, the Marxist- Leninist party, has a comprehensive understanding of the social nature of production, and without such understanding it is impossible to determine
unequivocally
what is progressive and what is reactionary at any given time.
Nolte - 1974 - The Relationship between "Bourgeois" and "Marxist" Historiography
?
Wesleyan University
The Relationship between "Bourgeois" and "Marxist" Historiography Author(s): Ernst Nolte
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Feb. , 1975), pp. 57-73 Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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? ? THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY*
ERNST NOLTE
At many universities in the Western world today, there is hardly any topic an historian will be asked to discuss more frequently than the relationship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist"historiography. At the same time, he will be obliged to define himself and his own work in terms of these two poles. Discussion of the matter is difficult because the basis for scholarly inquiry
an objective relationship to one's subject - is lacking. The "bourgeois his- torian" seems to look at the question differently from the "Marxist historian. " But we must not forget that in using the terms "bourgeois" and "Marxist" we, too, are following Marxist practice. Our acceptance of the Marxist posi- tion as a point of departure is clearly provisional, and as we proceed, we shall see that the apparently irreconcilable opposition of "bourgeois" and "Marxist" will prove not to be so irreconcilable after all. In making this initial concession to the Marxist view, we shall be able to temper the military metaphors both sides are so fond of using. I shall not roll out the heavy artillery of Hegelian concepts, as Bernard Willms does in his valuable essay Marxismus - Wissenschaft- Universitfit,' nor shall I open the attack on a number of fronts, as the authors of issue number 70 of Das Argument do in their "Kritik der biirgerlichen Geschichtswissenschaft. "2 Instead, I shall try to characterize the bourgeois and Marxist positions in historiography. This will involve three steps: citing statements of purpose by major represen- tatives of both schools, comparing the contents of leading bourgeois and Marxist publications in the field, and describing the most extreme and what have been to date the most usual types of exchange between the two camps. I shall then expand the scope of our inquiry by examining Marx's and Engels'
* This essay is a slightly abridged version of an inaugural lecture at the Free Uni- versity of Berlin. The lecture, announced as one in a series on the "Cold War," was not delivered in the university because powerful student groups had called for a boycott of it. This incident is not atypical of the current situation at the Free University.
1. Bernard Willms, Marxismus - Wissenschaft - Universitfit: Zw6lf Thesen (Diussel- dorf, 1971).
2. "Kritik der birgerlichen GeschichtswissenschaftI," Das Argument: Zeitschrift fuir Philosophie zind Sozialwissenschlaften, 70, Sonderband (Berlin, 1972).
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? ? 58 ERNST NOLTE
views on scholarship in general and on historical scholarship in particular. The insights derived from these first two steps should enable us to formulate, in a third section, distinctions and results that will make our controversy look very different from the way it did at the outset of our discussion.
I. THE "MARXIST" AND "BOURGEOIS" SCHOOLS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY
From 1953 on, the problem of defining the Marxist position in historiography has been the subject of numerous contributions in the Zeitschrift ffur Geschichtswissenschaft. Ernst Engelberg published essays on this theme in
1964, 1968, and 1971. In my remarks here, I shall draw primarily on his work as well as on relevant studies by Ernst Diehl and Gerhard Lozek. 3 The argument- greatly condensed but not, I feel, in any way distorted- is as follows:
Marxist historiography is concerned with the "arc of world history"4 that reaches from classless primeval society to the communistic society of the future. That is, Marxist historiography conceives of world history as a series of class struggles -and of class alliances as well - that have arisen from the one factor central to all previous history; man's exploitation of his fellow man. In its research, Marxist scholarship always takes sides with the progres- sive classes and parties that represent the future in the dialectical struggle between the forces of production and the system of production. Only the socially conscious advance guard of the working class, i. e. , the Marxist- Leninist party, has a comprehensive understanding of the social nature of production, and without such understanding it is impossible to determine unequivocally what is progressive and what is reactionary at any given time. The advance guard is in a position to understand because it is the leading element of a group that is not merely one historical group among others but a group that potentially includes the great majority of all humanity or at least the great majority of humanity's most progressive forces. If past history has been no more than a sequence of events in which one form of exploita- tion has replaced another in accordance with predictable laws, then this progressive group has transcended history and already stands beyond it.
3. Ernst Engelberg, "Die Aufgaben der Historiker der DDR von 1964 bis 1970," Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenischaft 12 (1964), 388-402; Uber Gegenstand und Ziel der marxistisch-leninistischenGeschichtswissenschaft," ibid. (1968), 1117-45; "Qber Theorie und Methode in der Geschichtswissenschaft,"ibid. (1971), 1347-66; Ernst Diehl, "Zu einigen Problemen und Aufgaben der Geschichtswissenschaftder DDR in dergegenwiirtigenEtappe,"ibid. (1969), 1393-1402;GerhardLozek,"ZurMethodologie einer wirksarnenAuseinandersetzungmit der bUrgerlichenGeschichtsschreibung:Das Problem der Strukturelementeund die Hauptrichtung der Auseinandersetzung,"ibid. (1970), 608-616.
4. Engelberg (1968), 1129.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 59
If Marxist historiography is biased, its bias differs fundamentally from the bias of any other form of historical scholarship. Its bias is not at odds with objectivity, for "the basic interests of the working class are in harmony with the conditions of objective reality. "5
The basic interests of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, cannot be in harmony with the conditions of objective reality because the time has passed in which exploiting classes could be progressive. What holds true for the bourgeoisie obviously holds true for its advocate, the bourgeois histori- ographer. Since bourgeois historiography is inextricably linked to a reac- tionary economy and to reactionary politics, it can only obscure the truth. "The questions an historian asks of history are determined by the interests of the class with which he identifies. "6 Bourgeois historiography is therefore unscholarly by nature, even when it concerns itself with remote subjects. The closer it comes to the present, the more obvious its defensive and reactionary position becomes. It shrewdly offers, for example, a partial criticism of Bis- marck and Hitler but at the same time obscures the very class structure that made Bismarck's Reich and the Fascist regime possible.
