The year 2023 marked the centenary of the birth of German historian Reinhart Koselleck whose work we wish to celebrate in this special issue. The conference “Uses and Actuality of Reinhart Koselleck's Work,” funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and held that year at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv (German Literature Archive) in Marbach am Neckar, was the starting point for the articles we are publishing here. Research on Koselleck's work has undergone many variations over time, and it became clear at this conference that the emphasis placed on different themes has challenged the monopoly of conceptual history. In the past several years, new publications of great importance to Koselleckian research have appeared, including a compilation of his articles on memory under the title Geronnene Lava. This recent scholarly scenario is supported and spurred on by the establishment not only of literary estates at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv but also by the pictorial estate at the Deutsches Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte—Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (German Documentation Center for Art History—Photo Archive Marburg). Both contain extensive materials that open new perspectives: in addition to handwritten works, they include books from Koselleck's personal library and a diverse collection of images, including numerous photographs taken by the historian himself. Inspired by this re-centering of the specialized literature, and from an interdisciplinary point of view, the texts presented in the current issue are conceived under the aegis of memory and image, also including related aspects such as dreams, experience, mass media, and iconology.
What role do dreams play in the writing of history, and how might we understand them beyond the limits of psychoanalytic interpretation? This article explores these questions by engaging with a range of interdisciplinary literature that examines the intersection between dreams, history, and philosophy. It highlights how dreams, often dismissed as purely subjective or psychological phenomena, can also serve as valuable historical sources that reflect collective experiences, social tensions, and political realities. The article then turns to the work of German historian Reinhart Koselleck, who investigated this potential through his analysis of two collections of dreams recorded during the era of National Socialism: one by Jean Cayrol and another by Charlotte Beradt. By examining Koselleck's approach, the article discusses how dreams not only relate to the historical context in which they emerge but also contribute to processes of individual and collective memory, offering a unique lens for historical inquiry.
This article analyzes Koselleck's views on the politics of memory and examines why, despite his valuable insights, these have had little impact on memory studies. After reviewing his contributions to the German debate, an attempt to reconstruct his notion of memory is made. It is then suggested that such a notion is limited by Koselleck's focusing on his own personal primary experiences and on the German case, as well as by the fact that he considers only victims and perpetrators. Nevertheless, at the same time, such limitations contain important potentialities. Koselleck's position as both a witness and historian, his advocation for wordless, negative aesthetics as a response to the absurdity of history and his insistence on the differentiation of victims are akin to proposals regarding multidirectional memory and the implicated subject.
This article reconsiders the relationship between experience, memory, and iconology in Reinhart Koselleck's thought from an unexpected perspective. It focuses on the lesser-known Reinhart Koselleck Figure Collection donated by the family to Bielefeld University in 2021, which contains about 150 highly diverse artifacts: tin soldiers, busts and monument miniatures, and especially figures of horses and horsemen. Reviewing the collection not in isolation but as part of Koselleck's working and inspirational material allows us to rethink his iconological project through the lens of figural assemblage perspective and, thus, in relation to Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, a connection that has hitherto been insufficiently explored. In this light, Koselleck's figure collection, entangled with other media such as print and images, is itself analyzed as evidence of Warburg's influence on his method of assembling historical material.
Space of experience (Erfahrungsraum) and horizon of expectation (Erwartungshorizont) are key concepts in Koselleck's theory of history. One of his best-known essays, written in 1976, is devoted to these empirical–historical premises. For him, they are anthropological presuppositions that, as formal categories of knowledge, constitute the possibility of history. The article analyzes the origin, appropriation, and use of these terms in the work of the Bielefeld historian and relates them to the concept of primary experience (Primärerfahrung), which refers mainly to sensory and physical dimensions. As the article shows, the sociological theories of Karl Mannheim prove to be influential in the genesis of Koselleck's Historik, although they are rarely mentioned in his texts.
In the space of a generation, the image has become the main and omnipresent medium through which we relate to the world, shaping our modes of expression and our experiences. This mutation has brought about a profound renewal of our practices and a significant change in our relationship to time—with a narrowing focus on actuality—but also to memory, with the possibility through images to instantly disseminate singular experiences in the public sphere. Starting from the untransmissible nature of individual experiences, particularly traumatic ones, Koselleck offers us the outline and starting point for a rethinking of these contemporary transformations, particularly regarding the question of transmission, but also access to a common memory, which leads us to rethink the very presuppositions of historical work.
