Otto Hintze's response to the crisis of historicism

Abstract

This article aims to shed light on the theoretical contributions of the historian Otto Hintze to the intellectual context experienced by German historical science in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. To do so, I proceed from the assumption that Hintze’s positions were constituted as an attempt to answer the crisis of historicism: namely, the collapse of trust in the Western-centered concept of history in modern times. From that previous definition, I argue that his individual ethics derived from what I describe as his two main theoretical contributions, developed to overcome such a crisis: the desacralization of modern state politics and his scientific reconceptualization of historicism. Finally, I claim that both the crisis of historicism itself and the responses offered by Hintze to overcome it remain largely present to reflect on some of the challenges professional historiography still faces in the twenty-first century.