German Historicism and Its Cricis

German Historicism and Its CrisisAuthor(s): Colin T. LoaderSource: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 48, No. 3, On Demand Supplement (Sep., 1976),pp. 85-119Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1878811 .

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German Historicism and Its Crisis

Colin T. Loader

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

In 1924, a young Hungarian immigrant named Karl Mannheim

announced his advocacy of German Historicism with the

following statement:

Historicism has developed into an intellectual force of extra-ordinary significance; it epitomizes our Welt- anschauung. The Historicist principle not only organizes like an invisible hand, the work of the cultural sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), but also permeates everyday thinking...For in everyday life too we apply concepts with Historicist overtones, for example, "capitalism," "social movement," "cultural process," etc. These forces are grasped and understood as potentialities, constantly in flux, moving from some point in time to another; already on the level of everyday reflection, we seek to determine the position of our present within a temporal framework, to tell by the cosmic clock of history what time it is.2

Why did Mannheim praise Historicism as the world view

best able to meet the needs of the times? His answer was

that only Historicism could deal with a world in flux; it

was a philosophy which could make sense of "forces...

moving from some point in time to another." He believed

that Historicism could provide a Weltanschauung, a system

of meaning (Sinn) and valuation, for the chaotic German

scene. However, Mannheim's optimistic statement came at

85



a time when the future of the doctrine of Historicism was

very much uncertain. Many people, even some Historicists,

had begun to doubt whether Historicism could provide a

system of values for the Germany of 1924. This crisis of

Historicism, which my essay will examine, stemmed directly

from the belief, voiced by Mannheim, that history provided

more than an academic method and a certain body of data --

that history, together with philosophy and the other cul-

tural sciences, provided a world view, a system of values.

But this belief (which made history Historicism) was

accompanied by the realization that the doctrine of His-

toricism was essentially relativistic, in other words, by

the doubt that science could actually provide some standard

of valuation. It was the relativization of values, then,

that lay at the heart of the crisis of Historicism.

I

Georg Iggers has written that one of the main

characteristics of German historical thought was "Anti-

normativitgt," the rejection of the concept of thinking in

normative terms. He means that Historicism denied the

possibility of universal and eternal values for mankind,

thus making the values of any part of mankind unchal-

lengeable by any other part. This rejection potentially

entailed a radical relativism, which could be avoided

only by a faith in the meaningfulness of history. When

86



this faith broke down, the crisis of Historicism re-

sulted.3 Iggers' interpretation follows that of the

Historicist Ernst Troeltsch, who wrote that the crisis of

Historicism itarises from the internal movement (Gang) and

essence of history itself... .Here we see everything in the

flow of becoming, in the endless and ever new individual-

ization, in the determination by the past and in the

direction of an unknown future."4 Troeltsch's answer to

this temporal relativism was a restoration of faith in the

meaning fulness of history.5

The interpretation of Iggers and Troeltsch is basi-

cally correct, and the purpose of this essay is not to

refute it. However, there is an important question which

their interpretation does not satisfactorily answer with-

out some modification, namely, why did the crisis of

Historicism occur when it did? Since the problem of

relativism was inherent in Historicism from the very be-

ginning, why did Historicists not perceive a crisis until

the early 1920's? After all, Ranke had written that each

epoch was immediate to God, a blatantly relativistic

statement. And men like Treitschke and Droysen had

similar concerns.6 The answer to the above questions is

that the crisis arose not from theoretical problems in-

herent in the doctrine of Historicism, but rather from the

inadequacy of the doctrine for solving the very real

87



problems arisina from Germany's collapse in World War One

and the establishmeint of the Weimar Republic. Or put

another way, the crisis arose not because of the Histori-

cists' inability to guarantee the existence of a universal

set of values, but rather because of their inability to

guarantee the existence of a unity of values for the German

nation in the 1920's. Thus, although the Historicists

expressed their crisis in temDoral terms, in terms of the

dissolution of eternal truths in the flow of history, the

crisis was in fact spatial, resulting from their antipathy

to a truly pluralistic Germany, one which was not an

organic community of values. While Antinormativitgt in

regards to universal history was an important ingredient

of Historicism, it was not that factor, but rather the

intense dedication to a normative concept within a defined

limited space that lay behind the feelings of uncertainty.

Since the categories of "temporal" and "spatial" are

important to my essay, I will attempt to make clear what

I mean by them. A temporal relationship is one between

different units of time, between entities existing within

different units of time, or between entities representing

different units of time. Thus the notions of "ancients

and moderns" and "the generation gap" refer to essentially

temporal relationships. Spatial relationships, however,

exist between objects within a shared cross-section of

88



time. The notions of "balance of power" and "class con-

flict" point to spatial relationships. Of course, spatial

relationships have temporal elements (e.g. the temporal

process leading up to a civil war) and vice-versa (e.g.

the shared space of the generations involved in genera-

tional conflict), but these secondary elements do not

define the basic relationship.

The field in which a spatial relationship obtains, in

other words, a cross-section of time, I will call the

"spatial realm." This term, however, must be qualified.

