Leopold von Ranke

Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) was a German historian, often called the founder of modern source-based history. Born in Thuringia and trained in theology and philology, he taught at the University of Berlin from 1825 to 1871 and insisted that the historian's task was to show the past as it actually was, from archives rather than tradition. His works include the History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations, the History of the Popes, German History in the Age of the Reformation, histories of France and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and an unfinished World History begun in his eighties.