This study investigates nonverbal iconographical signs in the sphere of political iconography, both in relation to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French historical paintings and portraiture and to political caricatures published in early nineteenth-century France. After examining the visual codes mobilized by French historical painting and portraiture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the temporal symbolism underlying their various modes of visual communication, I examine what I take to be the shift in visual symbolism brought about by the epoch-making caricatures of Honoré Daumier, which deployed new techniques of lithography permitting the unprecedented communication of highly charged political messages to a mass population. In elaborating this second part of my study, I draw on the iconographic theory of Reinhart Koselleck.
Although images are an integral part of historical research today, it is quite unusual that a historian is conceiving the image as a heuristic model instead of interpreting it in terms of representation (of an event or “its” time). In this article, I argue that in a long-term dialogue with image theory and by taking photographs of monuments and memory sites, Reinhart Koselleck discovered the image as an experimental space for thinking of historical time differently from linear narrative. Koselleck's photographs of memory sites in particular may be viewed as an invitation to explore the intricate relations between individual perception now and then, experience, memory, and its cultural (trans-)formations. Seen this way, images can provoke new questions and give impulses for methodological reflection in historical research.
Arguing that the conceptual history of ethics is vital to our understanding of the modernization of Arab societies, this article explores important shifts in early twentieth-century Arabic ethical discourse by analyzing The Book of Ethics by Aḥmad Amīn. Focusing on the moral-psychological underpinnings of this work, it shows how Amīn's self-proclaimed “scientific” approach causes a “leveling of the moral landscape,” meaning a reduction of all behavior to a singular physiological system that leaves little space for distinguishing different moral faculties. It argues that this reductionism, typical of modern ethical discourses, exemplifies the reform of an older moral framework focused on virtue and achieving practical wisdom into one focused on national progress in which duty and service to the public good attain prominence. In this process the meanings of older, ostensibly different moral concepts and powers become isomorphous, while the primary goal of ethics becomes the training of the will.
Hugo Bonin, “At the Sound of the New Word Spoken”: Le mot “démocratie” en Grande-Bretagne, 1770–1920 [“At the sound of the new word spoken”: The word “democracy” in Great Britain, 1770–1920] (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Collection Histoire, 2024), 256 pp. Javier Fernández Sebastián, Key Metaphors for History: Mirrors of Time (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024), 350 pp. Elías J. Palti, Intellectual History and the Problem of Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 284 pp.
Scholars have argued that following 1968, the idea of democracy was extended into new domains in Europe. To assess this, we focus on how MPs qualified phenomena as “democratic” in Britain and Sweden. We use word embeddings to automatically locate words whose contextual similarity to “democratic” decreased or increased. We combine this with bigram analysis, manually classifying word pairs including “democratic.” Our results partly lend credence to the “extension thesis” but also detect an “expansion of democracy” regarding democratic principles, as well as procedures and practices. This nuances the importance of the 1970s as a turning point and highlights larger shifts in the concept of democracy, namely its increased abstractness and proceduralization.
The text analyses how the use of certain expressions linked to Spanish Transition in political debate has served to demonstrate the extent to which confrontation over the legacies of that historical process forms part of an ideological conflict to this day. Two conceptual expressions, employed for different ends, serve to channel and concretize these proposals: the first is the regime of 78 , while the other expression examined is the second transition . Analysis of the two expressions serves to confirm how the different ways of viewing the Transition have been pushing back the possibility in Spain of considering this process as one of those interpretations of the past on which nations are secured, providing citizens with a shared explanation of their present.
Why did the genocide of European Jewry in the 1940s require a new entry in the Hebrew lexicon? How did this shape the singularization of the Holocaust among Hebrew speakers? This article traces the linguistic process through which Shoah shifted from a general term for disaster to the exclusive name for the Nazi genocide. Using big-data analysis of grammatical forms alongside content analysis, it identifies two stages: first, by the 1950s, the definite form ha-Shoah became the primary reference to the annihilation of European Jewry in commemorative discourse; second, by the 1990s, Shoah no longer denoted other disasters, losing its modifiers, construct state, and plural or verbal forms. Without public reflection, the term and the event it named were singularized, sacralized, and universalized as the ultimate calamity and metaphysical evil. The article situates this transformation within emerging 1990s exceptionalist and victimhood discourses.
Two main problems arise when we try to understand the relationship between populism and democracy. First, the over-extension of the category of populism leads to a conflation of movements and political parties with opposing democratic values. Second, the way populist actors represent democracy is often under-analyzed. This article tests the sociohistorical hypothesis that populism revolves around a singularly neglected concept in academic literature: constituent democracy. It constitutes its true political core. Populists understand democracy as being achieved by the people's constituent power, advancing both toward national-popular representation and the expression of popular autonomy in society. The article highlights this idea thanks to intellectual and militant productions from the three founding experiences of populism: Russian narodnichestvo , the US People's Party, and Latin American national-popular regimes.