Here I refer to the "meaningful spatial realm," the spatial

field in which a person expects his values to find vali-

dation. The two spatial fields can be, but need not be,

identical. In the case of the more optimistic thinkers of

the Enlightenment, the two were identical; these men

assumed that values, like the laws of physical science,

were universal. Such men, wrote Troeltsch, "believed in

universal ends common to all mankind -- in Humanity, the

cause of Natural Law, and the moral rules of Nature."7

The German Historicists, reacting to the Enlightenment,

advocated the restriction of the meaningful spatial realm

to individual nations or peoples (V8lker), a restriction

reflected in their replacement of the more universal con-

cept of Zeitgeist with that of Volkseist._8 However, the

fact that the meaningful spatial realmi was not conceived

89



to include all of the spatial realm, that the values of the

German Volk might be in conflict with those of other

V8lker, did not trigger a crisis of values among early

Historicists. As Heinrich von Treitschke stated: "I write

Conly7 for Germans."9

The Historicists perceived their meaningful spatial

realm, the German nation, to be organic, not only in its

relationship to the historical process as a whole, but

more importantly for this essay, in its own internal

organization. The meaningful spatial realm was viewed as

an organic indivisible whole rather than as a mere sum of

individual units or parts. In this belief, the Histori-

cists stood opposed to the mechanistic philosophy associ-

ated with the English and French Enlightenment. For the

mechanistic view, epitomized by the contract theory, the

basic unit was the autonomous individual. To understand

spatial relationships, one first had to discover what the

basic unit, the individual, was all about, and then

determine the causal relationships of these individuals

with one another. One understood the whole in terms of the

parts. Further, the relationship of the parts was

described in terms of universal laws; it was not perceived

as something unique. The Historicists rejected this

mechanistic view as abstract and potentially chaotic.

This rejection can be seen in the following passage by the

90



Historicist Georg von Below, who traced the origins of his

school to the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment.

If the historians of the Enlightenment without exception operated with the actions of individuals, then the movement which they essentially had in mind was like the reciprocal collisions and forces of atoms. The Romantic, on the other hand, envisions the personality as being singularly distinct, the individual state, the individual epoch not as a sum of atoms, but as a true Individuality (Individualitht). His goal is above all0understanding in terms of the whole (aus dem Ganzen).

The concept of Individuality, on which Below placed so

much importance, is crucial to the understanding of His-

toricism. Below was undoubtedly correct in tracing the

concept to the idealism of the German Romantics rather

than to the more logical and systematic Hegelian concept

of Individuality.11 The Romantic use of the term was also

emphasized by Troeltsch, who defined an Individuality as

"the particular embodiment from time to time assumed by the

Divine Spirit, whether in individual persons or in the

superpersonal organizations of community life." 12 Perhaps

further clarification of the concept can come from Ranke's

description of the form of Individuality with which he was

most concerned, the state. Ranke admitted that certain

general and analytic categories, i.e. monarchy, aristocracy,

democracy, could be applied to the state. However, he

believed that this "formal" type of analysis was only of

limited value.

It seems to me... that we must determine between formal and real aspects. The formal aspect only covers

91



generalities, the real covers peculiarities, the living elements. Certain forms of constitution, particularly those stipulating a limitation of personal powers and the definition of class relationships, may be necessary to all states. But they do not constitute the source of life which alone gives content to all forms. There is an element which makes a state not a subdivision of general categories, but a living thing, an individual, an unique self.... The primary fact... is the unique spiritual existence of the individual state, its principle,...its inner life.13

Individualities then were organic "basic unities" (Grund-

einheiten) of history, to use Troeltsch's term, charac-

terized by their uniqueness (Einmaligkeit) and originality

(Ursprunglichkeit) and not susceptible to meaningful sub-

division.14 Thus the essential nature of these spiritual

unities could not be exactly, or causally, explained or

quantified. This did not mean that the Historicists

shunned causal analyses, but simply that they qualified

the latterst effectiveness. Causal analyses, they felt,

could not penetrate all the way to the essence of an

Individuality. This essence could only be grasped through

understanding (Verstehen) and intuition (Ahnen). Eduard

Spranger wrote of the historical method:

It is a matter of... a reproduction (Nachbilden), con- summated through the powers of imagination, of external and internal life-forms of the past. And this power of imagination is... not an abstract, intellectual shell, but rather a complete consciousness of life in which the totality of all spiritual acts, forms of experience and manners of reaction demonstrate the same interplay as they do in life itself. That is the organ with which we grasp history.15

92



If Individualities' essences could never be exactly ex-

plained, the same was true for their relationships with

one another. The relationship of a person to a state or

an epoch, all Individualities, could not be grasped in any

logical or exact way. In fact, the understanding of such

a relationship was based largely on the faith of the His-

toricist in the world's basic harmony and meaning. He

believed that a spiritual unity, perceivable to some

degree but not exactly demonstrable, existed behind the

variety and finiteness of historical Individualities.

The lack of exactness and the potential relativism of

historical knowledge were integral parts of Historicism,

even in its most optimistic moments. Erich Rothacker has

written that the golden age of the German cultural sciences

lay between Herder's statement in 1774 that each nation

had the focal point of its happiness within itself and

Ranke's statement in 1854 that each epoch was immediate to

God and its value rested upon itself.16 The union of these

two principles, a union which Rothacker saw as the basic

concept of the Historical School and indeed of the entire

spiritual development of German learning during the nine-

teenth century, was really a combination of spatial and

temporal relativism. However, this relativism never

challenged the basic faith in the unity of history and, in

fact, aided that faith, by eliminating the need for the

93



organic unity to be actualized in universal form or laws

as some thinkers of the Enlighternment had demanded.17

This faith in the organic unity of the historical

process continued in the mainstream of Historicist

writings throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries. Even though the discipline of history became

more specialized during the course of that period, there

was always a belief that an organic unity integrated

specialized research.18 At the beginning of the twentieth

century, there were complaints that specialists had closed

their eyes to the larger organic picture, but this was

accompanied by the belief that the organic unity continued

to exist even if it was neglected.19

But again we come to the important question: why

should this faith be challenged so strongly in the 1920's?

