136. A Lecture by Karl Lamprecht

On Tuesday, January 17, 1900, the Leipzig Professor of History Karl Lamprecht gave a lecture at the Berlin Fleet Association on the necessity of training the German fleet. This is not the place to go into the pros and cons of this question, but it seems appropriate to mention the event in general in a few words. Lamprecht is regarded by many as the founder of a new view of history. He emphasizes the economic and material conditions of historical development more than other historians do. In his lecture, he also gave an overview of the economic foundations of German development over the last thousand years. He considered the intellectual development on this basis. He ignored the question of the connection between spiritual and material culture. This is characteristic of his and his followers' whole approach. They contrast the former view of history, which looked at the development of ideas, with another, that of the development of economic factors. Their view has thus become much more sober. And under such a view, history must forfeit something that Goethe regarded as essential, that it had an effect on enthusiasm. That is what must be pointed out in a literary journal. Lamprecht's lecture was sober, dry, cold. Does it have to be like that when talking about an important contemporary issue?