Marxist-Leninist historiography, however, adheres to strict standards of scholarship when it helps build the "intellectual arsenal" of peace and social- ism, when it exposes the neo-colonial plans of West German militarists and monopolists,7 and especially when it demonstrates that the German Demo- cratic Republic (GDR) represents the high point of German history to date. 8 There is no fundamental difference between state and party leadership on the one hand and Marxist historians on the other because government in the GDR "is based on a Marxist-Leninist view of history. "9
Granted, Engelberg allows for a "dialectical tension between politics and scholarship,"'10and Lozek does not deny that there are "certain practical and methodological skills of historical scholarship on which class has no bear- ing. "'" In these respects, the Marxist and the bourgeois are not completely at odds. As Engelberg expressed it in 1971, the Marxist-Leninist historian can "learn within limits'12 from his bourgeois counterpart. And the two schools seem to have some enemies in common, although these enemies do not pose the same kind of threat to them both. Among these mutual oppo- nents we find "left-wing opportunists," dogmatists, and "leftist-sectarian adventurers. " In the GDR it is sometimes openly said that these opponents
5. Engelberg (1964), 391.
6. Lozek, 611.
7. Engelberg (1964), 388 and 399. 8. Diehl, 1397.
9. Engelberg (1964), 388.
10. Ibid. , 393.
11. Lozek, 613.
12. Engelberg (1971), 1360.
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? ? 60 ERNST NOLTE
have still not freed themselves of bourgeois thinking. In the same issue of the Zeitschrift ftir Geschichtswissenschaft (XII/ 1964) in which Engelberg out- lines the historian's tasks in the GDR for the period 1964 to 1970, two Soviet writers published an article entitled "Problems of Historiography in the People's Republic of China," which sharply attacks certain "bourgeois- nationalistic" tendencies observed in that country. 13
Even at this early stage of our discussion it would seem that the relation- ship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography and between "bour- geois" and "socialistic" in general is much more complicated than the customary language of the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft would lead us to believe.
But now let us examine a representative statement of purpose by a "bour- geois historian. " I have chosen as my example a short essay by Friedrich Meinecke. I realize that methodological objections could be made to this choice, but I think it remains an appropriate one here nevertheless. Meinecke's article, entitled "German Historiography and the Needs of the Times," was first published in 1916 in Friedrich Naumann's Hilfe. It is now available in volume IV of Meinecke's Werke, where it appears together with other essays on the "Theory and Philosophy of History. "14 Meinecke ad- dresses himself to the criticism, which seems to have been frequently leveled at historians during World War I, that contemporary historical scholarship in Germany "concerned itself too little with the intellectual life of our times
and therefore offered it too little. "15Meinecke by no means takes this criti- cism lightly. He notes, without polemical overtones, "the preoccupation of our young scholars with problems of the nineteenth century. "'6 He modestly sees himself and his generation merely carrying on the tradition of the "great epoch of Ranke, Burckhardt, and Treitschke. '17 With an obvious tone of resignation, he points out that he and his contemporaries, too, like their great predecessors, had been summoned to the battlefield of national struggle but that in terms of "persuasive power" their manifestoes could not bear com- parison with those of a man like Treitschke. 18
For Meinecke, it was self-evident that historiography was closely con- nected with the state and era that produced it, and an "ideological critique" that demonstretad this interdependence would surely have contained no surprises for him. But when he rejects the "dramatic and sweeping syntheses"
13. R. V. Vjatkin and S. L. Tichvinskij, "Vber einige Fragen der Geschichtswissen- schaft in der Volksrepublik China," Zeitschrift ffir Geschichltswissenschaft 12 (1964), 403-422.
14. IV, 172-180. 15. Ibid. , 172. 16. Ibid. , 173. 17. Ibid. , 178
18. Loc. cit.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 61
that an age hungering for "ever new sensations" demands,19he is not only censuring Lamprecht but also attacking "ruthless nationalism" and the idea of a central Europe under German domination - all this in the midst of World War 1. 20 And when he insists on seeing things the way they really are, seeing them in their own light and in their own context, his demand stems from an awareness "that in the last analysis it is our own lifeblood we draw on in our attempts to bring the spectres of the past to life. "'21The rigorous discipline and the deep respect for facts and sources that Meinecke demands22 clearly cannot be taken for granted. They do not represent a point of depar- ture but are the results of arduous labor. The true value of these results is that they help us gain distance and perspective on our strongest impulses. And man's strongest impulses are the need for synthesis and the desire to identify with a totality beyond ourselves.
So understood, bourgeois historiography is characterized by its remove from its own time and its own nation. It is not at a remove - or is so only in a few extreme and atypical cases - in the sense that it is by nature remote from life but in the sense that it consciously seeks distance, has to seek it anew in each new situation and in ever shifting constellations. It is clear that Meinecke himself sometimes made misinterpretation inevitable by using ques- tionable metaphors like "the island of pure scholarship,"23and the temptation is certainly great to cite Treitschke as proof for the claim that bourgeois historians identify unquestioningly with their governments. But a reading of Treitschke's Berlin lectures on Politik, assuming that the reader is not exclu- sively interested in collecting offensive-sounding quotations, will show that such a claim can be upheld only with grave reservations. Furthermore, Treitschke was not "bourgeois historiography" incarnate any more than Meinecke was. Both of them occupied specific positions within the broad spectrum of historians in the Second Reich, and the spectrum reached from Treitschke to Mommsen, from Dietrich Schiaferto Ludwig Quidde.
Bourgeois scholarship, properly understood and practiced, cannot be de- fined in terms of content and methodology at all. What characterizes it instead is the extremely broad range of different views and approaches that maintain a running dialogue with one another and that collectively assume both affinity to and distance from the political and social realities in which they are rooted. Their affinity to those realities is taken for granted; their distance from them is not. This dual relationship gives bourgeois scholarship a certain degree of autonomy. Bourgeois scholarship can isolate itself from development within
19. Ibid. , 174.
20. Ibid. , 173, 174, 179. 21. Ibid. , 177.
22. Loc. cit.
23. Ibid. , 172.
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, the Marxist- Leninist party, has a comprehensive understanding of the social nature of production, and without such understanding it is impossible to determine unequivocally what is progressive and what is reactionary at any given time. The advance guard is in a position to understand because it is the leading element of a group that is not merely one historical group among others but a group that potentially includes the great majority of all humanity or at least the great majority of humanity's most progressive forces. If past history has been no more than a sequence of events in which one form of exploita- tion has replaced another in accordance with predictable laws, then this progressive group has transcended history and already stands beyond it.
3. Ernst Engelberg, "Die Aufgaben der Historiker der DDR von 1964 bis 1970," Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenischaft 12 (1964), 388-402; Uber Gegenstand und Ziel der marxistisch-leninistischenGeschichtswissenschaft," ibid. (1968), 1117-45; "Qber Theorie und Methode in der Geschichtswissenschaft,"ibid. (1971), 1347-66; Ernst Diehl, "Zu einigen Problemen und Aufgaben der Geschichtswissenschaftder DDR in dergegenwiirtigenEtappe,"ibid. (1969), 1393-1402;GerhardLozek,"ZurMethodologie einer wirksarnenAuseinandersetzungmit der bUrgerlichenGeschichtsschreibung:Das Problem der Strukturelementeund die Hauptrichtung der Auseinandersetzung,"ibid. (1970), 608-616.