To answer this question, as I have indicated above, we

must move away from the Historicists' view of the his-

torical process in general to that of the crucial relation-

ship between two forms of Individuality, the individual

person and the meaningful spatial realm, the German nation.

It was only when the Historicist view of this latter

relationship proved to be untenable during the Weimar

Republic that a real sense of crisis appeared in the

Historicist camp. The questioning of this basic organi

;relationship led to a questioning of all organic relation-

94



ships and to a questioning of the unity of the whole

historical process.

The Historicist conception of this limited spatial

relationship, while always organic, can be characterized

by two types of organicism. These types, however, cannot

be equated with camps within the movement. Indeed, one

often finds both types present within the same thinker's

writings. When I characterize certain thinkers as be-

longing to one of the two types, it simply means that that

type was more dominant than the other within their works.

The first type of limited spatial organicism, which I

will call corporate, emphasized the political character of

the meaningful spatial realm to the point that the state

was viewed as the prime expression of the national spirit.

For the Historicists in whose writings this type pre-

dominated, men like Ranke, Treitschke and Below, the state

was the most important Individuality. While none of these

thinkers denied that the individual person was also an

Individuality, their prime emphasis was on the individual

as a citizen, that is, as a participant in the "person-

ality" of the state. It was in this frame of mind that

Ranke wrote: "All states that count in the world and make

themselves felt are motivated by special tendencies of

their own... [which] are of a spiritual nature, and the

personalities of all citizens are determined, nay in-

95



eradically molded by them.'20 Treitschke added:

The state has a personality, primarily in the Juridical and secondly in the political moral sense... In state treaties it is the will of the state which is expressed, not the personal desires of the individuals who conclude them.... Roman law was not fortunate in its develcpment of the conception of legal personality, for...[it] assumes that a person in the legal sense must be merely an individual citizen. That is crude materialism.21

Below correctly noted that this emphasis on the state

meant that Ranke and the members of Treitschke's Prussian

School were more united than separated in their views. And

in the same spirit, Below cited approvingly Alfred Dove's

contention that the state was the most important of man's

cultural products.22 Even though some of these historians

disapproved of the use of a biological analogy as too

materialistic in describing the state-individual relation-

ship, their views approached just such an analogy. The

individual who defined his identity in terms of goals out-

side of or contrary to those of the larger organism (the

nation, the state) was considered cancerous.

The second type of limited spatial organicism was

much like the larger temporal view, that is, monadic.

This type, found in the writings of men like Wilhelm von

Humboldt, Spranger, Troeltsch and Meinecke, emphasized the

cultural character of the meaningful spatial realm and saw

the creative individual, especially the scientist and

artist, as the prime Individuality. As Helmut Schelsky

96



has noted, these men assumed that a basic normative harmony

existed within the meaningful spatial realm, and in this

sense their views were definitely organic; however, they

believed that this harmony was achieved tnrough individual

activity.23 It is not surprising then that many of these

men made important contributions to the development of the

German theory of education (Bildunp), which emphasized the

cultural personality and the development of the individual's

full potential. Humboldt wrote:

True reason can desire no other condition for man than one in which not only does every individual enjoy the most unlimited freedom to develop himself in his par- ticularity but also does physical nature receive no other form from human hands but what every individual, limited only by his force and his right, gives to it from his own free will according to the standard of his need and inclination.24

Troeltsch echoed this sentiment in writing:

What German Bildun seeks is...basically nothing other than...UaQ concentration and simplification by means of a collection around a distinct focal point and a greater proximity to the elementary and instinctive features of our own self. It is not a question of the strengthening of national feeling or the creation of a political sense.25

Thus the monadic type, in contrast to the corporate type,

was individualistic. However, with the exception of the

early Humboldt, none of the monadic thinkers was greatly

concerned with the threat of the state to the development

of the individual's potential. This was due to their

organicist view of the meaningful spatial realm, their

97



faith in the basic harmony between the "objective Geist"

of that realm and the "subjective Geist," the soul of the

individual.26 In this light, their monadic individualism

was very different from the individualism of Western

liberal thinkers, who emphasized the potential threat of

the state to the individual. In fact, the monadic indi-

vidualism of this group of thinkers was closer to the

corporate organicism of the other Historicists than it was

to classical Western liberalism due to the organicist

idealist premises of both types of Historicism.

Both types opposed what they saw to be the basic

Western type -- the individual who sought to satisfy his

own material needs and who operated according to Bentham's

calculus of pleasure and pain. 27 Such a person was not

practicing true individualism, but rather mere subjectivism.

The individual championed by Manchesterism was not a true

Individuality since he lacked the organic and ideal unity

which characterized such an entity. Instead he was a mere

abstraction, like the classical economists' "economic man."

