EARL LAMPBECUT AND KULTURGESCHICIITE. 419 



Karl Lampreclit was born near Wittenberg in 1856; received his 

 earlier training at Pforta, the celebrated Prinzenschule, and won his 

 Doctor's degree from the University of Leipzig in 1879. The student 

 was father of the scholar ; liis thesis was of such extraordinary charac- 

 ter that the department of history to whose head it was offered refused 

 to accept it. So the present head of the same department was com- 

 pelled to take his degree as a political economist. Young Lamprecht 

 was scarce hopeful of entering upon the professorial career, so scant 

 were his means and so expensive it was and now is in Germany to 

 become an instructor in a university. He engaged himself to teach in 

 a private family in Koln, but while employed in this capacity he unex- 

 pectedly attracted the attention of a wealthy burgher of that city 

 named Mevissen, who supplied him with the means of entering the 

 University of Bonn as a docent — usually the first step to a professor- 

 ship. Lamprecht 's initial work, the investigation of the condition 

 of the peasantry of the Ehineland at all stages of German history, 

 brought him into disagreement with most of his seniors in the univer- 

 sity faculty. He continued his studies in this direction, however, with- 

 out interruption until he had founded The West German Magazine of 

 History and Art, the 'Society for the Advancement of Ehenish His- 

 tory' and had laid the foundations for his famous 'Deutsche Ge- 

 schichte' in his first important work, 'Economic and Social Conditions 

 in Germany during the Middle Ages,' in four volumes. All this was 

 done during the years of 1880 to 1886 and while he was only a docent 

 — an activity which bespoke the astonishing energy of the present pro- 

 fessor. A year or two after the appearance of 'Social and Economic 

 Conditions in the Middle Ages' Lamprecht was called to Marburg as 

 ordentlicher professor, very much to the surprise of the wiseacres, who 

 had opposed him at every turn at Bonn. In 1890, when only thirty- 

 six years of age, he was made full professor of history at Leipzig, where 

 he has been the directing spirit in the faculty of modern liistory ever 

 since; his co-workers and assistants in this department number about 

 a dozen and his students each semester average 350 to 400; in the 

 historical seminars there are from ninety to one hundred men taking 

 special training in Kulturgeschichte. These students come from all 

 parts of the civilized world. It is not difficult then to understand what 

 an immense influence Lamprecht is exercising on the present genera- 

 tion of historical students. Such is, briefly, the lifework of the man 

 who has excited so much opposition in Germany. Let us examine more 

 closely the main features of the new history and its methods. 



Lamprecht divides all knowledge into two classes : the one depend- 

 ent on mechanics, the other on psychology, Naturwissenschaften and 

 Geisteswissenschaften. History is a science — a Geisteswissenschaft — 

 dependent on psychology. It deals with the acts of men just as bot- 



