George Bancroft ( 1800-1891 ) 

"History carries forward the study of ethics by following the footsteps of states from the earliest times of which there is a record. The individual who undertakes to capture truth by solitary thought loses his way in the mazes of speculation, or involves himself in mystic visions, so that the arms which he extends to embrace what are but formless shadows return empty to his own breast. To find moral truth, he must study man in action."

George Bancroft, History of the formation of the constitution of the United States of America, Vol. 1, New York 1882, S. 5. 

Stimmen der Forschung

"Bancroft's heavily Teutonic ideas of history quite missed the mark for most readers, but his exciting romantic picture of American progress and his eulogy of the common man struck a favorite theme of his era. Even in the twentieth century, Bancroft's histories have frequently appeared on college reading lists for history." 

Harvey Wish: The American historian. A social-intellectual history of the writing of the American past, New York 1962, S. 70. 

"Bancroft the transcendental Democrat [...] is an extremely attractive, difficult figure. Although his History of the United States expresses a notoriously effusive patriotism that he called ,objective', he was capable of great shrewdness not only in political strategy but in perceiving the subjectivity of other historians." 

David Levin: History as Romantic Art. Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman , New York 1967 , S. VII. 

"Bancroft's record of achievement bears no reasonable comparison. An early worshiper at the German shrine, he was influential in breaking down academic provincialism in the United States . He brought the invigorating ideals of his German tutors to this country directly as well as by application." 

Bert James Loewenberg : American History in American Thought. Christopher Columbus to Henry Adams, New York 1972, S. 242f. 

"Bancroft was a great master of narrative prose. The story he chose to tell will be important to us as long as America remains a great nation. The History tells that tale so fully and makes it so comprehensible that it won its author fame, riches and a mass readership in his lifetime; it should also earn him an important place today in American literature as well as historiography." 

Robert H. Canary: George Bancroft, New York 1974, S. 118. 

"Even Bancroft, with his notorious penchant for reading cosmic meaning into history, is, his philosophizing notwithstanding, surprisingly commonsensical and wary in his handling of much of his narrative. He shares with the others [Francis Parkman und Henry Adams] a powerful feeling for the untidiness of American history, and although he, unlike Parkman and Adams, finds the reason for America 's achievement of nationhood in a benevolent overruling Providence , he makes it plain that on the human level, at least, it was a touch-and-go business [.]." 

Richard C. Vitzthum: The American Compromise. Theme and Method in the Histories of Bancroft, Parkman, and Adams , Norman/OK 1974, S. 6f. 

"More than any other single writer, Bancroft persuasively fashioned American history in the form of a democratic mythology. In his works originates the widely prevalent ,consensus' interpretation of American history - the belief that America has always been a successful experiment in democracy, capitalism, and nationalism and has enjoyed a uniquely uninterrupted progress." 

Kirk Wood: George Bancroft, in: DLB, Bd. 47: American Historians. 1866-1912, Detroit 1986, S. 21. 

"Das zentrale Thema seiner Geschichtsschreibung war die göttlich gewollte Sondermission der USA, die demokratischen Ideale der Freiheit und Volkssouveränität beispielhaft zu realisieren; er war überzeugt, daß dann, auf Grund der dem Guten zugeneigten menschlichen Natur, der Fortschritt zur universalen Realisierung unaufhaltsam sein würde [...]. Aber schon zur Zeit seines Todes wurde Bancrofts dem Amerika des 19.Jahrhunderts vorzüglich angepaßte Geschichtsschreibung von den ,Scientific Historians' als unwissenschaftlich abgelehnt." 

Ernst Breisach: Bancroft, George (1800-1891), in: Rüdiger vom Bruch/Rainer A. Müller (Hgg.): Historikerlexikon. Von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Band 2, München 1991, S. 18f. 

"His theory was that history unveiled the record of a divine plan. God, he believed, was visible in history, and providence guided the affairs of men and nations. [.] Bancroft's focus was great men and events, and all others faded into the background, unknown and unimportant. A true Jeffersonian in philosophy, he adhered to the theory of racial and national evolution." 

Kathleen Egan Chamberlain: Bancroft, George (1800-1891), in: Kelly Boyd (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. I, London 1999, S. 71f. 

