German Historicism and Its Crisis Author(s): Colin T. Loader Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 48, No. 3, On Demand Supplement (Sep., 1976), pp. 85-119 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1878811 . Accessed: 09/09/2013 10:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Modern History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
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 .
Accessed: 09/09/2013 10:09
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheJournal of Modern History.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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 indi- viduals (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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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
108
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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 main- stream 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
113
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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.
114
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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.
115
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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 poli- tical reality of Weimar Germany was an important theme in Carl Becker's pamphlet calling for reforms in the univer- sity. 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.
116
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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.
117
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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 leader- ship 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.
118
This content downloaded from 193.198.209.205 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 10:09:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions