Ritter's Ghost?

Although I'm not a specialist in the issue of Confessionalization, as a
young scholar who specializes in the careers of German and other
"western" historians, I read Professor Holloran's contribution with
interest. I don't want to pull the discussion away from the
methodological issues of how to treat confessionalism. Yet I wonder if
any discussion so weighted on  historiography needs to be viewed from
Eley's admonition for submitting  scholarly assumptions to "necessary
comparative analysis."  I raise this due to Holloran's argument,
implicit if unintended, that Ritter and his work represent a
"nation-specific", and (in his words) "anti-modernist" path of German
scholarship on confesionalization/Reformation studies, as well as the
general (Austro)-German historical profession.

Was it? If the Sonderweg thesis has been so smashed since the initial
debates of the 1970s, why do German, English, and French-speaking
scholars today still view German historiography through the same old
national and exceptionalist lens? If German historians were
"conservative," "reactionary," or "anti-modern," what do we mean by
this? Was the German establishment between the wars, and after 1945,
really so monochrome that a single scholar can symbolize the entire
guild? Should we still view the development of our historical
professions, and fields of study, through a particularist national
paradigm? Using Ritter just as an example, I would like to suggest that
these comfortable assertions actually rest on a quicksand of assumptions
and evidence.

It is unclear if Holloran's "great divide" refers to a gap between
modernists/early modernists or a Sonderweg of the German historical
profession. It is also unclear who exactly "sympathetic anti-modernist"
historians were - anti-modernist in what way? For twenty years, scholars
have been suggesting the very modernist basis of National Socialism.
Were not many "Nazi" scholars actually opposed to the old Borussian
models of elite-state-Geistesgechichte of the model of Meinecke, and (to
an extent) Oncken?

We must remember, Ritter departed to Basel to get away from the aspects
of the radical Freiburg university that he profoundly disliked. Did
Ritter lead a purge of scholars at Freiburg? Based on the vast
literature about Ritter, including Corneliessen's recent biography, it
is not so clear that he could be grouped with his
Rectorfuhrer-historians, such as G. A Rein/Hamburg, Willy
Andreas/Heidelburg, Hoppe/Berlin, Theodore Mayer/Marburg and so on.
(Freiburg tended to be far more homogenous than say Heidelburg or Berlin
- there were very few expellees from its philosophical faculty in the
first place).  These are minor details, perhaps, but it is on such
details that assertions are to rest.

Ritter was certainly seen as "modern" enough from America and Britain to
enjoy warm relations with his leading American/British counterparts
BEFORE 1939. It was Harvard university that offered him (as well as
Meinecke) full-time positions after the Nazis came to power. Roland
Bainton joined the contributors of Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte
during the 1930s. When the review was reestablished in 1950 (?), we must
remember that it was with a trans-Atlantic editorial board led by Harold
Grimm - who championed the inclusion of social and economic perspectives
in his own synthesis of the Reformation. Again, this was certainly a
generation before Natalie Davis (who worked in French history and was
thus influence early on by Hauser, among others.) And Grimm was highly
critical of certain types of socio-economic approaches to the origin of
the German Reformation, as exemplified by Febvre's study of Luther. But
the key point is that calling Ritter somehow "anti-modern" simply
ignores a vast array of data regarding Ritter and his contemporaries,
while promoting broad, mythical terms that house very little actual
meaning. There is much more about Ritter that can be raised, or his
fellow Oncken students, or German historians and their "allied"
counterparts in general. But I want to emphasize that either Ritter
wasn't all that "anti-modern" in the first place, or the Weltanschauung
of Ritter and his contemporaries was far more widely shared by the
leading historians of the "Western democracies" than we have yet always
ourselves to admit. For example, did Fischer even object to Ritter's
perspective on early modern topics throughout his career?

Per the issue of denazification and the postwar German profession, we
still know very little about the actual effect of denazification on the
German historical establishment from 1945 to 1950. It is true that the
scholarship on universities and Allied occupation is quite extensive.
And recent case studies by Janssen, Remy, et al. have deepened our
awareness of the problematics of any ideological "cleansing" from 1945
to 1948. But despite general works such as Winfried Schulze's study of
1989, we remain practically blind to the relationship between the Allied
occupation officials in the three zones/Berlin and German academic
historians in the universities/research centers. And almost all of what
we now have, to be blunt, is layered with generations of whitewash, from
both sides of the Atlantic/Channel.  The case of the University of
Hamburg and Fischer is most revealing. For Fischer was far more than
simply a card-carrying member of the NSDAP before 1945. Hamburg emerged
under British control with an even more problematic historical faculty.
Excepting the deeply compromised Herman Aubin, the entire Hamburg
historical faculty by 1947 comprised former party members and SA men.

Thus I am not sure exactly what "power and responsibility" Ritter bears
for molding the path of German Reformation studies to an end that we
find "backwards," compared to what went on west of the Rhine.  What
OUGHT we have expected from German scholars form 1946 to, say, 1960?
What is the Western - or US - standard that they were to meet at this
time?  The Annales "school?"  I also remain confused by Holloran about
Ritter's purported "retreat" from the issue of the First World War back
into the early modern period. When was this? Ritter completed his
multi-volume study of Germany in the First World War from the 1950s to
the 1960s. Until his last years of writing, about 1965-6 (he died in
1967), he continued to pontificate in this field. As recent studies on
Brunner and Conze have shown, Ritter was NOT in agreement with the
"Rothfels Kreis" on postwar approaches to Volks/Sozialgeschichte, though
his regard for Brunner is more opaque. There are critical nuances
between the "Standes" preferences of Ritter, Hartung, and Oestereich,
compared to that of Conze, Brunner, Franz, Aubin and the (often younger)
historians who were more comfortable with (dubious) studies that
emphasized a focus on Ritter's hated "masses."

Again, I bow to my more senior and informed colleagues on the question
of fitting aspects of Confessionalization into narratives of German,
Central European, European, or global history. But historians often
fight intellectual battles of today through the historiography and
historians of yesteryears. I believe that it is well past the time to
question basic and long-held understandings of the nature of "Western"
historiography on Central Europe and the alleged peculiarities of German
historians themselves. Given that, by my estimation, Gerhard Ritter
enjoys the greatest number of volumes translated into English among all
continental European historians, perhaps this he would be a good place
to start.

Sincerely, and respectfully,

John L. Harvey
St. Cloud State University

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