Abstract

Karl Lamprecht's late nineteenth-century work, Deutsche Geschichte, illustrates that the specific intellectual positions of an historian can be fitted into a framework which takes shape in response to traumas the historian experiences as a child. Throughout his youth, Lamprecht's father compared Karl to his dead brother. The serious narcissistic injury which Lamprecht suffered as a result of this treatment led directly to his adult academic habits. Lamprecht's scholarship was shaped by his habits, acquired in childhood, of venturing out beyond established bounds and appropriating through collecting. Lamprecht's work, ostensibly discussing the history of the selffulfillment of the German nation, was on some level an autobiographical work, a veiled statement of the historian's understanding of his own growth. Lamprecht's historical vision was determined, at least in part, by childhood circumstances which affected his assimilation of his professional training, as they encouraged in him a drive toward self-affirmation by means of challenging established bonds