The Historian Banished: Karl Lamprecht in Imperial Germany

Abstract

No historical controversy has had as great an impact on the German historical profession, not even the debate about Fritz Fischer's book in 1961! or the Historikerstreit,2 as has the Lamprecht-Streit. It occurred at the end of the nineteenth century at time of increasing interest in social history in Germany and elsewhere, as result of the rising aware? ness of the problems that accompanied industrialization.3 The controversy resulted in the effective stifling of this incipient interest in social history at German universities. Considering the significance of Lamprecht for the course of German historiography, it is surprising that no major biography of Lamprecht has appeared until now. Indeed, the only biography written about Lamprecht was an unpublished hagiographical one by student of his.4 Two recent studies that were completed in the past ten years dealt rather narrowly with methodological issues without touching on the broader setting in which these issues were discussed.5 In this examination of a German academic life, Roger Chickering succeeds in recreating the world in which Lamprecht's work took shape by viewing him as part of the