RANKE, LEOPOLD VON

born Dec. 21, 1795, Wiehe, Thuringia, Saxony died May 23, 1886, Berlin leading German historian of the 19th century, whose scholarly method and way of teaching (he was the first to establish a historical seminar) had a great influence on Western historiography. He was ennobled (with the addition of von to his name) in 1865. Additional reading Heinrich von Srbik, Geist und Geschichte vom deutschen Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 1 (1950); and George P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. (1952), treat in detail the position of Ranke in the development of historical thought and the modern science of history. The philosophical foundations of his view of history are set forth by Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus (1946); and Carl Hinrichs, Ranke und die Geschichtstheologie der Goethezeit (1954). Rudolf Vierhaus, Ranke und die soziale Welt (1957), deals with the role of social factors in Ranke's historiography. Critical analyses are Theodore H. von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years (1950); and Helmut Berding, Leopold von Ranke (1971; in German).