"Oft findet sich die Auffassung, der Fortschritt der Menschheit ließe sich besonders anhand des amerikanischen Volks nachweisen, das einzelne Kolonien zu einer Nation vereint, die Wildnis des nordamerikanischen Kontinents gezähmt und die Grenze der Zivilisation ständig vorwärts getrieben habe. Für Bancroft, Sparks, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley, Parkman und viele andere wurde dieser Fortschritt durch göttliche Vorsehung ermöglicht. Die amerikanische Historiographie des 19. Jahrhunderts blieb in großen Teilen von einer Gläubigkeit gekennzeichnet, wie sie die aufklärerische Geschichtsschreibung Europas kaum noch kannte." 

Gabriele Lingelbach: Klio macht Karriere. Die Institutionalisierung der Geschichtswissenschaft in Frankreich und den USA in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Institutes für Geschichte 181), Berlin 2003, S. 87. 

Biografie

Werke (Auswahl)

1820 

Theses/Qvas ... pvblice defendet Georgivs Bancroft, Göttingen 1820, UB Göttingen 4 HLP IV, 26/5:1820 (30) 

1824 

The Life and Genius of Goethe: with Translations from his Poetical Works, Boston 1824 

1824 

Reflections on the politics of ancient Greece , of Arnold H. L. Heeren, deutsche Übersetzung von George Bancroft, Boston 1824, erw. London 1847 

1834-1874 

History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent to the Present Time, 10 Bde., Boston 1834-1874 ( Chicago u. a. 1966) , dt. Leipzig 1845-1875 

1837-1840 

History of the Colonization of the United States , 3 Bde., Boston 1837-1840 ( Boston 1962) 

1845 

An Oration Delivered at the Commemoration in Washington of the Death of Andrew Jackson, Washington 1845 

1855 

Literary and Historical Miscellanies, New York 1855 

1866 

Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln, Washington 1866 ( Washington 1903) 

1882 

History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America , 2 Bde., New York 1882 (Union/NJ 2000) 

1889 

Martin Van Buren to the End of his Public Career, New York 1889 

1891 

The History of the Battle of Lake Erie and Miscellaneous Papers: Life and Writings of George Bancroft, hg. von Oliver Dyer, New York 1891 

1904 

Letters from England . 1846-49, hg. von Elisabeth Bancroft Davis, New York 1904 

1908 

The Life and Letters of George Bancroft, hg. von Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe, Port Washington/NY 1908 ( New York 1971) 

1917 

Correspondence of George Bancroft and Jared Sparks, 1823-1832, Illustrating the Relation between Editor and Reviewer in the Early Nineteenth Century, hg. von John Spencer Bassett, Northampton/MS 1917 

1967 

Papers of George Bancroft, 1811-1901, Microfilm of originals in the Cornell University Library, Ithaca/NY, 1967 

Sekundärliteratur

Bassett, John Spencer: The Middle Group of American Historians, New York 1917.  

Breisach, Ernst: Historiography. Ancient, Medieval & Modern, Chicago 1983.  

Breunig, Charles: The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789-1850, New York 1970.  

Bush, Harold K.: American Declarations: Rebellion and Repentance in American Cultural History, University of Illinois Press 1999.  

Canary, Robert H.: George Bancroft (Twayne's United States authors series 266), New York 1974. 

Chamberlain, Kathleen Egan: Bancroft, George (1800-1891), in: Boyd, Kelly (Hg.): Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. I, London 1999.  

Dawes, Norman H./Franklin T. Nichols: Revaluing Bancroft, in: New England Quarterly 6 (1933), S. 278-293.  

DeWolfe Howe, Mark: The Life and Letters of George Bancroft, 2 Bde ., New York 1908.  

Ernest, John Richard: The Language of Truth: Narrative Strategy in the Histories of William H. Prescott, George Bancroft, and Henry Adams, Ann Arbor/MI 1989.  

Fisher, Sydney George: Legendary and Mythmaking Process in Histories of the American Revolution, in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 51 (April 1912), S. 53-75.  

Gooch, George P.: Geschichte der Geschichtsschreiber im 19. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a. M. 1964, S. 447-448.  

Handlin, Lilian: George Bancroft. The Intellectual as Democrat, New York u. a. 1984.  

Hoffer, Peter C.: Liberty or Order: Two Views of American History from the Revolutionary Crisis to the Early Works of George Bancroft and Wendell Phillips , New York u. a. 1988.  

Jameson, John Franklin: The History of Historical Writing in America , Boston 1891. Klose, Andreas R.:
Dogmen demokratischen Geschichtsdenkens: monumentalische Nationalgeschichtsschreibung in den USA, Würzburg 2003.

