Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen

Leopold Ranke’s Archival Turn : Location and Evidence in Modern Historiography

From 1827 to 1831 the German historian Leopold von Ranke travelled through Germany, Austria, and Italy, hunting for documents and archives. During this journey Ranke developed a new model for historical research that transformed the archive into the most important site for the production of historical knowledge. Within the archive, Ranke claimed, the trained historian could forget his personal predispositions and political loyalties, and write objective history. This essay critically examines Rankes model for historical research through a study of the obstacles, frustrations, and joys that he encountered on his journey. It shows how Rankes archival experiences inspired him to re-evaluate his own identity as a historian and as a human being, and investigates some of the affiliations between his model for historical research and the political realities of Prince Metternichs European order. Finally, the essay compares Rankes historical discipline to other nineteenth-century disciplines, such as anthropology and archaeology.

Inventing the archive Testimony and virtue in modern historiography

This article investigates the emergence of the archive as the primary venue for the production of historical knowledge in the 19th century. The turn to archival research, the article argues, may be considered as a response to the discussions about the problems of testimony that dominated 18th- and early 19th-century German writings on the methodology and epistemology of historical research. These discussions, especially regarding the epistemic virtues of witnesses, also helped create the particular culture of knowledge-making within German historical scholarship that enabled the archival turn. The article illustrates these developments through the examples of Johann Peter von Ludewig, who was one of the most prominent historians of the early German Enlightenment, and Leopold von Ranke, who is normally considered the founder of the modern historical discipline and the most important advocate of the 19th-century archival turn.

Christian Thomasius, Invisible Philosophers, and Education for Enlightenment

One of the eighteenth century’s most ambitious attempts at defining the philosopher was Christoph August Heumann’s journal, Acta philosophorum, published in Halle between 1715 and 1723.1 It was the world’s first journal for the history of philosophy and a recurrent question was whether one could find a definition of the philosopher that applied throughout history and across the world. But the frontispiece of the first issue of the Acta philosophorum (Fig. 1) already revealed Heumann’s own understanding of the role and place of the philosopher.

Relics of the Past: Antiquarianism and Archival Authority in Enlightenment Germany

During the Early Modern period, many scholars described the ideal historian as a person, who personally had experienced the events. However, the skeptical critique of the trustworthiness of testimonies increasingly undermined this ideal and some scholars attempted to identify sources that should not be considered as testimonies, but rather as “relics” of the historical situation. Some of these sources were antiquarian sources, such as coins, inscriptions, and monuments, but German historians especially emphasized the importance of legal and official documents stored in state archives. These documents, they insisted, were not only more reliable than eyewitness accounts, but also better historical evidence than all other material remains of the past. The use of these sources in historical research also helped shape the modern ideal of the historian as an archival researcher. To illustrate these changes, the paper focuses upon the example of the Göttingen historian Johann Christoph Gatterer, who is often considered one of the founders of modern critical historical research.