Talk:Leopold von Ranke

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In the German Wikipedia is a bigger text to Ranke. User: Mario todte

Ranke and Hegel
I saw in some passing reference on the internet that Ranke and Hegel were at one point both on the same staff at Berlin (which university?) and were at the head of different faculty factions. Can this be confirmed? If it is true it is a very interesting point, since both Hegel and Ranke have very explicit attacks at each other in some of their fundamental writings, and it would add some context to their disagreement of ideas as well. --Fastfission 02:52, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Connection to E.H. Carr?
Ranke was also the great-uncle of British historian Edward Hallett Carr.

I just removed the above sentence. I guess it's technically possible, but I'd never heard that, and it's not cited. Can anyone confirm this so it can go back in? -- TheMightyQuill 18:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I've definitely heard that but I don't have a source unfortunately. Chris 14/06/11 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.184.185.62 (talk) 06:35, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Has some other famous historian or scholar cited him as being the "father of scientific history"? I would say Edward Gibbon was the true holder of the title. What set them apart?

Grammatical nit
Can some linguist or native German speaker explain to why Ranke is traditionally quoted as having said, "... wie es eigentlich gewesen," rather than "wie es eigentlich gewesen war" — in other words, why no auxiliary verb? I'm puzzled. Sca (talk) 22:24, 27 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't be puzzled. In former times, it was possible to abbreviate the German sentence like this, at least in literary language. The complete verb form was meant to be wie es eigentlich gewesen ist. In German poems you may find many more examples for this. Sorry that I cannot give you a more detailed explanation. From today's perspective (and in the ears of a German speaker), it is actually the shortened phrase which adds the specific flavour to Ranke's famous quote. --DaQuirin (talk) 18:20, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Originally it was wie es eigentlich gewesen. In university I even lost points on that one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.134.141.13 (talk) 08:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Your comment is not merely a grammatical nit, and the "poetic language" and "abbreviate" explanations are not fully sufficient.  It is very difficult to translate Ranke's statement to contemporary English for a number of reasons-- it "takes part" (a lieu) in a longer sentence,  and makes with reference to antecedents in other sentences/statements (at least);  there is not necessarily the same subject-verb distinction in Ranke's German,  nor the same grammar,  as in present-day German or English;  Ranke is referencing a political and personal situation (Ranke's "office" in this case was the politically appointed position of historian to the court).  It's hard to get these sorts of things across in translation-- especially the "sound bite" of a sentence-- and contemporary English translations tend to phrasings that tend to have a contemporary ring and serve present-day purposes,  rather than 'as it really took place.'
 * We'd probably due well to quote more of the original in German, and translate at least the whole sentence (Satz,  statement)  instead of a fragment.  74.223.191.2 (talk) 01:12, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The text currently contains the parenthetical explanation: "(Note that Ranke wrote "wie es eigentlich gewesen", rather than the more common German phrase "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist". His omission of the final "ist" ("was") suggests, according to some scholars, a less literal meaning.)"

I highly doubt that "some scholars" have suggested that this auxiliary-less construction, typical for academic German in the first half of the 19th century, would be considered "less literal". In fact, in comparable syntactic contexts, we would find the same construction in von Ranke's writing and in the writing of his contemporaries, as an above commenter points out. If some scholar has actually written an article about the subject, there should be a citation here. Otherwise this parenthetical sentence should be removed; it is likely speculation based on ignorance of 19th-century scholarly German written style. 130.231.116.205 (talk) 10:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

