The historical essays of Otto Hintze /

Gilbert, Director of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, here presents a number of essays by one of Europe's most significant and most neglected scholars. The introduction is an invaluable guide to the essays, which span Hintze's entire career, covering his early interest in Prussian history and national security (under the influences of Ranke and Treitschke). his theoretical speculations, and his later turn toward Weber and comparative studies. What comes through as most significant here is not so much the writings themselves -- they cover areas best left to specialists -- but rather what Hintze has to say about how ideas germinate and develop. He seems to represent a sort of pivotal point in historiography: one foot in the transcendent idealism of the old ""Prussian School"" and the other firmly planted among today's social scientists and pragmatists. It becomes evident that it was not necessarily Middle Europeans coming west -- i.e., the emigres of the Frankfurt School -- who brought social philosophy down from the clouds (Hintze, though he disapproved of Nazism, did not leave Germany), but rather the exigencies of change in the 20th century which made the old abstract, olympian approach of the Germans hopelessly outmoded. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.