Hans Baron (June 22, 1900 – November 26, 1988)
was a German-American historian of political thought and literature. His main contribution to the historiography of the period was to introduce in 1928 the term ''
civic humanism
Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Ar ...
'' (denoting most if not all of the content of ''
classical republicanism
Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Ar ...
'').
Life and career
Born in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
to a Jewish family, Baron was a student of the liberal Protestant theologian
Ernst Troeltsch
Ernst Peter Wilhelm Troeltsch (; ; 17 February 1865 – 1 February 1923) was a German liberal Christianity, liberal Protestant theologian, a writer on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history, and a classical liberal politician ...
. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, he left Germany, first for Italy and England, then in 1938 for the United States. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1945.
He was employed as a librarian and served as Research Fellow and Bibliographer at the
Newberry Library
The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics rela ...
from 1949 to 1965 and was a Distinguished Research Fellow at Newberry until 1970, when he retired.
He also held a teaching appointment at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
for many years. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 1964.
His most important work, ''The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance'' (1955), theorized that a threatened invasion of the Florentine city-state by
Giangaleazzo Visconti
Gian Galeazzo Visconti (16 October 1351 – 3 September 1402), was the first duke of Milan (1395) and ruled the late-medieval city just before the dawn of the Renaissance. He also ruled Lombardy jointly with his uncle Bernabò. He was the foundi ...
of
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
had a dramatic effect on their conception of the directionality of history. Previously believing that good necessarily prevailed, upon considering the thought-to-be impending doom of the Florentine republic at the hands of Milan, some Florentine thinkers began to think otherwise. Baron theorized that it was this shift in understanding that allowed later thinkers like
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( , , ; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527), occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel ( , ; see below), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. ...
to construct his view that free states required a politically realistic outlook in order to survive.
Works
* ''Calvin Staatsanschauung und das konfessionalle Zeitalter'' (Berlin; Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1924).
* ''Leonardo Bruni Aretino. Humanistisch-philosophische Schriftten'' (Leipzig; Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1928; 1969).
* ''The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: civic humanism and republican liberty in an age of classicism and tyranny'' (Princeton: 1955; 1966).
* ''Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice at the beginning of the quattrocento; studies in criticism and chronology'' (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955; 1968).
* ''Fifteenth-century civilisation and the Renaissance'' in ''
New Cambridge Modern History
''The New Cambridge Modern History'' replaced the original ''Cambridge Modern History'' in an entirely new project with all new editors and contributors. It was published by Cambridge University Press in fourteen volumes between the 1950s and the 1 ...
'', vol. 1 ''The Renaissance, 1493–1520'' (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1957)
* ''From Petrarch to Bruni; studies in humanistic and political literature'' (Chicago: 1968).
* ''Petrarch’s Secretum: its making and its meaning'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1985).
* ''In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism : essays on the transition from medieval to modern thought'', 2 vols. (Princeton: 1988).
Footnotes
References
*Boyd, Kelly, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writers'' (Rutledge, 1999) 1:74–75
* Wallace K. Ferguson, "The Interpretation of Italian Humanism: the Contribution of Hans Baron," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 19 (1958), 14–25. Baron's reply immediately follows.
* Anthony Molho and John A. Teseschi, eds. ''Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron'' (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1971).
* Alison Brown, "Hans Baron's Renaissance," ''Historical Journal'' 33 (1990), 441–48.
* Donald R. Kelley, ''Renaissance Humanism'' (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991).
* Riccardo Fubini, "Renaissance Historian: the Career of Hans Baron," ''Journal of Modern History'' 64 (1992), 541–74.
* James Hankins, "The 'Baron Thesis' after Forty Years and some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 56,2 (Apr. 1995), 309–30.
* Hankins, ed. ''Renaissance Civic Humanism : reappraisals and reflections'' (Cambridge: 2000).
* Ronald Witt, John M. Najemy, Craig Kallendorf, and Werner Gundersheimer, "''AHR'' Forum: Hans Baron's Renaissance Humanism," ''American Historical Review'' 101,1 (Feb. 1996), 107–44.
External links
Hans Baron on Machiavelli's intellectual development
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baron, Hans
1900 births
1988 deaths
Jewish American historians
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Writers from Berlin
University of Chicago faculty
20th-century American historians
German male non-fiction writers
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
Historians of the Renaissance
German librarians
20th-century American male writers
Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America
American male non-fiction writers
Naturalized citizens of the United States
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States