Ranke, Leopold Von

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY RANKE

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) is one of the great figures of European nineteenth-century scholarship and a founder of modern historical science. The son of a lawyer in a small town of Thuringia, he graduated from Schulpforta, one of the most renowned public schools of Germany, and studied philology and theology at the University of Leipzig. In 1818 he became a teacher of classical languages in the high school (Gymnasium) in Frankfurt on the Oder. In 1824 his first book, the History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations, appeared and immediately brought him wide recognition. Ranke was appointed professor at the University of Berlin and received a travel grant from the Prussian government that permitted him to spend four years abroad, mainly in Italy—decisive years for the development of his historical views. He returned to Berlin in 1831 and, with the exception of extended trips for research in German, French, and English archives, he spent the rest of his life in Berlin. In the historical seminars that he made an essential part of the education of a young historian he trained most of the better-known German historians of the nineteenth century. Ranke retired from teaching in 1871 but continued to work on a last great enterprise, a world history. When he died in 1886, ennobled by the king of Prussia and laden with honors from all countries of the world, he was generally recognized as the greatest historical scholar of the modern world.

Ranke’s collected works comprise 54 volumes. Most famous among them are his history of the popes (1834–1836), his history of the Reformation in Germany (1839–1847), his works on French history (1852) and on English history (1859–1869), and his 12 volumes on Prussian history (1847–1848). All of them focus on developments from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century; they show that Ranke’s main attainment was to provide a scientific basis for the study of modern history.

Ranke’s most important innovation was the introduction of a critical historical method. In an appendix to his first work, the History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations, which was concerned with the development of a European state system around 1500, Ranke showed that the historical works by contemporaries, on which previous treatments of this period were based, were vitiated by personal and political prejudices and should be used only with great caution. When Ranke was in Italy he discovered the reports that Venetian ambassadors delivered before the Senate after their return from their diplomatic missions and realized that such materials of an official character, produced in the course of the conduct of affairs, were far superior to narrative sources as tools for discovering the truth about the past. Thus he established that the materials from which the historian should construct his history ought to be, wherever possible, documentary sources. Both the proposition that serious history ought to be based on archival research and the large-scale publications of documentary source materials that were started in the nineteenth century have their origin in Ranke’s adoption of a new critical method.

This methodological innovation sprang from Ranke’s general notions about the task of the historian: “to show what actually happened” (wie es eigentlich gewesen). This statement sounds simple and matter-of-course, but it was meant to be a challenge to the philosophies of history of the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly the philosophy of Hegel. According to Ranke, history has no final aim that can be abstractly defined and is not an ascending process in which the later period is always superior to the earlier one. Ranke thought that it is almost sacrilegious for man to believe that he can grasp God’s providential plan, but he did believe that history helps reveal the working of God by demonstrating the richness and variety of life. Thus the statement that the historian ought “to show what actually happened” was complementary to another famous pronouncement by Ranke—that “each period is equally close to God.”

For Ranke each period of history has its own individual features: it is unique. Each period, almost each historical phenomenon, reflects a distinctive “idea.” His own deeply religious feeling, his romantic enthusiasm for the “abyss of individuality,” as well as Platonic influences—all combined to form Ranke’s view of the role of “ideas” in history. He had a very fine understanding of the manner in which the various activities of a period —political, literary, intellectual—are permeated by the same spirit and express the same “idea.”

Despite his understanding of the interrelation of all these spheres, Ranke was chiefly a political and diplomatic historian. He belonged to the age of rising nationalism, and his interests were focused on the great powers that were the political embodiments of the spirits of the various European nations. He saw these powers as individualities, as expressions of different “ideas.” The clearest formulation of these views can be found in his essay entitled “A Dialogue on Politics,” published in 1836 in the periodical Historisch—Politische Zeitschrift, which Ranke himself edited and which represented one of his few ventures into the field of practical politics. In the essay Ranke defended the existing governments against the revolutionary movements of 1830 and explained that liberalism could not set a generally valid political pattern because each state was a living organism, an individuality, and must have its own particular institutional forms. The events of foreign policy must form the central interest of the historian because the great powers developed their particular individualities during, and by means of, struggles against each other. Ranke never used the expression “primacy of foreign policy,” but the doctrine that is signified by this term—that external pressure forms and determines the internal structure of a state—is implied in his works. Because Ranke was principally concerned with foreign policy, he had little understanding of the importance of the changes that industrialization brought about in his own century. Ranke was fundamentally conservative.