4. Engelberg (1968), 1129.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 59
If Marxist historiography is biased, its bias differs fundamentally from the bias of any other form of historical scholarship. Its bias is not at odds with objectivity, for "the basic interests of the working class are in harmony with the conditions of objective reality. "5
The basic interests of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, cannot be in harmony with the conditions of objective reality because the time has passed in which exploiting classes could be progressive. What holds true for the bourgeoisie obviously holds true for its advocate, the bourgeois histori- ographer. Since bourgeois historiography is inextricably linked to a reac- tionary economy and to reactionary politics, it can only obscure the truth. "The questions an historian asks of history are determined by the interests of the class with which he identifies. "6 Bourgeois historiography is therefore unscholarly by nature, even when it concerns itself with remote subjects. The closer it comes to the present, the more obvious its defensive and reactionary position becomes. It shrewdly offers, for example, a partial criticism of Bis- marck and Hitler but at the same time obscures the very class structure that made Bismarck's Reich and the Fascist regime possible.
Marxist-Leninist historiography, however, adheres to strict standards of scholarship when it helps build the "intellectual arsenal" of peace and social- ism, when it exposes the neo-colonial plans of West German militarists and monopolists,7 and especially when it demonstrates that the German Demo- cratic Republic (GDR) represents the high point of German history to date. 8 There is no fundamental difference between state and party leadership on the one hand and Marxist historians on the other because government in the GDR "is based on a Marxist-Leninist view of history. "9
Granted, Engelberg allows for a "dialectical tension between politics and scholarship,"'10and Lozek does not deny that there are "certain practical and methodological skills of historical scholarship on which class has no bear- ing. "'" In these respects, the Marxist and the bourgeois are not completely at odds. As Engelberg expressed it in 1971, the Marxist-Leninist historian can "learn within limits'12 from his bourgeois counterpart. And the two schools seem to have some enemies in common, although these enemies do not pose the same kind of threat to them both. Among these mutual oppo- nents we find "left-wing opportunists," dogmatists, and "leftist-sectarian adventurers. " In the GDR it is sometimes openly said that these opponents
5. Engelberg (1964), 391.
6. Lozek, 611.
7. Engelberg (1964), 388 and 399. 8. Diehl, 1397.
9. Engelberg (1964), 388.
10. Ibid. , 393.
11. Lozek, 613.
12. Engelberg (1971), 1360.
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? ? 60 ERNST NOLTE
have still not freed themselves of bourgeois thinking. In the same issue of the Zeitschrift ftir Geschichtswissenschaft (XII/ 1964) in which Engelberg out- lines the historian's tasks in the GDR for the period 1964 to 1970, two Soviet writers published an article entitled "Problems of Historiography in the People's Republic of China," which sharply attacks certain "bourgeois- nationalistic" tendencies observed in that country. 13
Even at this early stage of our discussion it would seem that the relation- ship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography and between "bour- geois" and "socialistic" in general is much more complicated than the customary language of the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft would lead us to believe.
But now let us examine a representative statement of purpose by a "bour- geois historian. " I have chosen as my example a short essay by Friedrich Meinecke. I realize that methodological objections could be made to this choice, but I think it remains an appropriate one here nevertheless. Meinecke's article, entitled "German Historiography and the Needs of the Times," was first published in 1916 in Friedrich Naumann's Hilfe. It is now available in volume IV of Meinecke's Werke, where it appears together with other essays on the "Theory and Philosophy of History. "14 Meinecke ad- dresses himself to the criticism, which seems to have been frequently leveled at historians during World War I, that contemporary historical scholarship in Germany "concerned itself too little with the intellectual life of our times
and therefore offered it too little. "15Meinecke by no means takes this criti- cism lightly. He notes, without polemical overtones, "the preoccupation of our young scholars with problems of the nineteenth century. "'6 He modestly sees himself and his generation merely carrying on the tradition of the "great epoch of Ranke, Burckhardt, and Treitschke. '17 With an obvious tone of resignation, he points out that he and his contemporaries, too, like their great predecessors, had been summoned to the battlefield of national struggle but that in terms of "persuasive power" their manifestoes could not bear com- parison with those of a man like Treitschke. 18
For Meinecke, it was self-evident that historiography was closely con- nected with the state and era that produced it, and an "ideological critique" that demonstretad this interdependence would surely have contained no surprises for him. But when he rejects the "dramatic and sweeping syntheses"
13. R. V. Vjatkin and S. L. Tichvinskij, "Vber einige Fragen der Geschichtswissen- schaft in der Volksrepublik China," Zeitschrift ffir Geschichltswissenschaft 12 (1964), 403-422.
14. IV, 172-180. 15. Ibid. , 172. 16. Ibid. , 173. 17. Ibid. , 178
18. Loc. cit.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 61
that an age hungering for "ever new sensations" demands,19he is not only censuring Lamprecht but also attacking "ruthless nationalism" and the idea of a central Europe under German domination - all this in the midst of World War 1. 20 And when he insists on seeing things the way they really are, seeing them in their own light and in their own context, his demand stems from an awareness "that in the last analysis it is our own lifeblood we draw on in our attempts to bring the spectres of the past to life. "'21The rigorous discipline and the deep respect for facts and sources that Meinecke demands22 clearly cannot be taken for granted. They do not represent a point of depar- ture but are the results of arduous labor. The true value of these results is that they help us gain distance and perspective on our strongest impulses. And man's strongest impulses are the need for synthesis and the desire to identify with a totality beyond ourselves.
So understood, bourgeois historiography is characterized by its remove from its own time and its own nation. It is not at a remove - or is so only in a few extreme and atypical cases - in the sense that it is by nature remote from life but in the sense that it consciously seeks distance, has to seek it anew in each new situation and in ever shifting constellations. It is clear that Meinecke himself sometimes made misinterpretation inevitable by using ques- tionable metaphors like "the island of pure scholarship,"23and the temptation is certainly great to cite Treitschke as proof for the claim that bourgeois historians identify unquestioningly with their governments. But a reading of Treitschke's Berlin lectures on Politik, assuming that the reader is not exclu- sively interested in collecting offensive-sounding quotations, will show that such a claim can be upheld only with grave reservations. Furthermore, Treitschke was not "bourgeois historiography" incarnate any more than Meinecke was. Both of them occupied specific positions within the broad spectrum of historians in the Second Reich, and the spectrum reached from Treitschke to Mommsen, from Dietrich Schiaferto Ludwig Quidde.
Bourgeois scholarship, properly understood and practiced, cannot be de- fined in terms of content and methodology at all. What characterizes it instead is the extremely broad range of different views and approaches that maintain a running dialogue with one another and that collectively assume both affinity to and distance from the political and social realities in which they are rooted. Their affinity to those realities is taken for granted; their distance from them is not. This dual relationship gives bourgeois scholarship a certain degree of autonomy. Bourgeois scholarship can isolate itself from development within
19. Ibid. , 174.
20. Ibid. , 173, 174, 179. 21. Ibid. , 177.
22. Loc. cit.
23. Ibid. , 172.
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? ? 62 ERNST NOLTE
its society to some extent, but it can also be in advance of those developments. Marxist scholarship - if I may anticipate my first conclusion - can do nei- ther the one nor the other, nor does it want to, for in the Marxist view there is no good reason to do either.