DaQuirin and this last commentator are correct. In nineteenth century academic German, the auxiliary verb (in this case, "ist") was often omitted when a compound verb occurs at the end of a sentence; it is simply assumed. Today correct German would include the "ist"; in the nineteenth century it would be routinely omitted. Ajrocke (talk) 12:20, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Ranke and Positivism
I feel the tone of the article privileges an outdated anglo-american idea that Ranke was a positivist whose essential contribution to historiography was his methodology and scientific aspirations. Contemporary scholarship in the West is accepting now what Germans have long known, which is that Ranke was anything but a positivist. Seen in his own context, his methodological innovations only followed from an attempt to bring the principles of visual perception to the study of the past, as J. D. Braw has argued. Put simply, we must distinguish between what Ranke was and how we have used him: two very different things. While perhaps applicable to his legacy, it is misleading and does a disservice to Ranke to label him a positivist in the first line when this is being wholly revisited if not rejected outright by many contemporary historians; more should be made of the other interpretations of Ranke's legacy which now have more credence. I am prepared to make some tweaks in this direction myself when I have some time; just putting it out there for discussion for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.169.16.164 (talk) 02:45, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree. It is quite obvious even from his own work that Ranke was not a positivist. I aim to rectify this in my updated version by removing references to him as such and expanding on the various interpretations of his purported advocacy of "empirical" history. &#10022; JH &#10022; 08:59, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Use of Conservatism template
Can anyone justify the use of the Conservatism template? What about Ranke is particularly conservative or fits him into this category? I would argue that, on the contrary, Ranke's approach to history was radical and he himself described it as such. I think the box ought to be removed unless someone can put a case forward arguing otherwise. John S Holloway (talk) 02:25, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree--he was a major innovator in methodology and teaching. Rjensen (talk) 03:36, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

According to Iggers and Von Moltke, Ranke was against democratic reform (such as the implementation of universal suffrage) and social revolution, because he believed that nation-states have an inner principle and purpose, according to which they should developed. He dismissed reforms and revolutions as radical alterations of the essence of a nation's development, as it was intended by God. See in particular: Georg G. Iggers and Konrad von Moltke, Leopold von Ranke: the Theory and Practice of History (The Bobbs-Merrill Company: Indianapolis and New York, 1973), pages: xxxiv-xxxv. It can still be argued whether his influence on politics is sufficient to justify the Conservatism template, as I believe he has to be seen as a historian rather than a politician. But going by this (and other sources as well) the template isn't very inaccurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cruon (talk • contribs) 17:01, 25 March 2014‎ (UTC)


 * The article does briefly cover his politics (in #Overview), but I doubt he is notable enough to the conservative movement to merit inclusion in the Conservatism sidebar template, which in turn is the only reason the sidebar is included in the article (added by an editor systematically working through all the people in the sidebar who didn't have the sidebar in their article in this edit). He was added to the template by an IP editor (in this edit) as well as Nikolay Karamzin, Jaime Balmes, Louis Veuillot, Gustave Le Bon, Maurice Barrès, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Ivan Ilyin, Henri Massis and Ramiro de Maeztu, in what looks to me less a case of "who are the important figures in conservatism", and more of "which other people on Wikipedia were conservatives". &#8209;&#8209; xensyria T 18:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Article Rewrite
Several major problems have been identified with this article and now I have discovered that much of the existing biographical information has been copied word-for-word from an external website (http://www.readanybook.com/author/ranke-leopold-von-12234). Most of the rest is unverifiable because no source is given. I am therefore resolved to rewrite this article, incorporating a number of significant improvements, which I have begun doing in my workspace area. Suggestions and ideas are very welcome. &#10022; JH &#10022; 07:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This rewrite seems to have been abandoned. Please would an interested editor assess the material added at User:John S Holloway/workspace/Leopold von Ranke, incorporate what is useful, redirect that WP:COPYARTICLE, and leave a note here when done? – Fayenatic  L ondon 17:39, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Spam
This article mostly consists of Ranke, telling us how clever Ranke is.

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Portraits

The London National Portrait Gallery has a photograph (online) by GW Watkins from the 1850s, which is well worth a look, especially in comparison with the two images this article offers. Is it really impossible to find a less mythologising free-to-use image?Delahays (talk) 09:43, 10 January 2020 (UTC)