Ranke’s views are incompatible with the aims of the modern social sciences. He rejected the possibility of laws of social development and of patterns generally applicable to social action or behavior. He was a great writer, and his books are not simply histories but also works of literature. Nevertheless, the turn he gave to the development of historical scholarship did have an influence on the development of the social sciences in that his views were a decisive factor in “professionalizing” history. History became an academic subject that required specialized training, and archival research and the editing of source materials became a great part of the activity of a historian. Although originally such efforts focused on sources for the history of foreign affairs, they soon extended to other aspects of the past: the sources for institutional, economic, and social developments. Thus historical scholarship has produced significant material for all kinds of social research. Moreover, by emphasizing the particular and individual character of each period of the past, Ranke implicitly suggested the existence of a relativity of values and helped to remove the barriers that had prevented an understanding of foreign cultures.

Felix Gilbert

[Directly related are the entriesHistoriography; History. Other relevant material may be found in the biography ofRobinson.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Von Laue 1950 gives a description of Ranke’s early intellectual development and contains a bibliographical essay. The intellectual roots of Ranke’s views on history have been analyzed in Meinecke 1936. See Vierhaus 1957 for Ranke’s views on social developments and social history, and for Ranke’s part in the professionalization of history see Higham et al. 1965.

WORKS BY RANKE

(1812–1885) 1964 Aus Werk und Nachlass. Volume 1: Tagebiicher. Edited by Walther Peter Fuchs. Munich: Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. → The first volume of a projected set of Ranke’s previously unpublished works.

(1814–1886a) 1949 Neue Briefe. Edited by Bernhard Hoeft and Hans Herzfeld. Hamburg (Germany): Hoffmann & Campe.

(1814–1886b) 1949 Das Briefwerk. Edited by Walther P. Fuchs. Hamburg (Germany): Hoffmann & Campe.

(1824) 1909 History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations (1494–1514). London: Bell. → First published as Ge-schichte der romanischen und germanischen Volker von 1494 bis 1514.

(1833) 1950 The Great Powers. Pages 181–218 in Theodore H. Von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years. Princeton Univ. Press. → First published as “Die grossen Mächte.”

(1834–1836) 1912 The History of the Popes During the Last Four Centuries. 3 vols. London: Bell. → First published as Die römischen Päpste in den letzten 4 Jahrhunderten.

(1836) 1950 A Dialogue on Politics. Pages 152–180 in Theodore H. Von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years. Princeton Univ. Press. → First published as “Politisches Gesprach” in Volume 1/2 of the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift.

(1839–1847) 1905 History of the Reformation in Germany. New York: Dutton. → First published as Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation.

(1847–1848) 1930 Zuöblf Bücher preussischer Geschichte. 5 vols. Munich: Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. → An enlarged edition of the Neun Bucher preussischer Geschichte.

1852 Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A History of France Principally During That Period. 2 vols. London: Bentley. → First published as Franzbsische Geschichte in five volumes. The English translation was never completed.

(1859–1869) 1966 A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. → First published as Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert.

Sämmtliche Werke. 54 vols. 3d ed. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. 1875–1900.

(1881–1888) 1882–1902 Weltgeschichte. 9 vols. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Higham, John; Krieger, Leonard; and Gilbert, Felix 1965 History. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Iggers, George G. 1962 The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought. History and Theory 2:17–40.

Meinecke, Friedrich (1936) 1959 Werke. Volume 3: Die Entstehung des Historismus. Munich: Oldenbourg.

Vierhaus, Rudolf 1957 Ranke und die soziale Welt. Miinster (Germany): Aschendorff.

Von Laue, Theodore H. 1950 Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years. Princeton Univ. Press.

RANKE, LEOPOLD VON

RANKE, LEOPOLD VON (1785–1886), German historian.

