Historical Studies in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Case of Hartwig Floto

Abstract

History was a key discipline in what the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey called the “human sciences” (Geisteswissenschaften). Focusing on the German lands, this chapter surveys what the study of history looked like in the decades prior to the publication of Dilthey’s Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Introduction to the Human Sciences, 1883). It does so, somewhat unconventionally, by zooming in on Hartwig Floto (1825–1881), a largely forgotten pupil of the famous Leopold von Ranke. Apart from the fact that this biographical angle adds color and flavor to an otherwise too abstract story, Floto’s life and work lend themselves well for discussion of both familiar and not-yet-familiar themes in the history of the humanities: Ranke’s historical exercises, historians’ middle-class backgrounds, research institutions like the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, but also historians’ personae as typically described in terms of virtues and vices. This chapter therefore aims to do two things at once: it wants to offer an accessible introduction to nineteenth-century German historical studies, and also seeks to showcase both older and newer lines of research in the history of the humanities.