Interpretation

“The function of historical controversy, … is to bring out the many-sidedness of events and to emphasise the absurdity of riding any one hobby horse too hard .” A. Marwick

Arthur Marwick

One of the most fascinating things about history as a subject is that it attempts to achieve a variety of things. The words for history in French and German (histoire and Geschichte) are the same words that are used for story. History is often seen as a narrative, in other words, what happened, when and how, and for many people this is how they experience and consume history. Popular history on the television or in coffee-table books tends to focus on this aspect of the past. But the study of history also encourages us to be analytical and to ask not just what happened but to develop an understanding of why something happened. Analytical history gets to the heart of matters and generates the opportunity to learn lessons from the past.

Analytical history also creates debate. The famous historian, E.H. Carr, said that in everything they do historians are affected by their own subjective views. Some historians have consciously tried to be more objective in their approach (i.e. to not let their own personal beliefs affect the conclusions that they draw), but this is ultimately almost impossible to fully achieve. Historians will gather factual evidence in order to develop an interpretation but in doing so they have to select which evidence is used and which is discarded. The availability of evidence often changes over time with the release or discovery of new sources opening up different lines of interpretation. For example, Fischer’s theory of German aggressive foreign policy in the build up to the First World War was largely based on documents relating to Bethmann-Hollweg. Other historians had access to different sources of evidence, such as Erdmann using Riezler’s diaries, which leads them to often very different interpretations.

Debate in historical interpretations can become very heated and whole schools of historians emerge who are likely to adopt a particular view. You will come across some of these groups in your study of Germany between 1871 and 1945. Intentionalists focus on the intentional policies and ambitions of individuals such as Kaiser Wilhelm or Adolf Hitler. Structuralists (functionalists) focus more on the structures in play such as groups, institutions and customs of the period. Some historians will bring a particular political or religious perspective to bear on an interpretation, such as Marxist or Jewish historians while others will try and find a consensus approach that considers a variety of different interpretations and reaches some kind of middle ground.

Without different interpretations history would not be so interesting and controversial and would not reflect the complexity and importance of the issues that we examine.