Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/423

Rh Karl Lamprecht was born near Wittenberg in 1856; received his earlier training at Pforta, the celebrated Prinzenschule, and won his Doctor's degree from the University of Leipzig in 1879. The student was father of the scholar; his thesis was of such extraordinary character that the department of history to whose head it was offered refused to accept it. So the present head of the same department was compelled to take his degree as a political economist. Young Lamprecht was scarce hopeful of entering upon the professorial career, so scant were his means and so expensive it was and now is in Germany to become an instructor in a university. He engaged himself to teach in a private family in Köln, but while employed in this capacity he unexpectedly attracted the attention of a wealthy burgher of that city named Mevissen, who supplied him with the means of entering the University of Bonn as a docent—usually the first step to a professorship. Lamprecht's initial work, the investigation of the condition of the peasantry of the Rhineland at all stages of German history, brought him into disagreement with most of his seniors in the university faculty. He continued his studies in this direction, however, without interruption until he had founded The West German Magazine of History and Art, the ‘Society for the Advancement of Rhenish History’ and had laid the foundations for his famous 'Deutsche Geschichte' in his first important work, ‘Economic and Social Conditions in Germany during the Middle Ages,’ in four volumes. All this was done during the years of 1880 to 1886 and while he was only a docent—an activity which bespoke the astonishing energy of the present professor. A year or two after the appearance of ‘Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle Ages’ Lamprecht was called to Marburg as ordentlicher professor, very much to the surprise of the wiseacres, who had opposed him at every turn at Bonn. In 1890, when only thirty-six years of age, he was made full professor of history at Leipzig, where he has been the directing spirit in the faculty of modern history ever since; his co-workers and assistants in this department number about a dozen and his students each semester average 350 to 400; in the historical seminars there are from ninety to one hundred men taking special training in Kulturgeschichte. These students come from all parts of the civilized world. It is not difficult then to understand what an immense influence Lamprecht is exercising on the present generation of historical students. Such is, briefly, the lifework of the man who has excited so much opposition in Germany. Let us examine more closely the main features of the new history and its methods.

Lamprecht divides all knowledge into two classes: the one dependent on mechanics, the other on psychology, Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften. History is a science—a Geisteswissenschaft—dependent on psychology. It deals with the acts of men just as