Friedrich Meinecke (1862-1954) was a leading German historian and political philosopher. Between 1887 and 1901 Meinecke served in the Prussian State Archives where he was greatly influenced by the historians Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) and Heinrich von Sybel (1817-1895). F. Meinecke was the founder of the history of ideas (Geistesgeschichte) and was a pioneer of what came to be known as "historicism." Well known among Meinecke's earlier works are Weltbuergertum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaats, 1908 (Cosmopolitanism and the National State) and Die Idee der Staatsraeson in der neueren Geschichte, 1924 (Translated into English as Machiavellianism: The Doctrine of Raison d'Etat and its Place in Modern History, 1954).

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