The difference between bourgeois and Marxist historiography becomes eminently clear if we compare the subjects they choose to treat. The leading bourgeois and Marxist periodicals in the field, the Historische Zeitschrift and the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft, can provide us with pertinent information. It is the editorial policy of both to publish articles covering the entire range of world history. Our sampling is taken from the year 1962. The Historische Zeitschrift published, among others, essays on the following subjects: "Frankish Coronation Customs and the Problem of the Ceremonial Coronation," "The Austro-Bavarian Treaty of Linz, September 11, 1534, as recorded in Munich Archives," "Giovanni Giolitti and Italian Policy in the First World War," "Structuresand Personalities in History," "The Emperor- ship of Otto the Great: A Reassessment after 1,000 Years," "The 'Kladder- adatsch' Affair: A Note on the Domestic History of the Second Reich. "
Some of the titles appearing in the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft were as follows: "Modern Bourgeois Historiography's Attempts to Reha- bilitate German Militarism," "Atomic Arms Policy in West German Imperial- ism: From the MC 70 to the MC 96," "The Clerical-Imperialistic Ideology of the Occident in the Service of German Imperialism. " "Messianic Move- ments in the Middle Ages," "The Theory and Policy of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on the National Question," "The Historical Mission of the German Democratic Republic and the Future of Germany," "The Major Class Conflict of Feudal Society as Reflected in Some Literary Sources from the Eleventh through the Thirteenth Century," "Friedrich Meinecke - A Precursor of the NATO Historians in West Germany," "Medieval Imperial Policy as Reflected in Bourgeois Historiography of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. " Most significant of all, perhaps, is the fact that an essay by Walter Ulbricht, "The Banner of the People's Democracy on German Soil," is the lead article in the first issue of the year and that the entire sixth issue is taken up with a reprint of Ulbricht's speech "A Historical Sketch of the German Workers' Movement. " We should also mention that in the Historische Zeitschrift, under the heading "Miscellaneous Notes," there is only one article for which it is essential to know the author's name. That is Gerhard Ritter's "A New Thesis on War Guilt? ", a critique of Fritz Fischer's book Germany's Aims in the First World War.
Without conducting a detailed quantitative analysis of subjects treated and methods employed, we can draw a few preliminary conclusions: In the His- torische Zeitschrift, all major historical epochs are equally represented. There are as many if not more studies of limited subjects as there are broad surveys.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS AND MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY 63
Theoretical discussions and articles on contemporary history appear rarely, but they are by no means excluded altogether. By contrast, the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft strongly emphasizes the present and the immediate past, giving considerable space to work on the history of the German Com- munist Party or the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, particularly in their relationship to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A comparable number of pages is given to critical and often fiercely polemical articles on developments in the Federal Republic and in West German historiography. By comparison, all the rest of human history assumes a relatively unimportant position, but articles that do deal with other topics often command great respect for the sophistication and energy with which they investigate pre- viously neglected aspects of history. Needless to say, however, these articles, too, follow a general line of inquiry that focuses on "class structures" in any given society.
Social history, particularly as a statistical discipline, plays a surprisingly minimal role in the Zeitschrift fair Geschichtswissenschaft. Ideas, whether one's own or those of one's opponents, dominate the scene entirely. The level of work differs far more widely than in the Historische Zeitschrift. Along with well-documented, careful studies, there are always other essays that can only be characterized as rhythmic hymns larded with ritualistic condem- nations. But perhaps the most striking feature of all is that the contemporary and the medieval studies, the careful and the shoddy ones, are all informed by a single view that is accepted without reservation. The Historische Zeit- schrift, too, has a fundamental position that no reader will be able to ignore. But when compared with the informing principle of the Zeitschrift fMr Geschichtswissenschaft, that of the Historische Zeitschrift looks like a pale pastel next to a brilliant oil.
We must ask now what kind of exchange can take place between two types of historical scholarship so different that they can hardly be subsumed under the same general definition of "scholarship. " I do not intend to present a historical survey here. It is common knowledge that historians from the GDR attended German Historical Conventions as late as 1958. They were expelled from the meeting in Trier. There were good reasons for the expulsion, but the nationalistic overtones of some of the arguments on which it was based drew criticism not only in the GDR but in the Federal Republic as well. From that point on, the attitude of historians in the West toward their col- leagues in the GDR can best be summed up in the word neglect. Marxism itself, of course, has not been neglected in the least, but to my knowledge Historiography in the GDR was not the subject of a single essay in the West until the new discipline of GDR studies became fashionable and devoted some attention to it. The reverse trend among younger historians soon developed into a movement that has managed to change the earlier picture entirely in
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? ? 64 ERNST NOLTE
some fields of study. The situation in the GDR has been just the opposite. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that historians of the Federal Republic receive more attention from the GDR than from any other country in the world. The treatment West German historiography receives is, of course, almost entirely negative and comes exclusively from historians of the GDR. Their dominant attitude toward their colleagues in the West can be summed up in one word, too, and that word is polemic. More often than not, this polemic is grossly distorting. I recently called attention in print to a typical instance in which a GDR historian, by citing a paraphrase written by a like-minded colleague rather than the original text, was able to destroy a political enemy. 24I was the victim of a similar distortion not long ago myself when a quoted text of mine was so altered by ellipses that it came out mean- ing precisely the opposite of what it had originally meant. 25
We might state our first conclusion as follows: Correctness or, as the modish term has it, "factology" is not the be-all and end-all of scholarship, but whether bourgeois or Marxist, scholarship cannot do without correctness or at least the effort to be correct. Obvious distortions, ellipses that change the meaning of quotations, and outright falsifications of quotations deserve our censure no matter what the circumstances that produced them, but the more extreme the political situation is that forces the historian to be an advocate for his society, the more understandable these distortions become.
II. MARX'S AND ENGELS' CONCEPT OF SCHOLARSHIP
We can move ahead now and ask whether Marx or Engels would have sub- scribed to the position I have developed here. Or to put the question in more general terms: What concept of scholarship did the founders of Marxism hold?
We should note first that when contemporary Marxists criticize bourgeois historiography, or least German historiography and its tradition, they can justifiably cite Marx and Engels as their authority. Marx spoke scornfully of that "dancing dwarf Ranke,"26 and Engels used the phrase "those two schools of historical fabricators 27when he described the division of German historians into those favoring a greater German confederation and those favoring a limited one. But these two remarks should not be interpreted as license for any and all gratuitous attacks. In the foreword to his Contribution
24. Cf. Ernst Nolte, "Ideologie, Engagement, Perspektive"in Geschichte Heute: Posi- tionen, Tendenzen iind Problemne, ed. Gerhard Schulz (Gdttingen, 1973), 292.
