Repository | Book | Chapter

For all practical purposes we might doubt whether 19th century historiography, so much abounding in various trends (more descriptive versus more philosophizing ones, less engaged versus life-oriented ones), complied with the requirements of any single pattern. The issue is even more controversial as, since the striving for the truth had been made the principal task of historical research, historiography was developing continuously as far as research techniques were concerned. From that point of view 19th century historiography was a continuation of earlier eruditional and philosophizing trends, especially if we consider the Göttingen school and the further development of German historiography. Yet all that earlier history writing was only arriving laboriously at the separation of facts from myths, legends, and fables. Even Schlözer quite seriously began the first period of universal history with Adam, and ended it with Noah. Historiography consisted in collecting facts, was erudite in character, but above all it had to solidify the critical sense which makes it possible to sift the truth from untruth. In pragmatic historiography that sense could be found in a nuclear form, but it could not have developed in view of the other tasks that were being set before historical research.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-1123-5_8

Full citation: