A Note on Begriffsgeschichte

Abstract

Historical research in recent years has witnessed a persistent trend away from the surface of kaleidoscopic events to the substructures of the historical process in which the demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic conditions of historical change are receiving more attention. The French historical school of the Annales has been the avant garde of this reorientation in historical research. Participating in the new quest for an histoire non-evenementielle is the German Begriflsgeschichte. A few years ago a multi-volume encyclopedia, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, began with an extensive begriflsgeschichtliche analysis and inventory of political language in Germany.' In Begrifjsgeschichte as in histoire non-evenementielle the focus is not on the more tangible and material conditions of historical change, but on the more elusive conceptualizations which accompanied such changes and provided an initial participant interpretation of historical realities. The crucial question Begriflsgeschichte raises is whether contemporary conceptualizations can be relied upon when historical situations and developments are to be interpreted. To what extent do these concepts offer adequate interpretations, or prejudge the issue? Some preliminary considerations might help to clarify and justify the use of the German term Begriffsgeschichte. No historian needs to be reminded that concepts, both as material of his studies and tools of his presentation, have an historical character; that is, they change their content and application through the passage of time. Every historian is at least in theory aware of this situation, although in practice the temptation to ignore it is great, and all too often historians proceed as though there is an accepted, strictly defined, and unchanging meaning to the concepts employed. The persistence of some of the keywords signifying philosophical, political, and social experiences state, democracy, liberty, and so forth -should not delude historians about the fact that the experiences, ideas, and aspirations constituting the meaning of these words are different according to time and place, and derive their exact meaning from the respective context of their usage. The awareness of these problems grew out of the tradition of historicist thinking. But this heritage has had both a positive and a negative effect. The historicist project of reconstructing each historical epoch, its achievements, ideas, political and social character in its own terms very literally was a remarkable advance in historical scholarship. For example, a careful interpretation of central concepts of medieval sources terra, dominium, Land, Herrschaft led to a decisive reassessment of the constitutional history of medieval Germany as well as to a critique of the anachronistic usage of the term state. The notion of state with