Simply put, Leopold von Ranke was the first, prominent figure who established and practiced the profession of academic history. This does not mean he was the first “historian,” but that he was the first individual to study history using numerous types of primary sources that are considered essential to the study of history.

Before Ranke, a work of history did not often utilize or prioritize written or contemporary documents from the period. Instead, they were often written accounts of oral histories by medieval monks or learned writers. If they did utilize primary sources (such as Edward Gibbons infamous series on the Rise and Fall of Rome), then interaction with the primary sources was usually top-down: examinations of a government, a leader, or a whole array of peoples based on chroniclers writing at the time. These resulted in numerous erroneous extrapolations based on (relatively) few sources to verify such conclusions.

Ranke used his studies in philology to analyze “mundane sources:” diaries, eye-witness accounts, missives, correspondence, etc. that offered insights into the people, their thoughts, and their experiences in the time they lived. While Ranke most certainly still emphasized high-politics (important figures, leaders), he introduced an examination of a diverse array of sources as necessary for the study of history. As a result, Ranke is seen as the transition from history as a passionate hobby to a true profession. A profession that required skills, a methodological approach to analyze sources, and, most importantly, a thorough examination of numerous primary sources instead of second-hand accounts.

The general understanding of Ranke is that he was the first, true, academic historian by our current standards. And this is important because the profession of history has changed significantly since Ranke was writing in the late 19th century. Whenever you read an academic monograph (book), the historian almost always starts with a historiography, or the history of how the topic has been written by historians. A social historian writing about Prussian Pietism and family structures will refer to Ranke most likely as someone who asserted a now incorrect view of Junkers, religious values, and Prussian social norms in the 18th and early 19th century. They will then discuss how this view was enhanced or rejected by later German historians during the Nazi era, who incorporated Prussian values into a wartime, propaganda machine. Then follow with American, British, and post-war German historians who took the opposite approach in the 1950s and 60s. Then they will address the numerous important works in the “Social Turn” of the 1970s, followed by spin-offs and more specific reevaluations of the field, like the New Social History, etc.

This is important, because the historian must show how they interact with earlier scholars to illustrate the significance of their work in relation to what came before. The ways the reject or support ideas and arguments, as well as establish entirely new concepts or frameworks for historical analysis. Understanding the historiography of a field (military, social, economic, diplomatic, religious, cultural, etc.) is absolutely essential for all academic historians, as it provides the background for an informed analysis of whatever topic that historian has chosen to research. Most of this started with Ranke. You could poetically say that a historian engages not just with the past in their work, but with the ghosts on which the profession is built by delineating the historiography of their work.