Suchergebnisse

Literaturverz. S. 205 - 208

My friendship with Hajo Holborn lasted through a lifetime, almost fifty years to be exact. Holborn used to reminisce about the rather unconventional manner of the beginning of our friendship: as neighbors in one of Meinecke's courses we fell into a conversation—quite contrary to the customary conduct of German students at the time. It so happened that I could be present when, on what was to be his last day, Holborn received the German Inter Nationes award at Godesberg. In a very direct and informal manner he spoke as to friends about his life and his work, thankful "für das, was ich insgesamt als ein glückliches Leben betrachte."

When in spring 1914 Otto Hintze was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Science he indicated in his inaugural address that his publications in the field of Prussian history most likely had earned him this honor. He added, however, that the history of Prussia was by no means the exclusive aim of his work as a historian. Alluding to the fact that his professorship at the University of Berlin was a chair for general constitutional, administrative, and economic history as well as for political science (Politik), he continued: "The real goal towards which my scholarly endeavors are directed has always been a universal comparative constitutional and administrative history of the West [der Neueren Staatenwelt—a term which for Hintze, as in Ranke'sEpochen der Neueren Geschichte, comprised both medieval and modern Europe], especially of the Romance and Germanic speaking nations. It is in this context that Ranke's lifework could and should be complemented."

Turner's concept of the frontier as the central theme in American History has proved to be one of the most formative forces in the development of American historiography. Even the critics, whether they completely rejected or partially accepted Turner's thesis, have been forced to reappraise the basic factors in American social and political history. At least to that extent they were influenced by Turner.

If historians, as some non-historians imagine, were occupied only with the detail of national past politics, they would have nothing to say to each other at an international conference. Yet leading historians have labored to create a permanent organization, the International Congress of Historical Sciences, which now holds regular quinquennial meetings with increasingly worldwide representation. At least twenty countries besides all European countries and the Soviet Union were represented at its eleventh meeting, held at Stockholm in August 1960.