25. Cf. Ludwig Elm, Hochsclzule und Neofaschismrus: Zeitgeschichtliclie Stiidien zur Hochlscliulpolitik in der BRD (Berlin [Ost], 1972), 250ff.
The Relationship between "Bourgeois" and "Marxist" Historiography Author(s): Ernst Nolte
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Feb. , 1975), pp. 57-73 Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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? ? THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY*
ERNST NOLTE
At many universities in the Western world today, there is hardly any topic an historian will be asked to discuss more frequently than the relationship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist"historiography. At the same time, he will be obliged to define himself and his own work in terms of these two poles. Discussion of the matter is difficult because the basis for scholarly inquiry
an objective relationship to one's subject - is lacking. The "bourgeois his- torian" seems to look at the question differently from the "Marxist historian. " But we must not forget that in using the terms "bourgeois" and "Marxist" we, too, are following Marxist practice. Our acceptance of the Marxist posi- tion as a point of departure is clearly provisional, and as we proceed, we shall see that the apparently irreconcilable opposition of "bourgeois" and "Marxist" will prove not to be so irreconcilable after all. In making this initial concession to the Marxist view, we shall be able to temper the military metaphors both sides are so fond of using. I shall not roll out the heavy artillery of Hegelian concepts, as Bernard Willms does in his valuable essay Marxismus - Wissenschaft- Universitfit,' nor shall I open the attack on a number of fronts, as the authors of issue number 70 of Das Argument do in their "Kritik der biirgerlichen Geschichtswissenschaft. "2 Instead, I shall try to characterize the bourgeois and Marxist positions in historiography. This will involve three steps: citing statements of purpose by major represen- tatives of both schools, comparing the contents of leading bourgeois and Marxist publications in the field, and describing the most extreme and what have been to date the most usual types of exchange between the two camps. I shall then expand the scope of our inquiry by examining Marx's and Engels'
* This essay is a slightly abridged version of an inaugural lecture at the Free Uni- versity of Berlin. The lecture, announced as one in a series on the "Cold War," was not delivered in the university because powerful student groups had called for a boycott of it. This incident is not atypical of the current situation at the Free University.
1. Bernard Willms, Marxismus - Wissenschaft - Universitfit: Zw6lf Thesen (Diussel- dorf, 1971).
2. "Kritik der birgerlichen GeschichtswissenschaftI," Das Argument: Zeitschrift fuir Philosophie zind Sozialwissenschlaften, 70, Sonderband (Berlin, 1972).
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? ? 58 ERNST NOLTE
views on scholarship in general and on historical scholarship in particular. The insights derived from these first two steps should enable us to formulate, in a third section, distinctions and results that will make our controversy look very different from the way it did at the outset of our discussion.
I. THE "MARXIST" AND "BOURGEOIS" SCHOOLS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY
From 1953 on, the problem of defining the Marxist position in historiography has been the subject of numerous contributions in the Zeitschrift ffur Geschichtswissenschaft. Ernst Engelberg published essays on this theme in
1964, 1968, and 1971. In my remarks here, I shall draw primarily on his work as well as on relevant studies by Ernst Diehl and Gerhard Lozek. 3 The argument- greatly condensed but not, I feel, in any way distorted- is as follows:
Marxist historiography is concerned with the "arc of world history"4 that reaches from classless primeval society to the communistic society of the future. That is, Marxist historiography conceives of world history as a series of class struggles -and of class alliances as well - that have arisen from the one factor central to all previous history; man's exploitation of his fellow man. In its research, Marxist scholarship always takes sides with the progres- sive classes and parties that represent the future in the dialectical struggle between the forces of production and the system of production. Only the socially conscious advance guard of the working class, i. e. , the Marxist- Leninist party, has a comprehensive understanding of the social nature of production, and without such understanding it is impossible to determine unequivocally what is progressive and what is reactionary at any given time. The advance guard is in a position to understand because it is the leading element of a group that is not merely one historical group among others but a group that potentially includes the great majority of all humanity or at least the great majority of humanity's most progressive forces. If past history has been no more than a sequence of events in which one form of exploita- tion has replaced another in accordance with predictable laws, then this progressive group has transcended history and already stands beyond it.
3. Ernst Engelberg, "Die Aufgaben der Historiker der DDR von 1964 bis 1970," Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenischaft 12 (1964), 388-402; Uber Gegenstand und Ziel der marxistisch-leninistischenGeschichtswissenschaft," ibid. (1968), 1117-45; "Qber Theorie und Methode in der Geschichtswissenschaft,"ibid. (1971), 1347-66; Ernst Diehl, "Zu einigen Problemen und Aufgaben der Geschichtswissenschaftder DDR in dergegenwiirtigenEtappe,"ibid. (1969), 1393-1402;GerhardLozek,"ZurMethodologie einer wirksarnenAuseinandersetzungmit der bUrgerlichenGeschichtsschreibung:Das Problem der Strukturelementeund die Hauptrichtung der Auseinandersetzung,"ibid. (1970), 608-616.
4. Engelberg (1968), 1129.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 59
If Marxist historiography is biased, its bias differs fundamentally from the bias of any other form of historical scholarship. Its bias is not at odds with objectivity, for "the basic interests of the working class are in harmony with the conditions of objective reality. "5
The basic interests of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, cannot be in harmony with the conditions of objective reality because the time has passed in which exploiting classes could be progressive. What holds true for the bourgeoisie obviously holds true for its advocate, the bourgeois histori- ographer. Since bourgeois historiography is inextricably linked to a reac- tionary economy and to reactionary politics, it can only obscure the truth. "The questions an historian asks of history are determined by the interests of the class with which he identifies. "6 Bourgeois historiography is therefore unscholarly by nature, even when it concerns itself with remote subjects. The closer it comes to the present, the more obvious its defensive and reactionary position becomes. It shrewdly offers, for example, a partial criticism of Bis- marck and Hitler but at the same time obscures the very class structure that made Bismarck's Reich and the Fascist regime possible.
Marxist-Leninist historiography, however, adheres to strict standards of scholarship when it helps build the "intellectual arsenal" of peace and social- ism, when it exposes the neo-colonial plans of West German militarists and monopolists,7 and especially when it demonstrates that the German Demo- cratic Republic (GDR) represents the high point of German history to date. 8 There is no fundamental difference between state and party leadership on the one hand and Marxist historians on the other because government in the GDR "is based on a Marxist-Leninist view of history. "9
Granted, Engelberg allows for a "dialectical tension between politics and scholarship,"'10and Lozek does not deny that there are "certain practical and methodological skills of historical scholarship on which class has no bear- ing. "'" In these respects, the Marxist and the bourgeois are not completely at odds. As Engelberg expressed it in 1971, the Marxist-Leninist historian can "learn within limits'12 from his bourgeois counterpart. And the two schools seem to have some enemies in common, although these enemies do not pose the same kind of threat to them both. Among these mutual oppo- nents we find "left-wing opportunists," dogmatists, and "leftist-sectarian adventurers. " In the GDR it is sometimes openly said that these opponents
5. Engelberg (1964), 391.
6. Lozek, 611.
7. Engelberg (1964), 388 and 399. 8. Diehl, 1397.
9. Engelberg (1964), 388.
10. Ibid. , 393.
11. Lozek, 613.
12. Engelberg (1971), 1360.
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? ? 60 ERNST NOLTE
have still not freed themselves of bourgeois thinking. In the same issue of the Zeitschrift ftir Geschichtswissenschaft (XII/ 1964) in which Engelberg out- lines the historian's tasks in the GDR for the period 1964 to 1970, two Soviet writers published an article entitled "Problems of Historiography in the People's Republic of China," which sharply attacks certain "bourgeois- nationalistic" tendencies observed in that country. 13
Even at this early stage of our discussion it would seem that the relation- ship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography and between "bour- geois" and "socialistic" in general is much more complicated than the customary language of the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft would lead us to believe.
