Zeitschrift was founded under the initiative of Count von Bernstorff, the then foreign minister. In founding it, von Bernstorff had had two purposes in mind. He wished to provide an organ for the defense of the policies of an enlightened Prussian bureaucracy against its numerous liberal critics on the left. But he also wished to distinguish the positions of the Prussian governments from that of the reactionary right. In the fall of 1831 this latter group, which included distinguished men such as Radowitz, von Raumer, and the Gerlachs, had founded the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt (Berlin Political Weekly) to propagate the feudal doctrines of the late Karl Ludwig von Haller.27 The men associated with this weekly publication considered enlightened despotism a forerunner of liberalism. They distrusted the Prussian bureaucracy. Their ideal of government was a pre-absolutistic Mecklenburg type of constitution in which political power was preserved or restored to the aristocratic and noble classes within society. Von Bernstorff and the men he consulted in this enterprise, particularly Savigny and Johann Albrecht Eichhorn,28 von Bernstorff s principal adviser, as well as the Hamburg publisher Perthes, represented a more enlightened position. They recognized the rising role of the middle classes and the need for Prussia to assume active leadership in satisfying the national and economic demands of this class. At the same time, von Bernstorff and his friends wished to do this within the framework of the existing political structure of Prussia and Germany through the agency of a benevolent and relatively progressive Prussian bureaucracy and with a minimum of concessions to political liberalism. These men, accustomed to royal absolutism and used to obedience rather than to deliberation, probably underestimated the force of liberal and national feeling, as well as the entrenched opposition of the vested interests of the old regime.
Ranke’s own political inclinations fitted well into this program. He had been relatively unaffected by the nationalist enthusiasm of the Wars of Liberation. His deep Lutheran piety was not narrow in a confessional sense. Nevertheless, it strengthened his respect for the established wordly authorities, the Obrigkeit, as part of God’s design. He was not yet as doctrinaire in his conservative views as he would become in later years. Although he had been a close friend of Savigny, Niebuhr, and Schleiermacher since his arrival at the University of Berlin in 1825, he had been much closer to the liberal circle around Varnhagen von Ense during the first three years of his stay in Berlin than he liked to admit later.29 Having been granted the complete freedom of expression in the review which he had requested, including the privilege not to have to submit the journal to censorship, Ranke conceived his task as one of keeping equal distance between the extremes of the Berliner Politisches Wochenblatt and of liberalism. Later, he commented on this episode: “I had been so bold as to undertake to defend a third orientation midway between the points of view that confronted each other in every public and private discussion. This new orientation, which adhered to a status quo which rests on the past, aimed at opening up a future in which one would be able to do justice to new ideas, too, as long as they contained truth.”30 Whether Ranke made his distance from the reactionaries clear is doubtful. In the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift, his criticisms almost entirely were directed at the liberals. Ranke seems to have disappointed Perthes, who withdrew his sponsorship from the journal after the appearance of the first volume in 1832.31 Instead, Ranke found himself encouraged by the very conservative Ancillon who succeeded von Bernstorff as foreign minister during that year.32
Thus almost all that appeared in the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift related to the critique of liberalism and of its theoretical foundations. But Ranke did not content himself with stressing the need of an historical approach for an understanding of the empirical functioning of political forces. Rather, in his contributions to the review, as well as in lectures on the methods and scope of historical study written at this time, he stresses the role of history as a guide to philosophical truth. Through history he seeks to uncover the metaphysical realities underlying the state which could provide the basis of a conservative theory of politics.
Three notions recur throughout his essays and lectures of the period and give them a high degree of unity. The first is the argument against the application of abstract principles to politics, and the identification of “theory” with liberalism and the ideas of the French Revolution. The second is the idea that, although all existence can be understood only in terms of its history, behind the ephemeral appearance of every particular phenomenon there is concealed a general truth. A final idea is that the states existing in history are the concrete expressions of underlying ideas.
1. Ranke’s warning in the Introduction to the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift that political and social institutions must not be approached from the standpoint of abstract theory, but be viewed in terms of their concrete existence, is understandable on methodological grounds as an almost indisputable maxim of historical study. So is his demand that political and social values must be understood within the context of the institutions within which they operate. “It is so seldom,” he observes, “that an undertaking or an institution is examined in terms of the conditions proper to it, usually one is satisfied with applying the measuring stick of theory.”33 The historian as historian must suspend judgment. “A pure judgment is possible only if one judges any person in terms of that person’s own standpoint and of his inherent aims.”34 But it is harder to follow Ranke when he, like Herder, Humboldt, and Savigny before him, holds that the principles and ideals that have guided societies or individuals possess objective value. Ranke does not regard them as value-free historical data which have no ethical significance for the scholar. For him all products of history and everything that operates within the context of a historical society are concrete, objective values. Such a position involves an extreme optimism regarding history and nature which Ranke shared with other adherents of the Historical School and with many thinkers in the Romantic tradition. It assumes that there is no real evil in nature. But in stressing that all historical phenomena possesses objective value it contains the seeds of a radical ethical relativism.
Once we assume, as Ranke did, that all institutions or ideas that have roots in history are valuable, a basis for judging political decisions is established. Not that the historian can measure political decisions by abstract, universal ethical standards, but he can unearth the extent to which such acts followed the historical lines of development of a state. “True politics,” Ranke observes, “constantly keeps in mind what constitutes practical interests, what is necessary, and what can be carried out.” Such politics does “not surrender its part at any moment for the sake of possibly deceptive prospects. Rather such politics aims at tranquil progress (Fortgang) and gradual but certain development.”35 This type of true politics proceeds on the basis of positively existing and dominant trends. It eschews innovation and planned reform. For nothing is more urgent for our time “than to remind ourselves of the difference between regular (gesetzmässig) progress and impatient, disruptive innovation, between intelligent preservation (of existing institutions) and the onesided defense of antiquated forms which have become lifeless.”
Even if Ranke knew that statesmen could not be guided by ethical doctrine in following the practical and necessary interests of the state, he was nevertheless sublimely confident that the statesman’s pursuit of such historic necessities would not conflict with the “immutable, eternal principles.” For “men of insight knew at all periods of history what was good and great, what was permitted and right, what constituted progress and what decay. In its broad outlines it is inscribed within the human breast. Simple reflection suffices for us to understand it.”36
It is an obvious conclusion from this concept of historical growth that liberal institutions, developed abroad, were not applicable in Germany. For, as Ranke observes: “… every people has its own politics.”37 The task of Germans is to create a genuinely German state which corresponds to the spirit of the nation.38 France had shown the ill effects of drafting foreign, British, and especially North American political ideas onto her traditional institutions.39 The danger of the French Revolution had lain less in the strength of French arms than in the spread of “doctrines of seemingly universal validity.”40 Behind the diversity of states and national character, Ranke sees a divine purpose: through the diverse