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this

realm of material interests and increasingly abstract

relationships was designated by the term "society." The

most damning characteristic of society for the Historicists

was its lack of organic unity. Treitschke wrote:

Anyone can see for himself that society, unlike the state, is intangible.. .Society... has no single will, and we

98



have no duties to fulfill towards it....Society is com- posed of all manner of warring interests, which if left to themselves would soon lead to a bellutr, omnium contra omnes, for its natural tendency is toward conflict and no suggestion of any aspiration after unity is to be found in it. 28

Thus in the eyes of most Historicists, society, were it

actually to exist as an autonomous entity, would be a

chaos of individuals seeking to fulfill material interests

with no organic bonds to give them meaning and ethical

orientation. The push-pull of the marketplace was no more

able to provide adequate values for men than was the push-

pull of the objects of physical science. In fact, through-

out this period, Historicists believed that society could

not be taken as a complete and distinct entity, but simply

as an aspect of human relationships, of ethical mutuality

(Gemeinsamkeit).29 The totality of these relationships,

the organic unity of the meaningful spatial realm, had its

basis in the sphere of Geist. Georg Simmel correctly

observed that the Historicist antagonism toward sociology

was based on this conception of society (the object of

sociology). Simmel wrote:

Existence, we hear, is an exclusive attribute of individuals (Individuen), their qualities and experiences. "Society, by contrast, is an abstraction. Although indispensable for practical purposes and certainly very useful for a rough and preliminary survey of the phenomena that surround us, it is no real object. It does not exist outside and in addition to the individuals (Einzelwesen) and the processes among them. After each of these individuals is investigated in his natural and historical characteristics, nothing is left by way of subject matter for a particular science.30

99



Historicists feared that the perception of society as an

actual entity would weaken the organic spiritual unity

which stood behind it.31 Most Historicists agreed with

Gustav Schmoller that while this abstract sociology would

continue to play a role in the teachings of parties and

classes (those bodies in which material interests were

organized and promoted), it could never play a role in the

scientific and learned world. Even the discipline of

national economy (Volkswirtschaftlehre) had to be a "moral-

political science" with a historical and ethical conception

of state and society.32

Before 1919, the Historicist movement did not view

the conflict with mechanistic individualistic thought as a

true crisis, that is, as a breakdown of the basic premises

of Historicism. Rather this challenge was seen as an

external force. Marxism was not even given the credibility

of a legitimate academic philosophy, and positivism was

something that had arisen outside of the meaningful spatial

realm. Comte and Buckle spoke for Frenchmen and English-

men, not for Germans. Movements from within the German

cultural sphere, i.e. that of the Viennese Menger, were

successfully isolated. The most serious challenge, since

it came not only from within the meaningful spatial realm,

but also from within the historical profession itself, was

that of Karl Lamprecht, which was a resounding failure.

100



Indeed, the Lamprechtstreit demonstrated a solidarity in

German historical thinking rather than a crisis.

II

At the turn of the century, Schmoller proclaimed in

his inaugural address as rector of the University of Berlin

that Marxism had no real scientific validity; and he jus-

tified the exclusion of Marxists from the university on

the grounds that they could not be good scientists.33

Schmoller could do this because the university and its

elite stood as the unchallenged authority of what was good

science, and indeed what was good within the meaningful

spatial realm.34

In Weimar Germany, this authority in questions of

validity no longer existed.35 With the defeat of Germany

in World War One and the establishment of the Republic

the postulated organic unity seemed threatened with dis-

solution. The advent of the Republic saw the institution-

alization of pluralism in Germany, at least in the view of

the Historicists. Parliamentary democracy for them meant

"party democracy." Their formula was simple: the parties

were institutions formed to realize the material interests

of specific social groups; these interests were the product

of the chaotic social sphere and not of the organic sphere

of Geist. Hence, a state which was based on the inter-

action of parties was one which subordinated the sphere of

101



Geist to the sphere of material interests, one which

subordinated unity to chaos.

This antipathy toward the pluralism of the Republic

was reinforced by the fact that the Social Democrats were

the strongest party at the beginning of the Republic. This

party, while reformist in deed, remained radical, that is,

Marxist, in word. And Marxism was a world view which

described society and its meaning in terms of material in-

terests. For the orthodox Marxist, the sphere of Geist

merely reflected the socio-economic sphere, which was

characterized by the conflict of interests. For the

Historicists, Marxism amounted to a mechanistic philosophy

of chaos.

Both Marxism and party democracy rejected the elitist

ideas of Historicism. The Historicists believed that since

the meaningful spatial realm was an organic unity of shared

values, and since that unity was provided by the sphere

of Geist, then the elite who interpreted the values of

Geist spoke for the entire meaningful spatial realm.

Marxist theory, on the other hand, relegated this elite to

the role of representative of a specific interest group

and, therefore, held that any claims of the academic elite

to speak for the entire meaningful spatial realm were

spurious and ideological.

102



The demise of the traditional political elite, which

had been charged with the defense of the spiritual unity

of the nation, naturally caused uneasy feelings among the

cultural elite, among whom the Historicist world view pre-

dominated. For the first time, Historicism was forced to

deal with a socio-political reality which rejected its

premises. Here was the root of the crisis.

Still, not all Historicists perceived a "crisis" in

the 1920's. This perception consisted of a recognition of

the internal weaknesses in the doctrine of Historicism and,

at the same time, an unwillingness to abandon its basic

premises. One group36 of Historicists, the largest, did

not perceive the weaknesses. A second group, the smallest,

was willing to abandon the crucial premises, that history

was an ethical concept and that the meaningf'ul spatial

realm formed an organic unity of valuation. This group in

effect ceased to be Historicists (even though they remained

committed to the historical method). It is the third group,

whom I shall call the "crisis Historicists," who are the

focal point of this section. However, before examining

their problems, we must first briefly discuss the other

two groups.

The first group of Historicists remained hostile to

Weimar democracy throughout their lives. Below spoke for

this group when he denounced democracy as "the devastation

103



and waste of the nation" (volksverheerend und -verzehrend).37

Its members believed the problems of Historicism were not

due to a weakness in the doctrine itself, but rather to an

attack from without, an attack that could be repelled.

