Franz Leopold Ranke, the Ranke Library at Syracuse, and the Open Future of Scientific History

Leopold von Ranke (1795 – 1886) was a German historian. Baur pays tribute to "the father of modern history," whose twenty-ton library crossed the Atlantic in 1888, arriving safely at Syracuse University. After describing various myths about Ranke, Baur recounts the historian's struggle to devise, in the face of accepted fictions about the past, a source-based approach to the study of history. Revised version of remarks given on October 12, 1998 at the Syracuse University History Department Colloquium.