Scholars have argued that following 1968, the idea of democracy was extended into new domains in Europe. To assess this, we focus on how MPs qualified phenomena as "democratic" in Britain and Sweden. We use word embeddings to automatically locate words whose contextual similarity to "democratic" decreased or increased. We combine this with bigram analysis, manually classifying word pairs including "democratic." Our results partly lend credence to the "extension thesis" but also detect an "expansion of democracy" regarding democratic principles, as well as procedures and practices. This nuances the importance of the 1970s as a turning point and highlights larger shifts in the concept of democracy, namely its increased abstractness and proceduralization.
Why did the genocide of European Jewry in the 1940s require a new entry in the Hebrew lexicon? How did this shape the singularization of the Holocaust among Hebrew speakers? This article traces the linguistic process through which Shoah shifted from a general term for disaster to the exclusive name for the Nazi genocide. Using big-data analysis of grammatical forms alongside content analysis, it identifies two stages: first, by the 1950s, the definite form ha-Shoah became the primary reference to the annihilation of European Jewry in commemorative discourse; second, by the 1990s, Shoah no longer denoted other disasters, losing its modifiers, construct state, and plural or verbal forms. Without public reflection, the term and the event it named were singularized, sacralized, and universalized as the ultimate calamity and metaphysical evil. The article situates this transformation within emerging 1990s exceptionalist and victimhood discourses.
Two main problems arise when we try to understand the relationship between populism and democracy. First, the over-extension of the category of populism leads to a conflation of movements and political parties with opposing democratic values. Second, the way populist actors represent democracy is often under-analyzed. This article tests the sociohistorical hypothesis that populism revolves around a singularly neglected concept in academic literature: constituent democracy. It constitutes its true political core. Populists understand democracy as being achieved by the people's constituent power, advancing both toward national-popular representation and the expression of popular autonomy in society. The article highlights this idea thanks to intellectual and militant productions from the three founding experiences of populism: Russian narodnichestvo, the US People's Party, and Latin American national-popular regimes.
Arguing that the conceptual history of ethics is vital to our understanding of the modernization of Arab societies, this article explores important shifts in early twentieth-century Arabic ethical discourse by analyzing The Book of Ethics by Ahmad Amin. Focusing on the moral-psychological underpinnings of this work, it shows how Amin's self-proclaimed "scientific" approach causes a "leveling of the moral landscape," meaning a reduction of all behavior to a singular physiological system that leaves little space for distinguishing different moral faculties. It argues that this reductionism, typical of modern ethical discourses, exemplifies the reform of an older moral framework focused on virtue and achieving practical wisdom into one focused on national progress in which duty and service to the public good attain prominence. In this process the meanings of older, ostensibly different moral concepts and powers become isomorphous, while the primary goal of ethics becomes the training of the will.
This article reconsiders the relationship between experience, memory, and iconology in Reinhart Koselleck's thought from an unexpected perspective. It focuses on the lesser-known Reinhart Koselleck Figure Collection donated by the family to Bielefeld University in 2021, which contains about 150 highly diverse artifacts: tin soldiers, busts and monument miniatures, and especially figures of horses and horsemen. Reviewing the collection not in isolation but as part of Koselleck's working and inspirational material allows us to rethink his iconological project through the lens of figural assemblage perspective and, thus, in relation to Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, a connection that has hitherto been insufficiently explored. In this light, Koselleck's figure collection, entangled with other media such as print and images, is itself analyzed as evidence of Warburg's influence on his method of assembling historical material.
What role do dreams play in the writing of history, and how might we understand them beyond the limits of psychoanalytic interpretation? This article explores these questions by engaging with a range of interdisciplinary literature that examines the intersection between dreams, history, and philosophy. It highlights how dreams, often dismissed as purely subjective or psychological phenomena, can also serve as valuable historical sources that reflect collective experiences, social tensions, and political realities. The article then turns to the work of German historian Reinhart Koselleck, who investigated this potential through his analysis of two collections of dreams recorded during the era of National Socialism: one by Jean Cayrol and another by Charlotte Beradt. By examining Koselleck's approach, the article discusses how dreams not only relate to the historical context in which they emerge but also contribute to processes of individual and collective memory, offering a unique lens for historical inquiry.