Leopold von Ranke was one of the most important historians of the modern era, whose work became the model of professional historical writing for the modern academic discipline in Germany and abroad, especially the United States and Britain. Ranke was remarkable for aspiring to dispassionate treatment of past eras; for attempting to understand them on their own terms, without the imposition of anachronistic ideologies; for assessing their significance in the broadest possible chronological and geographic frame of reference; for focusing on political history; and for insisting on critical use of original written sources as the foundation of professional historical writing.

Born on 20 December 1795 in Wiehe, Thuringia/Saxony, Ranke came from an educated Lutheran family. His paternal grandfather was a pastor, and his father, Gottlob Israel Ranke, began his studies in theology before switching to law. At age eighteen Ranke himself went to the University of Leipzig, where he studied theology and classical philology from 1814 to 1817. He gradually decided to become a historian, but with his personal piety undiminished. He received his initial appointment at the University of Berlin in 1825 and became professor of history there in 1834, making the Prussian capital his home until his death on 23 May 1886. In the fall of 1827 he began a research trip that took him to Vienna, Venice, Florence, and Rome. Returning to Berlin in the spring of 1831, he produced a succession of ambitious works over the next half century including Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535 (1824; History of the Latin and Germanic peoples from 1494 to 1535), Die römischen Päpste. Ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1834–1836; The Popes: Their church and state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839–1847; German history in the age of the Reformation), Französische Geschichte (1852–1856; French history), Englische Geschichte (1859–1868; English history), and Weltgeschichte (1881–1888; World history). His graduate seminar, which turned out generations of professional historians, contributed to the outstanding reputation of Germany's historical profession.

Ranke's conception of history was inseparable from his political conservatism. He was hostile to the democratic political movements that had challenged the traditional European order since 1789 and thought of the political actors in the moderate French Revolution of 1830 as a "mob"; for his model of government he looked to monarchs and statesmen like Frederick William IV, king of Prussia (r. 1840–1861), Maximilian II, king of Bavaria (r. 1848–1864), and Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), all of whom admired his work. He tried to further a pragmatic conservatism that respected historical institutions while accommodating innovation. The historian Friedrich Meinecke interpreted his approach to nationalism as typical for his politics: he argued for maintaining the individual German states, and in particular Prussia with its conservative social order, in a larger German nation-state—which was in fact the goal Bismarck realized by 1871.

Ranke's history had the parallel aim of furthering his readers' insight into past historical eras. He was dismissive of theories of progress that made the past into a means to a final historical end. Instead he asserted in his private lectures for Maximilian II that "every era is next to God; its value depends not at all on what emerges from it, but on its own existence, its own self "(Ranke, 1979, p. 17). He particularly objected to what he considered G. W. F. Hegel's empty scholasticism for draining past eras of their individuality and meaning. Instead he was fascinated by the task of an impartial, dispassionate discovery of the specific structure of different historical eras, which could be recovered by means of intensive research in written sources. Not that Ranke believed the facts spoke for themselves: The famous statement (in the preface to the History of the Latin and Germanic Peoples) that he wished to write history "wie es eigentlich gewesen" ("as it really was"), was a protest against imposing ahistorical schemas on the past (Ranke, 1867–1890, vol. 33, p. vii). Taken out of context it belies the complexity of his efforts to understand previous times in an age of accelerating change. As George Iggers has noted, Ranke was not a narrow factmongerer, even if some of his American and German followers chose to interpret him in this way. Far from letting the facts speak for themselves, he selected and narrated with great artistic skill and readily employed concepts like "nation" and "state" as organizing principles. His histories were never chosen for their local interest, but had the high drama, as he related them, of chapters within a universal history of humankind, its meaning never wholly clear, its future unpredictable, but nonetheless in retrospect a meaningful story of ever richer political, religious and cultural life.

Ranke has been criticized by Wolfgang J. Mommsen and other historians for hiding conservative politics beneath an ideology of objectivity and contributing to the generally antidemocratic politics of the German historical profession before 1945. Peter Burke has argued that many varieties of social history flourished in the eighteenth century only to be excluded by Ranke's narrow preoccupation with diplomatic and political history. Rudolf Vierhaus has analyzed how Ranke's political conservatism made it impossible for him to come to terms with the class society and proletarian politics undermining the traditional social order, a limitation that carried over into his historical writing, which failed to conceptualize the novel social history of his own time. His narratives lack anything comparable to Karl Marx's analyses of capitalism or Alexis de Tocqueville's grappling with democracy in America. A distinctive feature of Ranke's work, however, is its cosmopolitanism. He published a history of Serbia, wrote about Turkish diplomacy, and immersed himself in French and English history; although he wrote about individual nations and states he strove to establish their significance, as Leonard Krieger has emphasized, within a unified world history. His works remain timely for their synthesis of sympathetic imagination and dedication to empirical accuracy, qualities that make them enduring classics for the historical profession.

See alsoBismarck, Otto von; Germany; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; History; Mommsen, Theodor; Nietzsche, Friedrich.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Ranke, Leopold von. Das Briefwerk. Edited and with an introduction by Walther Peter Fuchs. Hamburg, 1949.

——Über die Epochen der Neueren Geschichte and Das Politische Gespräch und Andere Schriften Zur Wissenschaftslehre. New York, 1979.

——Sämmtliche Werke, 3rd ed. Leipzig, 1867–1890.

Secondary Sources

Dove, Alfred. "Ranke, Leopold v." Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1875–1912), vol. 27, 242–269. Reprint, Berlin, 1967–1971.

Iggers, Georg G., and James M. Powell, eds. Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline. Syracuse, N.Y., 1990.

Krieger, Leonard. Ranke: The Meaning of History. Chicago, 1977.

Liebersohn, Harry. "German Historical Thought from Ranke to Weber: The Primacy of Politics." In A Companion to Western Historical Thought, edited by Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza, 166–184. Oxford, U.K., 2002.

Meinecke, Friedrich. Cosmopolitanism and the National State. Translated by Robert B. Kimber. Introduction by Felix Gilbert. Princeton, N.J., 1970.

Mommsen, Wolfgang J., ed. Leopold von Ranke und die moderne Geschichtswissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1988.

Vierhaus, Rudolf. Ranke und die Soziale Welt. Münster/Westfalen, 1957.

Harry Liebersohn

Leopold von Ranke

Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) was a German historian and one of the most prolific and universal modern historians of his time. He imparted his expertise and methodology through the introduction of the seminar as an informal but intensive teaching device.

Leopold von Ranke was born on Dec. 21, 1795, in the rural Thuringian town of Wiehe, which then belonged to electoral Saxony. Although Ranke was born into the era of the French Revolution, his bourgeois, small-town, generally well-ordered, and peaceful background and upbringing did not provide much contact with the violent events of the times. After receiving his early education at local schools in Donndorf and Pforta, he attended the University of Leipzig (1814-1818), where he continued his studies in ancient philology and theology.

In the fall of 1818 Ranke accepted a teaching position at the gymnasium (high school) in Frankfurt an der Oder. His teaching assignments in world history and ancient literature, for which he disdained the use of handbooks and readily available prepared texts, as well as the contemporary events of the period, led him to turn to original sources and to a concern for the empirical understanding of history in its totality.

Making use of materials from the Westermannsche Library in Frankfurt and from the Royal Library in Berlin, Ranke produced his first work, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker (1824; Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples), which earned him a professorial appointment at the University of Berlin in 1825, where he was to remain for the rest of his life except for extended research trips abroad.

Although this first work was still lacking in style, organization, and mastery of its overflowing detail, it had particular significance because it contained a technical appendix in which Ranke established his program of critical scholarship—"to show what actually happened"—by analyzing the sources used, by determining their originality and likely veracity, and by evaluating in the same light the writings of previous historians "who appear to be the most celebrated" and who have been considered "the foundation of all the later works on the beginning of modern history." His scathing criticism of such historians led him to accept only contemporary documents, such as letters from ambassadors and others immediately involved in the course of historical events, as admissible primary evidence.

With Ranke's move to Berlin, the manuscripts of Venetian ministerial reports of the Reformation period became available to him and served as the basis for his second work, Fürsten und Völker von Süd-Europa (1827; Princes and Peoples of Southern Europe), which was republished in his complete works as Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (vols. 35 and 36; The Ottomans and the Spanish Monarchy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries).

