Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/285



RANKE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE SEMINARY > METHOD IN TEACHING HISTORY

The development and wide adoption of the seminary method in teaching history during the last two generations, and its great significance in the promotion of historical in- vestigation, lend unusual interest to the question of its origin. It is well known that Ranke, the centennial of whose birth was reverently celebrated last winter ^ in Ger- many, was the first great historical teacher 2 to develop and establish this method, but where he got the suggestion and

1 In December, 1895.

2 Gatterer, at Gottingen, in 1764, founded an Institutura Historicum, which has been regarded as a kind of Historical seminary (cf. Wegele, Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie, 761), but with doubtful propriety. In any case I find no evidence of its having suggested anything to Ranke. Heyne, in his address at the official recognition of the Institute, calls it " societas cum virorum docto- rum et historicis studiis florentium, tum juvenum ad accuratioris doctrinae laudem adspirantium," etc. In other words, Gatterer's Institute was the familiar His- torical Society made up of mature scholars and of students united to promote original research and a more comprehensive knowledge of history. Gatterer's AUgemeine Historische Bibliothek was the organ of the society (cf. Chr. G. Heynii, Opuscula Academica, I, 286). Wilken, also, the historian of the Crusades, con- ducted a seminary at Berlin before and during Ranke's time, but his work was not epoch-making. Wilken is not mentioned in Ranke's letters. Waitz in his Gluckwunschschreiben an Leopold von Ranke zum Tage der Feier seine sfunfzigjdhrigen Doctor juheldums, February 20, 1867, p. 5, says : " Historische Uebungen sind wohl schon lange einzeln an unsern Universitaten veranstaltet worden. Ich habe auch die des alten Wilken besucht, und ich ware undankbar, wenn ich nicht der man- cherlei Belehrung, die ich hier empfangen, gedachte. Aber ich glaube nicht zu viel zu sagen, wenn ich ausspreche, dass, wie das Studium der Geschichte iiber- haupt, so insonderheit das akademische Studium durch Sie ganz neue Impulse erhalten hat." Giesebrecht, in his Gedachtniss7-ede, 11, says: " Er selbst hat nicht von einem Seminar gesprochen, aber seine Uebungen sind das Semiuarium geworden f iir alle jene Seminare, die wir jetzt an unseren Universitaten besitzen."