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Von Ranke and others (1 Viewer)

Jos

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Please help me!
I am having trouble interpreting the notes my hist ex teacher gave me on Von Ranke. I am about to do half-yearly on him and prupose but do not know what to write. Can anyone help?
 

Sarah168

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hmmm it would help if u showed us the notes that ur teacher gave u. or do u just want a general explanation on ranke?
 

Jos

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a general explanation on ranke would be hugely appreciated! The notes are quite excessive, I'm sure I'm not meant to know it all.
 

Sarah168

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i can't be bothered typing up a long winded explanation (sorry) cos i type pretty slowly but maybe u can get ahold of the warren book called "history and historians" i think...well yeah that has a general overview of ranke that is simple to understand
 

Plebeian

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Von Ranke was the founder of the empiricist (scientific) school of historical thought. Prior to von Ranke, there was no clear distinction between history and literature. He was probably the first person to emphasise that history was a factual inquiry into the past, rather than just retelling stories without knowledge of whether they were really true (eg. Herodotus).

He stressed:

- the separation of the historian from his/her subject, ie don't interpret the evidence by modern standards, but extract true information about the past. Look at the sources in terms of the values the people who wrote them had, not the values you have.

- most attention should be paid to primary sources (he mainly used reports of Vatican ambassadors) in order to determine a correct historical record

- the historian should be looking for truth, rather than entertainment value.


His most well-known quote is that history wants only to show "wie es eiglentich gewesen", what actually happened, rather than provide the reader with moral lessons or entertaining stories. (That passage is in the BOS book of readings if you have it).

Hope this helps...
 

Jos

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Thanks so much! Unfortunately I had already taken my exam but for anyone else stuying Ranke that is a really clear summary....better than the stuff I came up with. Till next time :)
 

Jennibeans

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use that classic quote from him
"to history has been assigned the office of judging the past and of instructing the account for the benefit of future ages. It seems to show wie es eigentlich gewsen. let us know if you need any more i do have notes on him that i could send you if you needed them
 

Demandred

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Sounds exactly what I got after summarising "In Defence of History" techie :).
 

sugared plum

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Originally posted by Jennibeans
use that classic quote from him
"to history has been assigned the office of judging the past and of instructing the account for the benefit of future ages. It seems to show wie es eigentlich gewsen. let us know if you need any more i do have notes on him that i could send you if you needed them
dude you got the quote seriously wrong, it goes "To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire: It wants only to show what actually happened."
Ranke does NOT think the purpose of history is to judge the past. See Richard Evans for more stuff on the translation of wie es eigentlich gewesen.
 

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