Historiography of Germany

The historiography of Germany deals with the manner in which historians have depicted, analyzed and debated the History of Germany. It also covers the popular memory of critical historical events, ideas and leaders, as well as the depiction of those events in museums, monuments, reenactments, pageants and historic sites, and the editing of historical documents.

Diarium Europaeum was a journal on the history of the German-speaking lands founded by Martin Meyer (Philemerus Irenicus Elisius) and published between 1659 and 1683 in 45 volumes.

Very precise editing of historic documents was a main concern in the 19th century, as exemplified by Monumenta Germaniae Historica. It published many thousands of documents, both chronicle and archival, for the study of German history (broadly conceived) from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500. The MGH was founded in Hanover in 1819. The first volume appeared in 1826. The editor from 1826 was Georg Heinrich Pertz (1795 to 1876); in 1875 he was succeeded by Georg Waitz (1813-1886) . Many eminent medievalists participated in the project, searching for and annotating documents.

The Die Deutschen Inschriften project begun in 1934 collects and redacts medieval and early modern inscriptions in Germany.

Justus Möser (1720 - 1794), was a German jurist, best known for his innovative history of Osnabrück (1768) which stressed social and cultural themes.

Another important German thinker was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose theory of historical progress ran counter to Ranke's approach. In Hegel's own words, his philosophical theory of "World history... represents the development of the spirit's consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realization of this freedom.". This realization is seen by studying the various cultures that have developed over the millennia, and trying to understand the way that freedom has worked itself out through them:

Hegel's main historical enterprise was to study the emergence of the idea of freedom. Starting with China and India, which gave a very limited scope to freedom, he moves to ancient Persia and Greece, which had much more sophisticated views, and then to Rome, which added a policy of rule by law. Christianity added a positive spirit to the Roman idea of freedom, but during the Middle Ages, according to Hegel, tight Church control led to stagnation. The breakthrough for freedom came during the Renaissance, and especially during the Reformation. Hegel concludes that the constitutional monarchy of the Germanic and Scandinavian states, and Britain, represents so far the highest stage of freedom. He dismisses democracy is a step backward. His uses a three-stage approach: the status quo is the "thesis", the challenge to it (as represented by Socrates, Christianity, and Luther) is the "antithesis" with the outcome being a synthesis at a higher stage of development of freedom.

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