But now let us examine a representative statement of purpose by a "bour- geois historian. " I have chosen as my example a short essay by Friedrich Meinecke. I realize that methodological objections could be made to this choice, but I think it remains an appropriate one here nevertheless. Meinecke's article, entitled "German Historiography and the Needs of the Times," was first published in 1916 in Friedrich Naumann's Hilfe. It is now available in volume IV of Meinecke's Werke, where it appears together with other essays on the "Theory and Philosophy of History. "14 Meinecke ad- dresses himself to the criticism, which seems to have been frequently leveled at historians during World War I, that contemporary historical scholarship in Germany "concerned itself too little with the intellectual life of our times
and therefore offered it too little. "15Meinecke by no means takes this criti- cism lightly. He notes, without polemical overtones, "the preoccupation of our young scholars with problems of the nineteenth century. "'6 He modestly sees himself and his generation merely carrying on the tradition of the "great epoch of Ranke, Burckhardt, and Treitschke. '17 With an obvious tone of resignation, he points out that he and his contemporaries, too, like their great predecessors, had been summoned to the battlefield of national struggle but that in terms of "persuasive power" their manifestoes could not bear com- parison with those of a man like Treitschke. 18
For Meinecke, it was self-evident that historiography was closely con- nected with the state and era that produced it, and an "ideological critique" that demonstretad this interdependence would surely have contained no surprises for him. But when he rejects the "dramatic and sweeping syntheses"
13. R. V. Vjatkin and S. L. Tichvinskij, "Vber einige Fragen der Geschichtswissen- schaft in der Volksrepublik China," Zeitschrift ffir Geschichltswissenschaft 12 (1964), 403-422.
14. IV, 172-180. 15. Ibid. , 172. 16. Ibid. , 173. 17. Ibid. , 178
18. Loc. cit.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 61
that an age hungering for "ever new sensations" demands,19he is not only censuring Lamprecht but also attacking "ruthless nationalism" and the idea of a central Europe under German domination - all this in the midst of World War 1. 20 And when he insists on seeing things the way they really are, seeing them in their own light and in their own context, his demand stems from an awareness "that in the last analysis it is our own lifeblood we draw on in our attempts to bring the spectres of the past to life. "'21The rigorous discipline and the deep respect for facts and sources that Meinecke demands22 clearly cannot be taken for granted. They do not represent a point of depar- ture but are the results of arduous labor. The true value of these results is that they help us gain distance and perspective on our strongest impulses. And man's strongest impulses are the need for synthesis and the desire to identify with a totality beyond ourselves.
So understood, bourgeois historiography is characterized by its remove from its own time and its own nation. It is not at a remove - or is so only in a few extreme and atypical cases - in the sense that it is by nature remote from life but in the sense that it consciously seeks distance, has to seek it anew in each new situation and in ever shifting constellations. It is clear that Meinecke himself sometimes made misinterpretation inevitable by using ques- tionable metaphors like "the island of pure scholarship,"23and the temptation is certainly great to cite Treitschke as proof for the claim that bourgeois historians identify unquestioningly with their governments. But a reading of Treitschke's Berlin lectures on Politik, assuming that the reader is not exclu- sively interested in collecting offensive-sounding quotations, will show that such a claim can be upheld only with grave reservations. Furthermore, Treitschke was not "bourgeois historiography" incarnate any more than Meinecke was. Both of them occupied specific positions within the broad spectrum of historians in the Second Reich, and the spectrum reached from Treitschke to Mommsen, from Dietrich Schiaferto Ludwig Quidde.
Bourgeois scholarship, properly understood and practiced, cannot be de- fined in terms of content and methodology at all. What characterizes it instead is the extremely broad range of different views and approaches that maintain a running dialogue with one another and that collectively assume both affinity to and distance from the political and social realities in which they are rooted. Their affinity to those realities is taken for granted; their distance from them is not. This dual relationship gives bourgeois scholarship a certain degree of autonomy. Bourgeois scholarship can isolate itself from development within
19. Ibid. , 174.
20. Ibid. , 173, 174, 179. 21. Ibid. , 177.
22. Loc. cit.
23. Ibid. , 172.
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, the Marxist- Leninist party, has a comprehensive understanding of the social nature of production, and without such understanding it is impossible to determine unequivocally what is progressive and what is reactionary at any given time. The advance guard is in a position to understand because it is the leading element of a group that is not merely one historical group among others but a group that potentially includes the great majority of all humanity or at least the great majority of humanity's most progressive forces. If past history has been no more than a sequence of events in which one form of exploita- tion has replaced another in accordance with predictable laws, then this progressive group has transcended history and already stands beyond it.
3. Ernst Engelberg, "Die Aufgaben der Historiker der DDR von 1964 bis 1970," Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenischaft 12 (1964), 388-402; Uber Gegenstand und Ziel der marxistisch-leninistischenGeschichtswissenschaft," ibid. (1968), 1117-45; "Qber Theorie und Methode in der Geschichtswissenschaft,"ibid. (1971), 1347-66; Ernst Diehl, "Zu einigen Problemen und Aufgaben der Geschichtswissenschaftder DDR in dergegenwiirtigenEtappe,"ibid. (1969), 1393-1402;GerhardLozek,"ZurMethodologie einer wirksarnenAuseinandersetzungmit der bUrgerlichenGeschichtsschreibung:Das Problem der Strukturelementeund die Hauptrichtung der Auseinandersetzung,"ibid. (1970), 608-616.
