Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700-1900

At the end of the 19th century, German historical scholarship had grown to great prominence. Academics around the world imitated their German colleagues. Intellectuals described historical scholarship as a foundation of the modern worldview. To many, the modern age was an ‘age of history’. This book investigates how German historical scholarship acquired this status. Modern Historiography in the Making begins with the early Enlightenment, when scholars embraced the study of the past as a modernizing project, undermining dogmatic systems of belief and promoting progressive ideals, such a tolerance, open mindedness and reform-readiness. Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen looks at how this modernizing project remained an important motivation and justification for historical scholarship until the 20th century. Eskildsen successfully argues that German historical scholarship was not, as we have been told since the early 20th century, a product of historicism, but rather of Enlightenment ideals. The book offers this radical revision of the history of scholarship by focusing on practices of research and education. It examines how scholars worked and why they cared. It shows how their efforts forever changed our relationship not only to the past, but also to the world we live in.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Between Past and Present 1. The Lecture Hall 2. The Field 3. The Princely Archive 4. The Art Cabinet 5. The Study 6. The State Archive 7. The Seminar Epilogue: The Purpose of Historiography Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen is Associate Professor of History of Science at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the editor/co-editor of two books in Danish and German and has held teaching, research, and visiting positions at: University of Copenhagen, Denmark; University of Chicago, USA; Harvard University, USA; University of California at San Diego, USA; Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany; and EHESS, France.

Review :
[S]kilfully written and researched study of the Enlightened foundation of modern German historical scholarship. It is an original addition to the debate about the foundation of historical scholarship, and it contributes particularly to the field of moral and epistemic virtues and its role in Enlightened German historical scholarship. As a shadow, the past is omnipresent. And yet Eskildsen’s fundamental proposition is not to limit history to its possible function as the vicarious agent of a given contemporary agenda, but to engage with history in order to excavate differences in our access to and understanding of the world – be they past, present, or yet to come. This short book offers several reasons why it is worth following our predecessors and engaging in this insightful enterprise time and again. Historical scholarship has changed the world and continues to do so. In this groundbreaking book, Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen explores the origins of modern historiography by visiting the places where scholars connected past and present. He moves from the seminar to the lecture hall, from the field to the archive, and from the study room to the art cabinet. Eskildsen’s book is an exemplar for future histories of humanities disciplines – a must-read for anyone interested in the history of scholarship and science. Eskildsen has written a truly remarkable account of how historical knowledge was once made, the sorts of places in which it was made, and why this knowledge mattered. Necessary reading for anyone concerned about what would be lost if academic history is now allowed to disappear. Modern Historiography in the Making is a rich and colorful collection of ideas, which courageously puts the modernist narrative of German historiography to the test and meticulously marks its theoretical bias against its own practical footage. By the provocative arguments and the choice of the subject, the book merits scholarly attention and will hopefully lead to constructive debates on the overlooked implications of modern historiography... The author guides their readers with considerable confidence and compassion over the book’s seven chapters, which, due to the short but concise discussion of each topic, read easily. Thanks to its subject and elegant prose, the book could be of interest to expert and non-expert readers alike and would also be easy to use for educational purposes [E]xceptionally lucid ... Eskildsen does a marvelous job of demonstrating how, by the 19th century, leading German historians such as Leopold von Ranke portrayed their writings as objective, even when they were fairly saturated with ideology. ... Highly recommended.