Travels and Research

The limited collection in Berlin whetted Ranke's appetite to investigate other European libraries and archives, especially those of Italy. Armed with a travel stipend from the Prussian government, he proceeded at first to Vienna, where a large part of the Venetian archives had been housed after the Austrian occupation of Venetia. A letter of introduction brought acquaintance with Friedrich von Gentz, who, through intercession with Prince Metternich, not only opened the Viennese archives to Ranke but also brought him into immediate contact with the day-to-day politics of the Hapsburg court. During his stay in Vienna he wrote Die serbische Revolution (1829), republished in an expanded version as Serbien und die Türkei im 19. Jahrhundert (1879; Serbia and Turkey in the 19th Century).

In 1828 Ranke traveled to Italy, where he spent 3 successful years of study visiting various public and private libraries and archives, although the Vatican Library remained closed to him. During this period he wrote a treatise, Venice in the Sixteenth Century (published 1878), and collected material for what is generally considered his masterpiece, Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1834-1836; The Roman Popes, Their Church and State in the 16th and 17th Centuries).

Returning from Italy in 1831, Ranke soon became involved in the publication of a journal designed to combat French liberal influence, which had alarmed the Prussian government in the aftermath of the revolutionary events of 1830. Although the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, with Ranke as editor and chief contributor, contained some of the best political thought published in Germany during this time, it lacked the polemical quality and anticipated success of a political fighting journal and was discontinued in 1836. In the same year Ranke was appointed full professor and devoted the rest of his life to the task of teaching and scholarly work. A Protestant counterpart to his History of the Popes was published as Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839-1847; German History during theEra of the Reformation), which was largely based on the reports of the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt.

Last Works

With the following works Ranke rounded out his historical treatment of the major powers: Neun Bücher preussischer Geschichte (1847-1848; Nine Books of Prussian History); Französische Geschichte, vornehmlich im 16. and 17. Jahrhundert (1852-1861; French History, Primarily in the 16th and 17th Centuries); and Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1859-1868; English History, Primarily in the 16th and 17th Centuries). Other works, dealing mainly with German and Prussian history during the 18th century, followed in the 1870s.

During the last years of his life Ranke, now in his 80s and because of failing sight requiring the services of readers and secretaries, embarked upon the composition of his Weltgeschichte (1883-1888; World History), published in nine volumes. The last two were published posthumously from manuscripts of his lectures. He died in Berlin on May 23, 1886.

The complete work of Ranke is difficult to assess. Not many of his works achieved the artistic high point of The Roman Popesor its appeal for the general reader. Yet there is hardly a chapter in his total enormous production which could be considered without value. His harmonious nature shunned emotion and violent passion, and he can be faulted less for what he wrote than for what he left unwritten. His approach to history emphasized the politics of the courts and of great men but neglected the common people and events of everyday life; he limited his investigation to the political history of the states in their universal setting. Ranke combined, as few others, the qualities of the trailblazing scholar and the devoted, conscientious, and innovative teacher.

Further Reading

Considerable biographical information is in T. H. Von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years (1950). A comprehensive and fair study which emphasizes an evaluation of Ranke's major works and provides a useful bibliography is G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913; rev. ed. 1952); it also discusses Ranke's critics and pupils and provides a chapter on the Prussian school of historical scholarship that paralleled Ranke's career. An assessment critical of Ranke as historian appears in James W. Thompson, A History of Historical Writing, vol. 2 (1942). Historian Pieter Geyl discusses Ranke in his Debates with Historians (1955; rev. ed. 1958). Carlo Antoni, From History to Sociology: The Transition in German Historical Thinking (1940; trans. 1959), and Ferdinand Schevill, Six Historians (1956), contain chapters on Ranke. For general background see Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (1968).

Additional Sources

Krieger, Leonard, Ranke: the meaning of history, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. □

RANKE, LEOPOLD VON

Historian; b. Wiehe (Thuringia), Germany, Dec. 21, 1795; d. Berlin, May 23, 1886. He descended from a long line of Lutheran pastors and studied theology and classical philology at the University of Leipzig (1814–18), where his reading of Thucydides and Barthold Niebuhr turned his main interest to history. After a long period of doubt, Ranke had moved by 1818 toward a synthesis of Lutheran mysticism, Neoplatonism, humanism as propounded by Goethe and Herder, and the pantheism of Fichte. While teaching at a secondary school (gymnasium) at Frankfort on the Oder (1818–25), he completed the first part of his Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker (1824). This won him a professorship at the University of Berlin (1825–71). His accomplishments included the discovery of the invaluable records of the Venetian ambassadors; lectures on the history of Italian poetry (1833), which inspired a new school of historiography; and joint editorship of the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, founded in 1833 to combat revolutionary extremism. He was named official Prussian historiographer (1841), served as president of the Munich Historical Commission beginning in 1858, and gained the Prussian prefix of nobility "von" (1865).

Ranke was the most influential and widely read historian of his century, noted for pioneer work in the systematic exploitation of archival sources and in the creation of the modern scientific approach to history. The "Columbus of modern history," as Lord Acton termed him, took as the apt motto of his extremely industrious life, Labor ipse voluptas. His prodigious scholarly output spanned modern European history and continued for six decades until the eve of his death, which found him, half blind, at work on the sixth volume of a world history, begun in his 82d year. Although many sections of his works are outdated, many of his profound observations in them remain valid. His aim was to write history "as it actually happened," avoiding political partisanship, nationalistic narrowness, moral judgments, and religious enthusiasm. His universalistic and unitary view of European history was admirable, although not devoid of his conservative Prussian political commitment. To him the driving forces of modern history have been the European states. He was a leading exponent of historicism and rejected the notion of progress. History to him was a hieroglyph of God, and Christian hope and belief in Divine Providence were dominant in his outlook. Each era, he believed, is directed to God and is fulfilled in itself, not in later generations. He tended, however, to center history too much on great personages and to concentrate on diplomatic questions to the neglect of social and juridical ones.

Chief among Ranke's books were his three volumes on Prussian history (1847–48), five volumes on French history (1852–61), and seven volumes on English history (1859–68). His five-volume history of Germany in the Reformation period (1839–47) revealed a Lutheran sympathy evident elsewhere in his treatment of religious topics. Ranke first won fame with his three-volume history of the popes during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1834–39), which he extended to include Vatican Council I (1869–70) in the 6th edition (1874) and later ones. It was based on extensive archival research, although it did not include the Vatican Archives, which were not then opened to scholars. Although it overemphasized papal political and diplomatic activity, it was a masterpiece of historiography and raised this subject from its hitherto polemical level. Protestants criticized it as too favorable to Catholics; Rome placed it on the Index (Sept. 16, 1841).

Bibliography: Sämtliche Werke, 54 v. (Leipzig 1867–90); ed. p. joachimsen et al. (Munich 1952–); Das Briefwerk, ed. w. p. fuchs (Hamburg 1949); Neue Briefe, ed. b. hoeft and h. herzfeld (Hamburg 1949). h. f. helmolt, L. von Rankes Leben und Wirken (Leipzig 1921). g. p. gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (2d ed. London 1952). f. schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, 4 v. (Freiburg 1927–37) 3:86–101. t. h. von laue, Leopold Ranke, the Formative Years (Princeton 1950). h. von srbik, Geist und Geschichte vom Deutschen Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart, 2 v. (Munich 1950–51) 1:239–292. h. heuser, L. von Rankes protestantisches Geschichtsbild (Zurich 1950). c. hinrichs, Ranke und Die Geschichtstheologie der Goethezeit (Göttingen 1954). f. baethgen, "Zur geistigen Entwicklungsgeschichte Rankes in seiner Frühzeit," Deutschland und Europa, ed. w. conze (Düsseldorf 1951) 337–353. f. meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus, ed. c. hinrichs (3d ed. Munich 1959). h. lutz, "Ranke und das Papsttum" Rivista di storia della Chiesa iri Italia 16 (1962): 439–450. k. kupisch, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7 v. (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–65) 5:778–779. s. skalweit, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 10 v. (Freiburg 1957–65) 8:990–991.

[s. j. tonsor]