They viewed the Republic in the same way as they viewed

England during the war -- as something foreign to the

German spirit. They advocated a corporate, statist or-

ganicism, a program for rallying traditional elements

around a monarchist flag in order to cleanse the body

politic of democratic forces infecting it. The following

poem, delivered before an academic audience in 1920,

reflects these views.

Let not Bismarck die within yout Don't give it up, the banner attainedl Will yourself, German landt Will yourself, master misfortunel Bismarck was dead, is no longer deadt In your soul, which awakes, 38 He arises for you, returns and lives!

Thus there was no feeling of the need to reformulate his-

torical problems, to rethink the theory of valuation,

which was so important a part of the Historicist doctrine.39

All one could do was simply hope and wait for the Resur-

rection of the Bismarckian state.

Thinkers of the second group, men like Max Weber and

Otto Hintze, denied the possibility of returning to those

golden days of the iron chancellor. However, they not

only rejected the corporate statist organicism of the

104



first group, but the monadic type of organicism. Their

message was contained in Weber's famous address, t"Science

as a Vocation:' "'Scientific' pleading is meaningless in

principle because the various value spheres of tne world

stand in irreconcilable conflict with each other."40

While Hintze's position was not quite as radical (by His-

toricist standards) as Weber's in that he held that some

kind of cultural syntnesis was possible, he qualified

this conviction to such an extent that he removed himself

from the Historicist camp. He wrote that Historicism

should not try to "overcome itself," in other words, that

it should abandon the task which had precipitated the

crisis in the first place -- the establishment of a stan-

dard of values for the meaningful spatial realm. Hintze

wrote:

Only the ethical will can overcome Historicism, and as soon as we are forced to deal with the ethical will, we are forced to consider the problem of value as well, a problem we have tried to exclude from our methodological discussion up to this point.... In the interests of a clear methodology, I should prefer to conceive of His- toricism as nothing more than another mode of thought. another set of methodological categories.41

This group, while highly respected by their fellow academics,

nonetheless were essentially outsiders within the univer-

sity community.42

The third group, the "crisis Historicists," occupied

a position between the first two. Like the Weber group,

105



they realized that the Second Reich was gone forever and

rejected the corporate statist position. Meinecke wrote

in 1918: "Further socialization will be accompanied by

further democratization, the one as inescapable as the

other."43 They were also very sympathetic to the disci-

pline of sociology.44 But while the crisis Historicists

were not political reactionaries, they did continue to

believe in the intellectual-spiritual unity of the German

nation. Spranger wrote:

The most interesting aspect of the structure of the philosophy of history is the coalescence of scientific objectivity with a lively affirmation of values; a state of affairs which, in opposition to Max Weber's attempt to prune away the cultural sciences' role in valuation, showed even more strongly that such a role was at the very roots of the cultural sciences. Here we agree with Ernst Troeltsch, who, in his "Historicism," called special attention to this reciprocity between historical consciousness and a living standard of values.45

Despite their democratic convictions, which they shared

(either from the heart or simply from reason) with the

members of Weber's group, the crisis Historicists continued

in their idealist and organicist world view. The problem

in these men's eyes was how to instill in the German people

a new consciousness of the values which united them all.

Again Meinecke: "Intellectual and spiritual aristocracy is

by no means incompatible with political democracy....The

values of our spiritual aristocracy...have to be carried

into the political democracy, in order to refine it and

protect it against degeneration."46

106



The crisis Historicists assumed that the personality,

if allowed to develop to its full potential, would auto-

matically be in accord with the objective Geist of the

nation. Essentially they envisioned a relationship between

socio-political and cultural-intellectual life similar to

that of pre-Bismarckian Germany, in which the prime respon-

sibility for the maintenance of the organic unity of the

meaningful spatial realm would fall on the shoulders of

learning and culture rather than on those of the state.

Accordingly, their spatial idealist organicism was monadic

rather than corporate, and the rescue of the personality

from materialist and v8lkisch collectivism was one of their

main themes during the Republic.47

Naturally, the discipline of histcry was assigned an

important role in the rescue of the personality. The task

of history, wrote Troeltsch, was to awaken a consciousness

of the German national Geist, to prepare the German people

for modern decision making. It was necessary to provide

continuity between the values of the past end the new

modern setting. History's role would be a synthetic one.

True, the discipline needed the specialization which was

increasing within its ranks, however, this specialization

always had to occur in the framework of a larger perspective.

Since history was concerned with the problems of life

itself, the historian could not follow the example of the

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natural scientist and retreat into the specific problems

of his research. There would have to be a new dedication

to synthesis, a new union of history and philosophy in such

a manner as would provide a new Weltanschauuing for the

entire German people.48 This new world view would replace

the old Historicism, which had been found to be wanting.

It was the divisions blocking this new synthesis that pro-

voked the crisis of Historicism. Meinecke lamented:

This endless pluralism of individual values which we are discovering everywhere.. .is able, especia'lly now in our gloomy position, to again thrust us into confusion and leave us helpless. Everything is Individuality following its own laws, everything is flux... How are we to emerge from this anarchy of values? From Historicism, how does one again come to a science of values?49

Meinecke's statement is revealing in that he continued to

identify the problem of value relativism as a temporal one.

