Abstract
The article takes a middle position between the idea of objectivity which accompanied the professionalization of historical studies in the nineteenth century ascribed to Leopold von Ranke and the postmodern position identified with Hayden White that histories and novels are indistinguishable. A main function of historical writing, whether professional or literary, has been the creation of collective memory which in turn has been a key element in the formation of collective identity. Despite its claim to value neutrality, professional history as practiced in the nineteenth century researched and wrote steadily in the service of ideologies, frequently nationalistic. Research served to buttress this ideology and thus in fact distorted the past. Nevertheless while the historian cannot free himself from value commitments that guide his research and conclusions and thus because of the complexity of the source can never recreate the past wie es eigentlich gewesen, a past which lends itself to multiple interpretations, he is able to disprove on the basis of the evidence distortions of the past. This is what distinguishes history from propaganda. This, of course, assumes that there is a real past; that although our image of the past is a construct, it is not an arbitrary construct, but emerges out of an ongoing discussion among historians who share standards of rational discourse. History is memory; the task of the honest historian must be to prevent it from becoming distorted memory.