Comparative Historical Research: German Examples

Systematic comparison was alien to the historicist paradigm which dominated historical research and literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly in Germany. Anyone aiming to reconstruct historical phenomena as individual events, study them under the aspect of ”development” and understand them in their context would not be interested in systematic identification of similarities and differences or in their explanation. Narrative and comparison were and are opposites. Without conceptual explanation and theoretical input, historical comparison is not possible. Because German historians were strongly influenced by the historicist paradigm until well into the second third of the twentieth century, systematic comparison did not play a major role in their work. In essence it was left to important outsiders like Otto Hintze and historically oriented sociologists like Max Weber.