It's the latter category which concerns us here. In the mid-19th century, the University of Berlin was considered by Germans to be the greatest university -- certainly the greatest in Germany, and perhaps in the world. Cultured Germans were certainly not unaware of the Sorbonne and other great universities in other lands -- and Leopold von Ranke, the chairman of the history department in Berlin, was a figure treated with awe. If there was a greater historian than Ranke somewhere in the world in 1872, then Germans, at least, didn't know much about that. In 1872, Jacob Burckhardt,
who had caught Ranke's attention as a student in Berlin, and who was then a professor at Basel, was offered Ranke's chairmanship -- and to the surprise of many, he declined. Burckhardt preferred to stay in Basel, where he had been born in 1818, where he had taught from 1843 to 1855 and again since 1858, and where he would remain until retiring in 1893. And where he had, among great throngs of devoted students, a notable prodigy of his own: Friedrich Nietzsche. If Burckhardt had gone to Berlin in 1872, and if Nietzsche had come with him -- not an unreasonable thought, surely a number of people would've followed Burckhardt anywhere -- what all might have been different in the world since 1872?
Heinrich von Treitschke ended up succeeding Ranke in Berlin, a highly respected figure, to be sure, but not as charismatic, as individualistic, as memorable as Burckhardt. Somewhat the way Nietzsche did in philosophy, Burckhardt drew outside the lines in history. He did things his own way, to the extent that many people describe him as an art historian, or an historian of culture, or something else rather than just an historian. I think it's best to describe him simply as Jacob Burckhardt. To the best of my knowledge, there have not been others like him. Very much of his prose, perhaps most of it, combines political, art-historical, philosophical and other considerations, in a way which no-one else I know of has done. His best known book is probably Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, but he also wrote Der Cicerone, a book intended to be used as a field guide to painting, sculpture and architecture in Italy, from the Greek temple of Paestum, built around 600 BC, up to 18th-century works; Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen (The Time of Constantine the Great); Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (World-Historical Considerations); and other works which don't fit into similar categories any more than the ones I've named.
Burckhardt's reputation may have faded a bit since his time. One of the reasons I say this is that I had a very, very hard time finding a copy of Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, and the copy I found was published in Bern in 1941. And I can't find any record that it was ever translated into English. World-Historical Considerations, that's my own translation. This is a collection of lectures making up a course which Burckhardt gave at Basel just twice. He didn't repeat himself very much, to put it mildly. Those lectures blew students' minds, and they carried his reputation with them out into the world. He very much believed in the view of history being shaped by geniuses, by "world-historical figures," a phrase made popular by Hegel (and then, after Burckhardt's time, by Edward Albee), although Burckhardt is at pains in these lectures to point out how his views differ from those of Hegel. The view that history is shaped by great individuals, by geniuses, is rather unpopular at the moment among academics. But it makes sense to me. And for that reason, it makes sense to me to assume that Burckhardt's reputation will rise again at some point.
A hardcover copy from the Walter Verlag collected works of Doeblin. So now I had one hardcover volume of Doeblin to go with a couple of paperbacks, and the library had a hardcover collected works of Doeblin with one volume missing in the middle. I went and checked, the collected works on their shelf now seemed to be complete except for the volume I now had. I felt like going to someone who worked at the library and say, Hey, seems like you made a mistake here, there's no way you actually wanted to throw this away, right? But I was angry that they did such a stupid thing, and I already dealt, more then I wanted to, with library employees who didn't know what I was talking about when attempted to borrow items via ILL. 
The History of the Popes. The Popes of Rome in the Last Four Centuries, by Leopold von Ranke, was part of the haul I made the first time I visited a thrift store near Amsterdam and 96th St in Manhattan, which I might never had noticed, had they not had a sign out front saying "Fill a bag of books for a buck." Why, yes, thank you! I believe perhaps I shall! 
by Walter Hasenclever -- not the Expressionist writer Walter Hasenclever who emigrated from Germany to France in 1933 and took his own life in 1940 rather than fall into the hands of the Nazis, but his less-well-known son of the same name whom he had sent to the US; some things in French, some in Italian, some in Hungarian -- it was a haul. I don't remember exactly what all was in that first bagfull, I just remember that it was tremendous. I went back to that store on a few other days before I had, from my point of view, cleaned them out. It didn't matter to me whether on a particular day the bag cost one dollar or three, either way, I was getting treasure for nothing.
or at least I assume I'm being Shandyish: I've had a copy of Sterne's novel on my shelf for some years now, but I haven't yet read it. So much to read, you know, and only one of me. But a writer whom I very much admire once said of some of my writing that there was a Tristram Shandy-ish flavor to it, and he said that he meant it as a high compliment. He was brilliant and angry and always at odds with the drudges who ran the university English department in which he worked as an MA and an Instructer, many times more brilliant than any of those PhD's and Full Professors would ever be... It's a familiar story. Flee, young writers! from the English departments!