Operating under the assumption that they can discover the past as it really was, or as it actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen) (Table 1.3, box 1),
reconstructionists promote history as a realist epistemology in which knowledge derives from empirical evidence and forensic research into primary sources (Table 1.3, boxes 5 and 7).
Forensic research means interrogating, collaborating and contextualising sources to verify them as real and true (see Chapter 2).
Reconstructionists maintain that history exists independently of the historian and that discovering the past is an objective process,
uncontaminated by ideology.
The historian is permitted only one attitude,
that of impartial observer,
unmoved equally by admiration or repugnance’,
argue reconstructionists, who insist
that real historians are obliged to ‘simply relate the facts’ and to avoid dictating readers’ responses.