The Göttingen school of history was a group of historians associated with a particular style of
historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...
located at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...
in the late 18th century.
The University of Göttingen was the original centre of the "
Geschichtswissenschaft" or history as an academic discipline, and became a major centre for globally-orientated anthropology.
The school itself was one of the newest universities in Europe, having been founded in 1734 by
Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, and the first to include the obligation to conduct and publish research alongside lecturing. The historians of this school sought to write a
universal history by combining the critical methods of
Jean Mabillon with that of the philosophical historians such as
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
and
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for ...
.
This group of historians played an important role in creating a scientific basis for historical research,
and were also responsible for coining two fundamental groups of terminologies in
scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that the Human, human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "race (human categorization), races", and that empirical evi ...
:
*Blumenbach and Meiners's
color terminology for race:
Caucasian or white race;
Mongolian or yellow race;
Malayan or brown race;
Negroid or black race; and
American or red race;
[''The End of Racism'' by Dinesh D'Souza, pg 124, 1995, "Blumenbach's classification had a lasting influence in part because his categories neatly broke down into familiar tones and colors: white, black, yellow, red, and brown."]
* Gatterer, Schlözer and Eichhorn's
Biblical terminology for race:
Semitic,
Hamitic and
Japhetic.
List of academics
*
Johann David Michaelis[ (1717–1791), first chair of the department of Oriental Studies and Biblical Sciences][ (1727–1799)
* Christian Gottlob Heyne][ (1729–1812)
* August Ludwig von Schlözer][ (1735–1809)
* Christoph Meiners]Johann Gottfried Eichhorn
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (16 October 1752, in Dörrenzimmern – 27 June 1827, in Göttingen) was a German Protestant theologian of the Enlightenment and an early orientalist. He was a member of the Göttingen school of history.
Education and ...
[
* Ludwig Timotheus Spittler][ (1752–1810)
* Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840)
* Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren][ (1760–1842)
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gottingen School of History
University of Göttingen
18th-century German historians
Historiography
Anthropology