The crisis Historicists asked themselves whether the values

of an age were traceable to an eternal unchanging sphere

of value, or whether such a sphere was at best a thing-in-

itself, unknowable by historical man. An Eduard Spranger,

an Ernst Robert Curtius and an Ernst Troeltsch would all

take different positions concerning this question. How.-

ever, all assurmed that the meaningful spatial realm was an

organic spiritual unity. They would not entertain the

notion of spatial relativism. And as long as they main-

tamned their monadic organicist conception of the meaning-

ful spatial realm, the relationship between that realm and

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the entire flow of history could remain a matter of faith --

just as it always had been for Historicists.

The great problem for the crisis Historicists was

that, while they defended the pluralistic political and

social structure of the Republic, they were unwilling to

grant the existence of competing Weltanschauungen within

the meaningful spatial realm. The main thrust of their

attacks on Marxism and v8lkisch theories was based on the

denial that these theories were true world views. Rather

they were seen as the temporary victory of individual

material interests or of total irrationality at the expense

of the organic spiritual sphere. In other words, the cri-

sis Historicists interpreted their crisis as the abandon-

ment of the essential spiritual unity rather than as its

fractionalization. Their solution remained the education

of the individual and the realization of his spiritual

essence so that his material interests could be subordin-

ated to their proper place.50 The crisis Historicists

then did not give credence to the conLention that there

might not be an objective Geist, that there might be other

Weltanschauungen within the meaningful spatial realm whose

claim to validity was of equal strength to theirs.

Chained to the concept of an objective Geist, a unity

of meaning and values for the meaningful spatial realm,

they charged science with the task of discovering what that

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objective Geist was. Unwilling to follow the corporate

statist Historicists and reject democratic institutions,

but also unwilling to follow Weber's group and reject the

ethical task of science and the organic unity of values,51

they remained in a quandary. The options that appeared open

to them -- either to isolate the university from society

to preserve the purity of scientific decisions on

validity,52 or to improve lines of communication with

society so that the university might reassert its spiritual

leadership of the nation53-- were equally pathetic, since

both refused to abandon the premise that there could be

only one "scientific" Weltanschauuni for the meaningful

spatial realm and that the university should be the judge

of its validity. In refusing to recognize the value-

pluralism within the nation, the crisis Historicists con-

tinued to interpret the problem as one of temporal rela-

tivism -- of finding a new organic world view for the age,

thus never really coming to grips with the problem.

Despite their belief that they could "overcome" the old

Historicism when they discovered the new synthesis, they

never really did. All their discussions about the relation-

ship of a new cultural synthesis with the old one, or about

the relationship of the present cultural unity with the

total stream of history, were useless since they skirted

the problem of relativism within the meaningful spatial

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realm.

Since large segments of the nation rejected the basic

organicist premises of Historicism, the proposed solutions

to the crisis of Historicism, which were always based on

these premises, were mere pipedreams. The monadic organi-

cist, cultural solution of the crisis Historicists was just

as obsolete as the corporate organicist, statist solution

of their fellow historians. The perceptive Karl Mannheim,

with whom I opened this paper, quickly came to realize the

futility of his optimistic statements on the future of His-

toricism. Within five years of his advocacy of Historicism,

he had admitted the doctrine's failure and had developed a

new discipline (which also would fail) to succeed it. He

would regard those world views which transcended social

conflict (the ideal of the Historicists) as either ideolo-

gies or utopias, both destined for "unmasking" in the

modern world. His hopes would now rest on a new discipline,

the sociology of knowledge, and a new group, the socially

unattached intelligentsia, which incorporated the multi-

plicity of Weltanschauunqen competing within the meaningful

spatial realm. The Historicist rejection of that multi-

plicity was abandoned.54 As an earlier antagonist of His-

toricism, Carl Becker, wrote: "The value of history lay in

the idea of a factual or transcendental objectivity. This

belief has been shattered; it will never return, its tablets

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have been broken to pieces... .The age of Historicism is

past. "55

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I was aided in my research for this essay by a fellow- ship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

1By "Historicism," I mean the world view of the mainstream of German historical thought in the nineteenth and twentietn centuries, which has been described by Friedrich Meinecke, Ernst Troeltsch, and more recently, Georg Iggers.

2 Karl Miannheim, "Historicism," Essays in the Sociology

of Knowledge, ed. Paul Kecskemeti (TLondon, 1968), p. 8L4.

3Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History (Niddletown, 1968), pp. M-9, 125-127, 270.

4Ernst Troeltsch, "Die Krisis des Historismus," Die neue Rundschau, vol. 33, pt. 1 (1922), p. 573.

5Ibid., p. 590.

6See Johann Gustav Droysen, Historik (Darmstadt, 1974), especially p. 182.

7Troeltscn, "The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity in World Politics," in Otto Gierke, iiatural Law and the Theory OL Society,1500 to 1&00, trans. ernest barker (Boston, 19)0), p. 209.

8See Mannheim, Ideolo and Utopia, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York, nd), p. 27L.

9Heinrich von Treitschke, History of Germany in the Nineteenth Cet ur, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London, 1919), vol. 5, p. 611.

10 Georg von Below, Die deutsche Geschichtschreibung von den Befreiungskriegen bis zu unseren Tagen (Leipzig, 1916), p. 11.