4. Engelberg (1968), 1129.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 59
If Marxist historiography is biased, its bias differs fundamentally from the bias of any other form of historical scholarship. Its bias is not at odds with objectivity, for "the basic interests of the working class are in harmony with the conditions of objective reality. "5
The basic interests of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, cannot be in harmony with the conditions of objective reality because the time has passed in which exploiting classes could be progressive. What holds true for the bourgeoisie obviously holds true for its advocate, the bourgeois histori- ographer. Since bourgeois historiography is inextricably linked to a reac- tionary economy and to reactionary politics, it can only obscure the truth. "The questions an historian asks of history are determined by the interests of the class with which he identifies. "6 Bourgeois historiography is therefore unscholarly by nature, even when it concerns itself with remote subjects. The closer it comes to the present, the more obvious its defensive and reactionary position becomes. It shrewdly offers, for example, a partial criticism of Bis- marck and Hitler but at the same time obscures the very class structure that made Bismarck's Reich and the Fascist regime possible.
Marxist-Leninist historiography, however, adheres to strict standards of scholarship when it helps build the "intellectual arsenal" of peace and social- ism, when it exposes the neo-colonial plans of West German militarists and monopolists,7 and especially when it demonstrates that the German Demo- cratic Republic (GDR) represents the high point of German history to date. 8 There is no fundamental difference between state and party leadership on the one hand and Marxist historians on the other because government in the GDR "is based on a Marxist-Leninist view of history. "9
Granted, Engelberg allows for a "dialectical tension between politics and scholarship,"'10and Lozek does not deny that there are "certain practical and methodological skills of historical scholarship on which class has no bear- ing. "'" In these respects, the Marxist and the bourgeois are not completely at odds. As Engelberg expressed it in 1971, the Marxist-Leninist historian can "learn within limits'12 from his bourgeois counterpart. And the two schools seem to have some enemies in common, although these enemies do not pose the same kind of threat to them both. Among these mutual oppo- nents we find "left-wing opportunists," dogmatists, and "leftist-sectarian adventurers. " In the GDR it is sometimes openly said that these opponents
5. Engelberg (1964), 391.
6. Lozek, 611.
7. Engelberg (1964), 388 and 399. 8. Diehl, 1397.
9. Engelberg (1964), 388.
10. Ibid. , 393.
11. Lozek, 613.
12. Engelberg (1971), 1360.
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? ? 60 ERNST NOLTE
have still not freed themselves of bourgeois thinking. In the same issue of the Zeitschrift ftir Geschichtswissenschaft (XII/ 1964) in which Engelberg out- lines the historian's tasks in the GDR for the period 1964 to 1970, two Soviet writers published an article entitled "Problems of Historiography in the People's Republic of China," which sharply attacks certain "bourgeois- nationalistic" tendencies observed in that country. 13
Even at this early stage of our discussion it would seem that the relation- ship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography and between "bour- geois" and "socialistic" in general is much more complicated than the customary language of the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft would lead us to believe.
But now let us examine a representative statement of purpose by a "bour- geois historian. " I have chosen as my example a short essay by Friedrich Meinecke. I realize that methodological objections could be made to this choice, but I think it remains an appropriate one here nevertheless. Meinecke's article, entitled "German Historiography and the Needs of the Times," was first published in 1916 in Friedrich Naumann's Hilfe. It is now available in volume IV of Meinecke's Werke, where it appears together with other essays on the "Theory and Philosophy of History. "14 Meinecke ad- dresses himself to the criticism, which seems to have been frequently leveled at historians during World War I, that contemporary historical scholarship in Germany "concerned itself too little with the intellectual life of our times
and therefore offered it too little. "15Meinecke by no means takes this criti- cism lightly. He notes, without polemical overtones, "the preoccupation of our young scholars with problems of the nineteenth century. "'6 He modestly sees himself and his generation merely carrying on the tradition of the "great epoch of Ranke, Burckhardt, and Treitschke. '17 With an obvious tone of resignation, he points out that he and his contemporaries, too, like their great predecessors, had been summoned to the battlefield of national struggle but that in terms of "persuasive power" their manifestoes could not bear com- parison with those of a man like Treitschke. 18
For Meinecke, it was self-evident that historiography was closely con- nected with the state and era that produced it, and an "ideological critique" that demonstretad this interdependence would surely have contained no surprises for him. But when he rejects the "dramatic and sweeping syntheses"
13. R. V. Vjatkin and S. L. Tichvinskij, "Vber einige Fragen der Geschichtswissen- schaft in der Volksrepublik China," Zeitschrift ffir Geschichltswissenschaft 12 (1964), 403-422.
14. IV, 172-180. 15. Ibid. , 172. 16. Ibid. , 173. 17. Ibid. , 178
18. Loc. cit.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 61
that an age hungering for "ever new sensations" demands,19he is not only censuring Lamprecht but also attacking "ruthless nationalism" and the idea of a central Europe under German domination - all this in the midst of World War 1. 20 And when he insists on seeing things the way they really are, seeing them in their own light and in their own context, his demand stems from an awareness "that in the last analysis it is our own lifeblood we draw on in our attempts to bring the spectres of the past to life. "'21The rigorous discipline and the deep respect for facts and sources that Meinecke demands22 clearly cannot be taken for granted. They do not represent a point of depar- ture but are the results of arduous labor. The true value of these results is that they help us gain distance and perspective on our strongest impulses. And man's strongest impulses are the need for synthesis and the desire to identify with a totality beyond ourselves.
So understood, bourgeois historiography is characterized by its remove from its own time and its own nation. It is not at a remove - or is so only in a few extreme and atypical cases - in the sense that it is by nature remote from life but in the sense that it consciously seeks distance, has to seek it anew in each new situation and in ever shifting constellations. It is clear that Meinecke himself sometimes made misinterpretation inevitable by using ques- tionable metaphors like "the island of pure scholarship,"23and the temptation is certainly great to cite Treitschke as proof for the claim that bourgeois historians identify unquestioningly with their governments. But a reading of Treitschke's Berlin lectures on Politik, assuming that the reader is not exclu- sively interested in collecting offensive-sounding quotations, will show that such a claim can be upheld only with grave reservations. Furthermore, Treitschke was not "bourgeois historiography" incarnate any more than Meinecke was. Both of them occupied specific positions within the broad spectrum of historians in the Second Reich, and the spectrum reached from Treitschke to Mommsen, from Dietrich Schiaferto Ludwig Quidde.
Bourgeois scholarship, properly understood and practiced, cannot be de- fined in terms of content and methodology at all. What characterizes it instead is the extremely broad range of different views and approaches that maintain a running dialogue with one another and that collectively assume both affinity to and distance from the political and social realities in which they are rooted. Their affinity to those realities is taken for granted; their distance from them is not. This dual relationship gives bourgeois scholarship a certain degree of autonomy. Bourgeois scholarship can isolate itself from development within
19. Ibid. , 174.
20. Ibid. , 173, 174, 179. 21. Ibid. , 177.
22. Loc. cit.
23. Ibid. , 172.
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? ? 62 ERNST NOLTE
its society to some extent, but it can also be in advance of those developments. Marxist scholarship - if I may anticipate my first conclusion - can do nei- ther the one nor the other, nor does it want to, for in the Marxist view there is no good reason to do either.
