RANKE'S SEMINARY METHOD 267
and numbered among its 189 active members many of the most distinguished scholars of the century. This Greek Club was conducted in the following manner: A student prepared a critical paper on some subject and handed it in to Her- mann, who read it and marked with a pencil its weak points. At the meeting of the club he passed the marked essay to a member called the opponent, who immediately opened a fire of criticism on the work. The writer defended himself as best he could, and when the discussion was closed Hermann reviewed the questions on their merits. These exercises were very stimulating and contributed in no small degree to Hermann's great success as a teacher. ^
Of these two famous pioneer seminaries Ranke was a mem- ber during his student days at Leipzig, 1814-18.2 At that time he had no special interest in history, but was deeply absorbed in classical literature. In his autobiographical sketches he characterizes Beck and Hermann as the most active and effective of his teachers, and refers to the training for teaching he had received in Beck's seminary.^ From 1818 to 1824 Ranke was a teacher of Greek and Latin and the history of classical literature in the Gymnasium at Frank- fort a. O. In 1824 he was made an assistant professor of history at Berlin, and there he began his first systematic in- struction in that subject in the spring of 1825 with a course on the History of Western Europe, including the history of literature and of the Church.'*
Among Ranke 's intimate friends at this time was Karl v. Raumer, professor of mineralogy at Erlangen. Raumer was at all times deeply interested in improving methods of teach-
1 See Koechly's Gottfried Hermann, Heidelberg, 1874, 79-81 and 240-244, for vivid descriptions of these exercises. On pp. 257-259 will be found a list of the members during the life of the club.
2 Ranke, Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, 34, and Koechly, ibid., 257. Ranke, in the place just cited, refers to Beck's seminary as the " philologisch-padagogische Seminar " at Leipzig, which would indicate that pedagogical objects received some attention. His other reference to Beck's seminary is on p. 60, where it is called simply " Philologische."
8 Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, 34, 60.
- Ibid., 145.
