Peter N. Miller: "For those of us interested in cultural histories of the material world, the twentieth century began in the 1880s, in Bonn, with Karl Lamprecht. [...] [I]n this decade, Lamprecht launched projects which would define the next century’s chief initiatives. He published a book on ornamental patterns in medieval incipits; he organized a collaborative “total history” of an illuminated manuscript, treating it as an artistic, political, economic, political, and material artifact; he published a four-volume study of the medieval Moselle region that blended geography, economy and law; and he launched himself into a multi-volume work on German history that he characterized in terms of cultural history."
"[I]n a very real way, Lamprecht is the most important historian for the twentieth century, and in particular for those of us who tell stories with—as well as about—things."
the instructor of Aby Warburg [see separate notes]