MUDDLED HISTORIANS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 777, 11 June 1954, Page 13

MUDDLED HISTORIANS

GERMAN HISTORY, some new German views; edited by H. Kohn; Allen and Unwin, English price 18/-. HIS book is not, as the title might lead ‘one to expect, about new views on German history. It consists of an apparently haphazard collection of essays by German historians re-thinking their "politics." Most of them used to worship Bismarck and Ranke’s idea that the power-state is the goal of historical development, and, e.g., constitutionalism, a historical freak. These historians have now seen that the attainment of that goal can have undesirable consequences. Therefore, they are putting their doubts before us. One essay in particular, in which Meinecke now prefers Burkhardt to Ranke, deserves a comment similar to the one made by Strachey on Acton. Acton, he said, was a historian who had come through laborious research to the (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page) conclusion that the Pope can err. Meinecke has now discovered that Ranke could err. One author outlines the via dolorosa of the civilian spirit in Germany and another explains that the German wars, unlike most other wars (sic!) benefited no one. Apart from these commonplaces there is also a great deal of muddled thinking. One writer says that the problem before German historians is "how to write history that the future will not invalidate.’ I gather that he advises German historians not to take it for granted that the power-state is the goal of all history because events may prove them wrong. To my naive way of thinking such assumptions are not the ; -historian’s business, anyway. Last, but not least, there is the irritating habit of the American editor to explain all obvious historical references in footnotes. The book must be intended for a historically illiterate public. With such a public it is likely to foster the illusion that Germany is now safe for Nato. The more perceptive reader will take it as proof of unstability. Meinecke, one feels, would consider himself entitled to withhold his support from Ger- many’s new institutions every time he changes his mind about the merits of Ranke. Suppose our support of parlia-

mentary institutions were dependent upon the precarious judgment that Mill was a better man than Carlyle...

Peter

Munz