Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge

Chapter 2. The Crisis of Classical Historicism

Chapter 2 The Crisis of Classical Historicism Historical studies at the end of the nineteenth century were characterized by a sense of profound unease. Almost simultaneously throughout Europe and in the United States a critical examination of the presuppositions upon which the established historiography at the universities rested took place. No single concept emerged of how historical studies should be conducted in the modern age, but there was widespread conviction that the subject matter of history must be expanded and greater space be given to the role of society, the economy, and culture. Moreover the preference for a narrative, preeminently political, history centered on events and great personalities was challenged, and the demand was made that history be linked more closely to the empirical social sciences. At no point, however, did this critical reaction to history as it was researched and taught at universities throughout the world question two basic assumptions of the older historiography, namely (i) that history should be a professional discipline, and (2) that history must conceive of itself as a science. On the contrary, there waspressure to make the pursuit of history even more professional and more scientific. In Germany this discussion gained in intensity with the controversy surrounding Karl Lamprecht's Deutsche Geschichte (German History), the first volume of which appeared in 1891.l Lamprecht questioned two basic principles of conventional historical scholarship: the central role assigned to the state and 31 the concentration on persons and events. In the natural sciences , he asserted, the age in which scientific method restricted itself to the description of isolated phenomena has long been passe. Historical scholarship, too, would have to replace the descriptive method with a genetic one. Because of its broad scope, encompassing culture, society, and politics, and its readability , the Deutsche Geschichte was received very positively by a broad public. But it also met with vehement opposition from most professional historians. Their criticism was justified on two grounds: First, the work contained many mistakes and imprecisions, giving rise to the assumption that it had been hastily and carelessly composed, but not necessarily invalidating its basic theses. Second, the latter were open to criticism because they employed a highly speculative conception of collective psychology to prove that German history since antiquity had followed predetermined laws of historical development. The concept of law was also central to Lamprecht's understanding of science. In his programmatic writings he distinguished between the "old directions in historical science"—the endeavor to establish facts by means of rigorous research in the sources but without any "scientific" method for explaining historical behavior—and the "new" ones—the conscious approach to a subject of research by means of theoretical questions and methodological principles, as is done in every other science.2 According to Lamprecht the older concept of scientific or scholarly inquiry into history rested on the metaphysical assumption that, behind the appearances observed by the historian, great historical forces or "ideas" were at work, giving history its coherence . The "new historical science" aimed at aligning history with the systematic social sciences; yet Lamprecht's key concept in the Deutsche Geschichte, that of a Volksseele, a national spirit that remained constant through all ages, had its roots in German romantic philosophy rather than in serious social science. This led Max Weber, who clearly advocated social science approaches in historical studies, to view Lamprecht's Deutsche Geschichte as speculative nonsense and to accuse Lamprecht of having "compromised for decades" a "good thing, namely the effort to steer historical work in the direction of greater conceptualization."3 The Early Phase 32 Political motives also played an important role in the opposition to Lamprecht. For the key spokesmen of the profession, historical studies, as they had developed at the German universities in the nineteenth century, and the conception of history and science on which they rested, were closely linked to the political order that had resulted from German unification under Bismarck's leadership.4 Already several years before the Lamprecht controversy erupted, there had been a sharp dispute between Dietrich Schafer,5 who represented the dominant viewsin the profession, and Eberhard Gothein,6 who argued for the extension of history to include economic, social, and cultural aspects . For Schafer the state was central to history; the German state as created by Bismarck was for him the prototype of the modern state. Unless one placed the state at the center of events, no coherent historical...