Thomas Nipperdey

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Thomas Nipperdey (27 October 1927, Cologne – 14 June 1992, Munich) was a German historian best known for his monumental and exhaustive studies of Germany from 1800 to 1918. As a critical follower of Leopold von Ranke's famous ideal of writing "history exactly as it happened", Nipperdey sought to explain the interconnectedness of political, social and cultural developments, while avoiding partisanship and rejecting moralistic efforts to see German history before 1933 only in the light of Nazism. Nipperdey was born in Cologne and studied philosophy, history, and German philology at the University of Göttingen, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Cologne, where he obtained a PhD in 1953. He taught history at the University of Göttingen (1961–63), the University of Karlsruhe (TH) (1963–1967), the Free University of Berlin (1967–1971), and at LMU Munich (1971–1992). He is best known for his multi-volume history of Germany from 1800 to 1918. He also published widely in the fields of Reformation history and religious history, as well as in the political history of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the history of German political parties. Among his students were Martin Baumeister and Andreas Daum. Nipperdey was a persistent opponent of the "critical school" of German historians who saw the underlying feudal and authoritarian political and social structures of the German Empire during the 19th century as paving the way for the triumph of Hitler's National Socialism in 1933. In a series of essays, Nipperdey rejected this view and argued that the 19th century was best seen in its own right. While he never finished a book on the post-1918 era, he wrote articles that analyze the phenomena of National Socialism in terms of modernization theory.