Treitschke-Baumgarten controversy

The Treitschke-Baumgarten controversy was a historians' dispute in the late 19th century, which concerned the extent to which historiography had to be objective and truth-seeking or could be tendentious and partisan.

Background and course of the controversy

The leading historian of Wilhelmine Germany , Heinrich von Treitschke , had written a German history in the nineteenth century (5 volumes, Leipzig 1879-1894), which tended to focus entirely on the telos of national unity under Prussian aegis. While, according to Treitschke, the Hohenzollern had consciously worked towards the liberation of Germany from foreign rule and small states since the middle of the 17th century, he saw Austria, England, Judaism and southern German liberalism as the most important opponents of German unity. The publication of the second volume of this work in 1882 sparked a fierce journalistic controversy in which the leading representatives of German history took part.

It all started with the Strasbourg history professor Hermann Baumgarten , who attacked the tendentious basic conception of the work in three articles in the Allgemeine Zeitung on a principle basis and also objected to Treitschke's poor archive work. While liberal historians like the Zurich professor Alfred Stern and the high school teacher Konstantin Bulle from Bremen intervened on Baumgarten's side in the dispute, Treitschke received support from national-conservative historians, among others. a. by the Heidelberg professor Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer , the Tübingen historian Gottlob Egelhaaf and the reviewer of the Deutsche Rundschau Paul Bailleu (1853–1922). Even Heinrich von Sybel , who as founder and editor of the Historical Magazine held an influential and powerful position within the institutional history, Treitschkes shared conception of historiography. Baumgarten was portrayed in the historical magazine as an isolated and arrogant know-it-all, thus promoting his isolation. In January 1884, Treitschke was awarded the official ordination of Wilhelmine history with the award of what is probably the most important historian award of the empire, the Verdun Prize . Heinrich von Sybel had prepared the expert opinion that was submitted to the Verdun Commission for decision-making. The Treitschke-Baumgarten controversy was not decided on the basis of a substantive debate, but rather by the award of the Verdun Prize in favor of Treitschke and represented a serious defeat for liberalism.

source

• Hermann Baumgarten: Treitschke's German History . 3rd edition Trübner Verlag, Strasbourg 1883.

literature

• Andreas Biefang : The dispute over Treitschke's "German History" 1882/83. To split national liberalism and establish a national-conservative view of history . In: Historische Zeitschrift (HZ), Volume 262 (1996), pp. 391-422, doi : 10.1524 / hzhz.1996.262.jg.391 .
• Ulrich Langer : Heinrich von Treitschke. Political biography of a German nationalist . Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1093-0 (also dissertation, University of Düsseldorf 1997).
• Norbert M. Schmitz : Alfred Stern (1846-1936). A European historian against the current of national historiography . Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-86525-140-4 (also dissertation, University of Tromsø 2008).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alfred Stern: Against Treitschke. A contribution to the criticism of the second volume by H. v. Treitschke's German History in the Nineteenth Century. In: The grandstand , 23rd year, nos. 49–50, 30.– 31. January 1883.
2. ↑ Konstantin Bulle: Baumgarten and Treitschke. In: Weser-Zeitung , No. 12928–12930, 29.– 31. December 1882.
3. ^ Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer: Review by Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer. In: Die Grenzboten 41/1, 1883, pp. 232–250.
4. ↑ Gottlob Egelhaaf: Article in Swabian Chronicle, Sunday supplement to Swabian Mercury , No. 60, March 11, 1883.
5. ^ Paul Bailleu: Review by Paul Bailleu. In: Deutsche Rundschau 36, 1883, pp. 144–147.