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Otto Hintze: His Work and His Siginificance in Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Dietrich Gerhard
Dietrich Gerhard
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis
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Extract

When in spring 1914 Otto Hintze was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Science he indicated in his inaugural address that his publications in the field of Prussian history most likely had earned him this honor. He added, however, that the history of Prussia was by no means the exclusive aim of his work as a historian. Alluding to the fact that his professorship at the University of Berlin was a chair for general constitutional, administrative, and economic history as well as for political science (Politik), he continued: “The real goal towards which my scholarly endeavors are directed has always been a universal comparative constitutional and administrative history of the West [der Neueren Staatenwelt—a term which for Hintze, as in Ranke's Epochen der Neueren Geschichte, comprised both medieval and modern Europe], especially of the Romance and Germanic speaking nations. It is in this context that Ranke's lifework could and should be complemented.”

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 3 , Issue 1-2 , March 1970 , pp. 17 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1970

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References

1. Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1914), p. 744.

2. Meinecke, Friedrich, Erlebtes 1862–1919 (1964), p. 104;Google Scholar cf. Hintze's “Über individualistische und kollektivistische Geschichtsauffassung” (1897), in vol. II.

3. I owe this information to the unpublished Ph.D. thesis of Smith, Leonard S., “Otto Hintze's Comparative Constitutional History of the West” (Washington University, St. Louis, 1967).Google Scholar The thesis, which was written under my direction, deserves being published in a condensed form. Specific factual information in this article is derived either from the introductory essays to the collection of articles or from Smith's thesis.

4. Hintze's political attitude, which is analyzed in this section, has recently been dealt with by Simon, W. M., “Power and Responsibility: Otto Hintze's Place in German Historiography,” in The Responsibility of Power. Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn, ed. Krieger, Leonard and Stern, Fritz (1967).Google Scholar My own treatment differs considerably in approach and appraisal from Simon's.

5. In Die deutsche Freiheit: Fünf Vorträge, hsg. vom Bund deutscher Gelehrter und Künstler (1917), p. 169.

6. II, 198.

7. “Imperialismus und Weltpolitik” (1907), in vol. I.

8. I, 495.

9. “Bürgerlich-demokratisch” was the term used in the original title of the article in vol. I, according to an archival notice in the Nachlass (see the thesis of Leonard S. Smith).

10. Meinecke, Erlebtes, pp. 260f.

11. Hintze concentrated on social history in its bearing on institutions. He did not deal with social history as an independent topic. Hence his studies on Prussian officialdom could be complemented by the investigation of the relation of nobility and officialdom; cf. Rosenberg, Hans, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy. The Prussian Experience, 1660–1815 (1958).Google Scholar

12. II, 390.

13. II, 421, 419.

14. II, 57.

15. I, 425.

16. I, 89, 160ff. (cf. also below, p. 34); II, 433ff.

17. I, 163.

18. Cf. Oestreich, G., “Ständestaat und Ständewesen im Werk Otto Hintzes,” in Gerhard, D., ed., Ständische Vertretungen in Europa im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (“Veröffentlichungen des Max Planck Instituts für Geschichte,” XXVII, 1969).Google Scholar

19. II, 242.

20. II, 157, 162.

21. See the obituary of Schmoller in vol. II

22. II, 23, 26, 436.

23. Cf. above, pp. 21–22.

24. II, 264.

25. An attempt to sketch Hintze's relation to both Droysen and Ranke can be found in Covensky, Milton, “Hintze and the Legacy of Ranke,” in White, Hayden V., ed., The Uses of History. Essays in Intellectual and Social History Presented to William J. Bossenbrook (1968).Google Scholar It appeared after this article had been written.

26. II, 290.

27. I, 230ff.

28. II, 163.

29. II, 367. Oestreich assumes, probably correctly, that this is the first mention of Goethe's “schaffender Spiegel.” Meinecke later frequently referred to it. In 1948 a collection of Meinecke's historiographical and methodological articles was published under this title.

30. II, 171.

31. In the introduction to “Die Entstehung der modernen Staatsministerien” (1908), I, 275.

32. II, 336.

33. II, 177.

34. Cf. the excellent article on Die Entstehung des Historismus by Schulin, Ernst: “Das Problem der Individualität,” Historische Zeitschrift, CXCVII (1963), 102.Google Scholar Hintze was very outspoken in rejecting Troeltsch's thesis that historicism developed as a specifically German way of thinking, in contrast to the West. He saw in the emphasis on this contrast— in my opinion rightly—an aftereffect of the propaganda of the First World War (II, 329). Meinecke, differing from Hintze, regarded the French and English contributions as a prologue, while the climax was reached in the deutsche Bewegung of classical idealism and romanticism. Oestreich rightly stresses that Hintze was much closer not only to the social sciences but also to historical writing in Western Europe than most of the other German historians. I differ from Iggers, Georg G., The German Conception of History (1968)Google Scholar, whose book also contains some interesting remarks on Hintze, in my appraisal of the earlier phases of German historical-political thought. The conscious counterposition against the West was only taken as a result of the propaganda and counterpropaganda of the First World War, whose effect is usually underestimated in this country.

35. II, 382.

36. II, 251.

37. Cf. above, p. 25.

38. II, 146. Hintze was impressed by Dilthey's plan to write a “Critique of Historical Reason”; throughout his whole life he paid special attention to all epistemological studies bearing on history. He regarded the exposition of his Berlin colleague, Heinrich Maier, as particularly enlightening. Oestreich rightly emphasizes the influence of Maier, who is far too little known. Hintze referred especially to Maier's distinction between general notions which science uses and “types” which are based on perceptive (anschauliche) abstractions. Recently the problem of the “Typus” has been discussed by, among others, Schieder, Theodor in Staat und Gesellschaft im Wandel unserer Zeit (1958), pp. 172–87Google Scholar, and in Geschichte als Wissenschaft (2nd ed., 1968), pp. 46–50.Google Scholar

39. I, 422.

40. I, 218.

41. III, 99, criticizing Loening (cf. above, pp. 22–23).

42. II, 144.

43. Brunner, Otto, Land und Herrschaft (4th ed., 1959), pp. 161–63.Google Scholar Cf. also Birtsch, G., “Die landständische Verfassung als Gegenstand der Forschung,” in Ständische Vertretungen in Europa im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Gerhard, D. (1969).Google Scholar

44. Cf. above, p. 27, n. 7.

45. II, 370.

46. II, 364–65.

47. Meinecke, Friedrich, Die deutsche Katastrophe (1946), p. 89.Google Scholar

48. II, 373.