Kraus, Michael: A History of American History, New York 1937.  

Kraus, Michael/Davis D. Joyce: The Writing of American History, Norman/OK 1953.  

Levin, David: History as Romantic Art. Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman, Stanford 1959.  

Lewis, Merrill Embert: American Frontier History as Literature: Studies in the Historiography of George Bancroft, Frederick Jackson Turner and Theodore Roosevelt, Ann Arbor/MI 1968. Lingelbach, Gabriele:
Klio macht Karriere. Die Institutionalisierung der Geschichtswissenschaft in Frankreich und den USA in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Institutes für Geschichte 181), Berlin 2003.

Loewenberg , Bert James: American History in American Thought. Christopher Columbus to Henry Adams, New York 1972. 

Long, Orie W.: Literary Pioneers, Cambridge/MA 1935.  

Nye, Russel Blaine: George Bancroft. Brahmin Rebel, New York 1944.  

Tassel, David van: Recording America's Past: An Interpretation of the Development of Historical Studies in America 1607-1884, Chicago 1960.  

Tymeson, Mildred Mc Clary: George Bancroft, 1800-1891: he made history, and he wrote it, Worcester/MA 1956.  

Vitzthum, Richard C.: The American Compromise. Theme and Method in the Histories of Bancroft, Parkman, and Adams, Norman/OK 1974.  

Waechter, Michael: Die "Progressive Historians" und die Modernisierung der amerikanischen Geschichtswissenschaft, in: Wolfgang Küttler/Jörn Rüsen/Ernst Schulin ( Hgg .): Geschichtsdiskurs, Bd. 4: Krisenbewußtsein, Katastrophenerfahrungen und Innovationen 1880-1945, Frankfurt a. M. 1997, S. 124-135.  

Walker, Josef Clay: George Bancroft as Historian, Heidelberg 1915. Wish, Harvey:
The American Historian. A social-intellectual History of the Writing of the American Past, New York 1960.

Wood, Kirk: George Bancroft, in: DLB, Bd. 47: American Historians.1866-1912, Ann Arbor /MI 1983, S. 6-22 

Links

a) Quellen  

A Plea for the Constitution of the United States  

http://www.constitution.org/gb/gb-plea.htm

Textauszüge
Anbieter: Constitution Society, private Organisation.

The Place of Abraham Lincoln in History 

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/bancroft_george_on_abraham_lincoln.html

Kompletter Artikel als E-Text, ursprünglich erschienen in: "The Atlantic" 1865.
Anbieter: School of Cooperative Individualism , privates US-Bildungsnetzwerk.

On Self-Government  

http://www.theaha.org/info/AHA_History/gbancroft.htm

Rede Bancrofts als Präsident der AHA 1885-86 in New York am 27. April, 1886, ursprünglich in: Papers of the American Historical Association 2 (1887), S. 7-13.
Anbieter: http://www.theaha.org/ - American Historical Association.

The Office of the People - in Art, Government and Religion 

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Bancroft.html

George Bancrofts Rede vor der Adelphi Society of Williamstown College , August 1835
Anbieter: Swarthmore College , PA.

b) Sekundärinformationen  

Biografie  

http://www.2020site.org/literature/george_bancroft.html

umfangreiche Biografie mit Informationen zu Bancrofts Vater, seiner Erziehung und seinem späteren Wirken, mit Foto
Anbieter: 2020site.org, LoveToKnow, kirchliche Organisation.

Lexikoneintrag  

http://www.bartleby.com/65/ba/BancroftG.html

umfassende biografische Angaben mit Foto
Anbieter: bartleby.com, zitiert nach Columbia Encyclopedia.

Lexikonartikel  

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Lisle/dial/bancroft.html

Eintrag aus dem Dictionary of Literary Biography
Anbieter: American Studies der University of Virgina, enthält u.a. auch David Levins "History as Romantic Art" als E-Text:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/LEVIN/levtit.html.

Lexikoneintrag  

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bancroft

Kurzinformation zu Leben und Werk
Anbieter: Freie Internet-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia.

Guide to the George Bancroft Papers  

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM01262.html

Nachlassverzeichnis
Anbieter: Bibliothek der Cornell University.

Lexikoneintrag  

http://www.famousamericans.net/georgebancroft/

Sehr ausführlicher Eintrag zu Leben und Werk mit Foto
Anbieter: Appletons Encyclopedia.

Sarah-Leonie Kaufhold/Manuel Theisen 

30.10.2003