, to adorn no tale, but to tell the simple historic truth. His sole ambition was to narrate things as they really were "wie es eigentlich gewesen". Truth and objectivity were Ranke's highest aims. In his view, history is not for entertainment or edification, but for instruction... He did not believe in the historian's province to point out divine providence in human history.”

“That history became "scientific" in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was probably due as much to the influence of Ranke as to the influence of natural science.”

“No one else has been able to speak with equal authority on the history of so many nations, Grote wrote nothing on the history of Rome, Mommsen has written nothing on the history of Greece. Ranke was equally at home in the Germany of the Reformation, in the France of Louis XIV., and in the England of Charles I. and Cromwell.”

“[T]he history of German historical thought since Ranke's time has to a large extent been nothing but the spiritual and philosophical (weltanschauliche) debate about his legacy.”