The difference between bourgeois and Marxist historiography becomes eminently clear if we compare the subjects they choose to treat. The leading bourgeois and Marxist periodicals in the field, the Historische Zeitschrift and the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft, can provide us with pertinent information. It is the editorial policy of both to publish articles covering the entire range of world history. Our sampling is taken from the year 1962. The Historische Zeitschrift published, among others, essays on the following subjects: "Frankish Coronation Customs and the Problem of the Ceremonial Coronation," "The Austro-Bavarian Treaty of Linz, September 11, 1534, as recorded in Munich Archives," "Giovanni Giolitti and Italian Policy in the First World War," "Structuresand Personalities in History," "The Emperor- ship of Otto the Great: A Reassessment after 1,000 Years," "The 'Kladder- adatsch' Affair: A Note on the Domestic History of the Second Reich. "
Some of the titles appearing in the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft were as follows: "Modern Bourgeois Historiography's Attempts to Reha- bilitate German Militarism," "Atomic Arms Policy in West German Imperial- ism: From the MC 70 to the MC 96," "The Clerical-Imperialistic Ideology of the Occident in the Service of German Imperialism. " "Messianic Move- ments in the Middle Ages," "The Theory and Policy of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on the National Question," "The Historical Mission of the German Democratic Republic and the Future of Germany," "The Major Class Conflict of Feudal Society as Reflected in Some Literary Sources from the Eleventh through the Thirteenth Century," "Friedrich Meinecke - A Precursor of the NATO Historians in West Germany," "Medieval Imperial Policy as Reflected in Bourgeois Historiography of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. " Most significant of all, perhaps, is the fact that an essay by Walter Ulbricht, "The Banner of the People's Democracy on German Soil," is the lead article in the first issue of the year and that the entire sixth issue is taken up with a reprint of Ulbricht's speech "A Historical Sketch of the German Workers' Movement. " We should also mention that in the Historische Zeitschrift, under the heading "Miscellaneous Notes," there is only one article for which it is essential to know the author's name. That is Gerhard Ritter's "A New Thesis on War Guilt? ", a critique of Fritz Fischer's book Germany's Aims in the First World War.
Without conducting a detailed quantitative analysis of subjects treated and methods employed, we can draw a few preliminary conclusions: In the His- torische Zeitschrift, all major historical epochs are equally represented. There are as many if not more studies of limited subjects as there are broad surveys.
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? ? "BOURGEOIS AND MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY 63
Theoretical discussions and articles on contemporary history appear rarely, but they are by no means excluded altogether. By contrast, the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft strongly emphasizes the present and the immediate past, giving considerable space to work on the history of the German Com- munist Party or the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, particularly in their relationship to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A comparable number of pages is given to critical and often fiercely polemical articles on developments in the Federal Republic and in West German historiography. By comparison, all the rest of human history assumes a relatively unimportant position, but articles that do deal with other topics often command great respect for the sophistication and energy with which they investigate pre- viously neglected aspects of history. Needless to say, however, these articles, too, follow a general line of inquiry that focuses on "class structures" in any given society.
Social history, particularly as a statistical discipline, plays a surprisingly minimal role in the Zeitschrift fair Geschichtswissenschaft. Ideas, whether one's own or those of one's opponents, dominate the scene entirely. The level of work differs far more widely than in the Historische Zeitschrift. Along with well-documented, careful studies, there are always other essays that can only be characterized as rhythmic hymns larded with ritualistic condem- nations. But perhaps the most striking feature of all is that the contemporary and the medieval studies, the careful and the shoddy ones, are all informed by a single view that is accepted without reservation. The Historische Zeit- schrift, too, has a fundamental position that no reader will be able to ignore. But when compared with the informing principle of the Zeitschrift fMr Geschichtswissenschaft, that of the Historische Zeitschrift looks like a pale pastel next to a brilliant oil.
We must ask now what kind of exchange can take place between two types of historical scholarship so different that they can hardly be subsumed under the same general definition of "scholarship. " I do not intend to present a historical survey here. It is common knowledge that historians from the GDR attended German Historical Conventions as late as 1958. They were expelled from the meeting in Trier. There were good reasons for the expulsion, but the nationalistic overtones of some of the arguments on which it was based drew criticism not only in the GDR but in the Federal Republic as well. From that point on, the attitude of historians in the West toward their col- leagues in the GDR can best be summed up in the word neglect. Marxism itself, of course, has not been neglected in the least, but to my knowledge Historiography in the GDR was not the subject of a single essay in the West until the new discipline of GDR studies became fashionable and devoted some attention to it. The reverse trend among younger historians soon developed into a movement that has managed to change the earlier picture entirely in
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? ? 64 ERNST NOLTE
some fields of study. The situation in the GDR has been just the opposite. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that historians of the Federal Republic receive more attention from the GDR than from any other country in the world. The treatment West German historiography receives is, of course, almost entirely negative and comes exclusively from historians of the GDR. Their dominant attitude toward their colleagues in the West can be summed up in one word, too, and that word is polemic. More often than not, this polemic is grossly distorting. I recently called attention in print to a typical instance in which a GDR historian, by citing a paraphrase written by a like-minded colleague rather than the original text, was able to destroy a political enemy. 24I was the victim of a similar distortion not long ago myself when a quoted text of mine was so altered by ellipses that it came out mean- ing precisely the opposite of what it had originally meant. 25
We might state our first conclusion as follows: Correctness or, as the modish term has it, "factology" is not the be-all and end-all of scholarship, but whether bourgeois or Marxist, scholarship cannot do without correctness or at least the effort to be correct. Obvious distortions, ellipses that change the meaning of quotations, and outright falsifications of quotations deserve our censure no matter what the circumstances that produced them, but the more extreme the political situation is that forces the historian to be an advocate for his society, the more understandable these distortions become.
II. MARX'S AND ENGELS' CONCEPT OF SCHOLARSHIP
We can move ahead now and ask whether Marx or Engels would have sub- scribed to the position I have developed here. Or to put the question in more general terms: What concept of scholarship did the founders of Marxism hold?
We should note first that when contemporary Marxists criticize bourgeois historiography, or least German historiography and its tradition, they can justifiably cite Marx and Engels as their authority. Marx spoke scornfully of that "dancing dwarf Ranke,"26 and Engels used the phrase "those two schools of historical fabricators 27when he described the division of German historians into those favoring a greater German confederation and those favoring a limited one. But these two remarks should not be interpreted as license for any and all gratuitous attacks. In the foreword to his Contribution
24. Cf. Ernst Nolte, "Ideologie, Engagement, Perspektive"in Geschichte Heute: Posi- tionen, Tendenzen iind Problemne, ed. Gerhard Schulz (Gdttingen, 1973), 292.
25. Cf. Ludwig Elm, Hochsclzule und Neofaschismrus: Zeitgeschichtliclie Stiidien zur Hochlscliulpolitik in der BRD (Berlin [Ost], 1972), 250ff.
