Former Fellows

Project Outline

The proposed research is based on the discussion of the postulate that the Methodenstreit, which broke out after the publication of the Deutsche Geschichte by German historian Karl Lamprecht in 1891, was not a German but a transnational event, though having different political connotations in various European countries and the Westernising world.

The proposed research project investigates the complex interplay of local traditions and ‘imported’ intellectual products of the Lamprecht controversy, which reached Finland in the very beginning of the twentieth century. The emphasis is placed on the appropriation and mediation of the Lamprechtian ideas in early twentieth-century Finnish historiography as reflected in the first Finnish historical journal, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja, and debates at the Historical Association of Finland.

While previous research done on the subject has (fully justifiably) emphasised the nationalistic aspects of the Finnish Lamprechtianism, the proposed project would like to broaden the scope and include its transnational dimension. Hence, three goals have been formulated:

• to explore the Methodenstreit evoked by Lamprecht and the further developments of the Lamprechtian paradigm of historical scholarship as a part of the transnational reconfiguration of the ideological landscape of the period;
• to analyse how the Finnish Lamprechtianists debate dealt with the questions of modernity and identity, inherently related to the reconceptualisation of the ‘national self’;
• to study the complex processes of cultural transfer and appropriation in Europe, by starting out with a scholar such as Lamprecht, who was almost totally rejected in his native German Reich but, nevertheless, cherished in the ‘small-state’ regions of Eastern and Northern Europe.

As a contribution to the overall research goals of the Regimes of Historicity project, the proposed project aims at investigating the complex interplay between national and transnational horizons as well as the border-crossing nature of ideas and of intellectuals as a group. Considering the popularity of Lamprechtianism in various European ‘small-states’, this study may also serve as a basis for establishing connections between traditions which were not having a direct impact on each other but were participating in comparable projects of ‘domesticating’ modernity.

Moreover, the proposed project questions the conventional, modernist model of cultural transfer, which assumes a rather passive assimilation of new ideas, conceived in the ‘dynamic centre‘, and leading the way for an assimilating ‘periphery’. Instead, it views cultural appropriation and mediation as bearing witness to a highly creative process, in which – due to adjustments to a new environment, alterations occurring in the transmitted messages, and the crossing of linguistic frontiers – initial Central European ideas grew out of their conception and essentially diverged from their origin. Since such creative appropriations in small European nations are usually ignored by international research, the proposed project hopes to contribute to a more balanced picture of historical differences and multiple modernities in Europe.