11For Hegel, "Individuality" was a moment of the universal realm of Geist and not a historical entity, the particular, the individual. He warned against conceiving it in this latter way in his Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baillie (New York, 19b7), p. 333. But the Historicists themselves seem to have done just what Hegel warned against. Indeed, one of the criticisms of Hegelian philosophy was that it was too abstract. See Leopold von Ranke, Die Epochen der neueren Geschichte, vol. 2 of Aus Werk und Nach- lass, ed. Theodor Schieder and Helmut Berding (Munich and Vienna, 1971), p. 63. For an account of the differences between Hegel and the Historical School, see Erich

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Rothacker, Einleit,un in die Geisteswissenschaften (Darm- stadt, 1972), pp. 62-7L.

Troeltsch, "Natural Law and Humanity,t" p. 211.

13Ranke, "A Dialogue on Politics," in Theodore H. von Laue, Leonold Ranke: The Formative Years (Princeton, 1950), p. 162.

14Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme; Erstes Buch: Das Logische P

Ti Ibingen, 1922), P. 36.

15Eduard Spranger, "Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte und ?iethodenlehre: Er5ffnungsbericht," Archir fir Kultur- geschichte, vol. 9 (1911), p. 366.

16Rothacker, Loyik und Systematik des Geisteswissen- schaften (Darmstadt, 1970), p. 114.

17Hayden White makes this argument concerning J.G. Herder in M4etahistory: The Historical Ima ination in Nine- teenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 70-74.

18The classic statement on this question is Meinecke, "Drei Generationen deutscher Gelehrtenpolitik," Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 125 (1922), pp. 248-283.

19See, lor example, Below, Deutsche Geschichtschreiben, p. 66.

20Ranke, "Dialogue on Politics," p. 168.

21Treitschke, Politics, ed. Hans Kohn (New York, 1963), p. 10.

22Below, Deutsche Geschichtschreiben, pp. 54-56, 84.

23Helmut Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit: Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universitgt und inrer Heformen, second edition (Ddsseldorf, 1971) , p. 64.

24Quoted in Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom (Boston, 1957), p. 488.

25Troeltsch, "Deutsche Bildung,," in Alexander von Gleichen-Russwurm (ed.), Der Leuchter; Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung (Darmstadt, 1919), p. 200.

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26See Spranger, Die deutsche Bildungsideal der Gegenwart in gesenichtsphilosophischer Beleuchtung (Leipzig, 192b), P. 64.

27For an extreme statement of this denunciation of the Western type, see Werner Sombart, Hgndler und Helden: Patriotische Besinnungen (lviunich, 1915), pp. 9-16.

28Treitschke, Politics, p. 26. Ernst Rober't Curti-s, arguing in 1932 against the kind of excessive nationalism which Treitschke had represented and in favor of a cultural internationalism based on the classics, used basically the same conception of society that Treitschke did. See Curtius, Deutscher Geist in Gefahr (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1932), pp. bO-9b. One could say that this view was typologized by Ferdinand T8nnies' book, Communitv and Soc (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft) in which the latter term characterized atomistic, materialistic, abstract relationships. This is especially true if one accepts Rene K8nigts interpretation that T8nnies viewed the Gesellschaft as nothing more than the absence of Gemeinschaft. See K8ni, "Die Begriffe Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft bei Ferdinand T8nnies," K8lner Zeitschrift fMr Soziologie und SozialDsychologle, vol. 7 (1955), p. 407. Tdnnies believed tnat the highest form of Gemeinschaft was founded on the unity of Geist. The disintegration of the spiritual organic Gemeinschaft into the materialistic, mechanistic Gesell- schaft was exactly what historicists feared. It would be unfair to insinuate that T8nnies' view was nationalistic (he saw the nation as a form of Gesellschaft), but many of the book's admirers did draw nationalistic conclusions from it.

29Dietrich Fischer, Die deutsche Geschichtswissenshaft von J.G. Droysen bis 0. Hintze in ihrem Verhgltnis zur Soziologie (Kbln, 1966), PP. 30-31. Even earlier, Ranke had basically the same view. See Rudolf Vierhaus, Ranke und die soziale Welt (Mdnster, 1957), pp. 99-104.

30Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. and ed. Kurt H. Wolf (1~ew York 9. This was exactly the argument made by Below in his well-known polemic against sociology, Soziologie als Lehrfach, Ein kritischer Beitrag zur Hochschulreform. (Miunich and Leipzig, 1920), especially PP. 49-57.

31See for example Spranger, Deutsche Bildunasideal, pp. 60-61. Also, Below, Die Entstehung der Soziologie (Jena, 1928), p. 23.

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32 Gustav Schmoller, "Wechselnde Theorien und feststehende Wahrheiten im Gebiete der Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften und die heutige deutsche Volkswirtschaftslehre." Schmollers Jahrbuch, vol. 21 (1897), pp. 1395-101, 1L04-1407. This did not mean that Schmoller and the Verein fdr Sozial- politik, which he headed, were total reactionaries who completely rejected the modern world. In fact, they were reformers. But while Schmoller could accept industrialism and crusade for imDroved factory conditions, he could never accept social conflict ss something inherent in the nation. Reforms were designed to preserve the organic whole, to maintain harmony, to bring the workers into tune with the rest of the nation. Schmoller always believed that some higher unity should prevail over the divisive material interests of bourgeois and proletarians. See Dieter Lindenlaub, RichtungskfmDfe im Verein fIr Sozialpolitik (Wiesbaden, 19-67), pp. 3, 90.-_

33Ibid.

34The social, institutional and intellectual basis of this position of moral authority is presented in Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1690-1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), especially chapters one and two. I am much indebted to Ringer's book, which is crucial to an understanding of the period.

