The German Genius

a sine qua non. 21
    In criticism of Ranke, George Iggers says that, although he was interested in power, he never considered the role of evil in history. Convinced that states were “ideas of God,” ends in themselves, his perspective was that of governments. Arguably, this led Ranke and his followers to underestimate economic and emerging sociological factors. A potent side effect was that his approach helped foster a growing nationalism. 22 Historians were better scholars after Ranke, but in Germany in particular they were also more politically involved and active.
    T HE G ERMAN I DEA OF F REEDOM
     
    Ranke’s approach, we can see with the benefit of hindsight, was not without its consequences. George Iggers says that three ideas shaped German history but also the wider picture.
     
     
    The state as an end in itself and the concept of the Machtstaat.
     
     
    The German conception of the state always had an aristocratic and bureaucratic bias plus an appreciation of the cultured, propertied middle class as the backbone of the country. German historians maintained a much sharper distinction between government and governed than was true in France or in Britain. The state was seen as an “individual,” an end in itself.
     
     
    The rejection of normative thinking.
     
     
    For Ranke, the main task of the state is to secure “the highest measure of independence and strength” among other powers, so that the (German) state will be able to fully develop its innate tendencies. All domestic affairs are subordinated to this end, from which it follows that “The state cannot sin when it follows its own higher interests.” Sheer power becomes one and the same as morality.
     
     
    Anti-Begrifflichkeit, the rejection of conceptualized thinking.
     
     
    Generalizations and overarching theories in history and the cultural sciences are of limited value. History, “the area of willed human actions,” requires understanding, but this is not accomplished by abstract reasoning, rather “by direct confrontation” with the subject and acknowledgment of its individuality. It follows that all historical understanding requires an element of intuition. The irrational aspects of life need to be taken into account. 23
     
     
    These notions meant that German historians moved in a world of their own, remaining largely unaffected by the great transformations of the period 1848–1914, in particular the great social and economic changes brought in by industrialization. History for them remained primarily the interplay of the great powers, and the primary solution for domestic social and economic problems was an expansive foreign policy, the main means of which was a strengthening of the nation.
    It is in this sense that, as Iggers has said, German historicism is a unique event in the history of ideas. Besides its substantive scholarly achievements, its effect on politics and on Germany’s self-understanding was remarkable. The increasing achievements of the natural sciences throughout the nineteenth century did not affect this. Only the disasters of the twentieth century brought change. 24
    The other important consequence of the Ranke mind-set was how it affected notions of freedom. Freedom, the historians insisted, can only be achieved within and through the state, and this was closely tied to the political and social outlook of a particular class, the academic Bildungsbürgertum . Historicism thus provided a theoretical basis for the traditional political and social structure of nineteenth-century Prussia and Germany. This represents a major cultural divergence of Germany from “the West.” For German historians, the reformed Prussian monarchy represented a “high point” in the history of freedom: it was a society where the individual was fully free, but at the same time integrated into a social whole . This “German idea of freedom” was a core belief, at least among Humboldt’s Bildung-loving Bildungsbürgertum and flatteringly contrasted with “the atomistic ideas of 1789.” 25

The Heroic Age of Biology
     
    O n the evening of March 11, 1890, hundreds of men in white tie and tails gathered for a gala dinner at the Berlin City Hall. The chandeliered room was lined with palm trees, and everyone of note was there, including the cream of Germany’s hostesses, seated at separate tables in an arcade. It was, according to one present, “A festival of magnificence perhaps unparalleled in the history of science” and,