35Charles McClelland correctly writes that the historians are perhaps the best reflection of intellectual trends in nineteenth century Germany. The German Historians and England; A Stud'r in Nineteenth-Century Views (Cambridge, 1971 ), p. 6. Tlhis was no longer true during the Weimar Republic, a fact that most Historicists could not admit to themselves. This lack of touch with the social and political reality of Weimar Germany was an important theme in Carl Becker's pamphlet calling for reforms in the university. See Becker, Gedanken zur Hochschulreform (Leipzig, 1920), pp. 9-14. Becker's attack caused great concern in Historicist circles.

36The categorizing of groups is my own. I do not claim that the Historicists themselves were conscious of these groupings.

37Below, Autobiographical sketch in Sigfrid Steinberg (ed.), Die Geschichtswissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbst- darstellungen, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1925-1926), p. LO.

38Quoted in Ringer, German Mandarins, p. 227.

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39See for example, Hans-Heinz Krill, Die Rankerenaissance: Max Lenz und Erich Marcks (Berlin, 1962), p. 197.

40Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation," From Max Weber, ed. and trans. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, 1958), p. 147. Also see Friedrich H. Tenbruck, "'Science as a Vocation' Revisited," in E. Forsthoff and R. H3rstel (eds.), Standorte im Zeitstrom: Festschrift fif'r Arnold Gehlen (Frankfurt, 1974).

41Otto Hintze, "Troeltsch and the Problems of Histori- cism: Critical Studies," The Historical Essays of Otto

Hintze, ed. Felix Gilbert (New York, 1975), pp. 407, 373.

42See Gilbert's introduction to Ibid. Also Meinecke, "Drei Generationen deutscher Gelehrtenpolitik," p. 282.

43Meinecke, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichen Welt und des Geschichtsunterrichts ftir die Bildung der Einzel- personlichkeit Berlin, 1918), p. 33.

4AThis sympathy varied. Meinecke cited with apparent approval in 1916 Alfred Dove's denunciation of sociology as a "Wortmaskenverleihinstitut." See "Alfred Dove," Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 116 (1916), p. 96. During Weimar, Meinecke seems to have accepted the disciDline "from reason," much as he did the republic. Troeltsch, on tre other hand, showed great sympathy for the work of sociologists, and some of his own work can be called sociological.

5Spranger, Deutsche Bildungsideal, p. 11.

L6Quoted in Ringer, German Mandarins, p. 212.

47See for example Curtius, Deutscher Geist, pp. 16, 96. Also see Eugene N. Anderson, "Neinecke's Ideengeschichte and the Crisis in Historical Thinking," in James Lea Cate and Eugene N. Anderson (eds.), Medieval and Historiographi- cal ESsays in Honor of James Westfall Thom'so Chicago, 1938), pp. 367, 3d7-3d5. In fact, looking back on the entire crisis and the resulting Nazi Tyranny Meinecke still opted for this monadic cultural solution. See The German Catastroohe, trans. Sidney B. Fay (Boston, 19647, pp. 115- 11 b.

* Troeltsch,"Krisis des Historismus," pp. 584-589.

49Meinecke, "Ernst Troeltsch und das problem des Histor- ismus," Schaffender Spiegel (Stuttgart, 1948), pp. 223-224.

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50 Their emphasis was on the education of the elite rather than the whole populace. They saw the masses as the place where materialism and irrationality won their easiest victories. The masses were like Schiller's Naturmensch, unbalanced toward natural material needs at the expense of the spiritual. Thus while the crisis Historicists hoped to provide some degree of Bildung for the masses, their main concern was for those who would provide spiritual leadership for the masses. These leaders would instill in the masses the only valid world view for the new meaningful spatial realm. See, for example, Alfred Weber, "Die Bedeutung der geistigen Fihrer in Deutschland," Die neue Rundschau, vol. 29 (1918), pp. 1262-1268.

51This was especially difficult for Troeltsch, who was a friend and great admirer of Weber. However much Weber's ideas influenced Troeltsch's writings, the latter could not bring himself to accept the concept of a value-free science. Troeltsch staunchly defended Weber during this period of crisis, but only up to a certain Doint. See Troeltsch, "Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft," Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4 (Tibingen, 1925), p. 673.

2 This was the position of Curtius in Deutscher Geist in Gefahr, especially pp. 73-78.

53Friedrich von der Leyden suggested that educational institutes be set up in conjunction with the university to promote the German ideal and create a German politics out of the total Gerrman Geist. "Gedanken 7ur Hochschulreform," Deutsche Rundschau, vcl. 1b4 (1920), p. 253. Histcricists

n general hoped to harness the active youth movement to promote a new spiritual synthesis. The importance of establishing spiritual leadership for the vounger generation was the theme of Spranger's colleague Aloys Fischer in the inaugural volume of the Dedagogical journal they founded for this very purpose. TUnsere Zeit und die Mission der PHdagogik," Die Erziehung, vol. 1 (1926), pp. 1-7.

5L0f course many Historicists did not follow Mannheim and continued to interDret the crisis as a temporal one. Karl Heussi's contribution in 1932, although providing some fine specific insights concerning methodology, is nothing more than a re-statement of Troeltsch's position. Heussi frequently cited Mannheim's earlier essay, "Historicism," but not the later Ideology and Utonia. See Heussi, Die Krisis des Historismus (Tdbingen, 1932), especially pp. 65- 77.

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55Carl H. Becker, "Der Wandel1 irm geschichtlichen Bewusstsein," Die neue Rundsctiau, vol. 38, pt. 1 (1927), pp. 113-114.

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German Historicism and Its Cricis

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