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Begriffsgeschichte and social history

Reinhart Koselleck
Version of record first published: 24 May 2006.

To cite this article: Reinhart Koselleck (1982): Begriffsgeschichte and social history, Economy and Society, 11:4, 409-427

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 Begriffsgeschichte
and social history

Reinhart Koselleck

According t o a well-known saying of Epictetus, it is not deeds

which shock humanity, but rather the words describing them.l
Apart from the Stoic point that one should not allow oneself to be
disturbed by words, the contrast between 'pragmata' and 'dogmata'
has aspects other than Epictetus' moral dictum indicates. It draws
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our attention t o the autonomous power of words without whose

use our human actions and passions could hardly be experienced,
and certainly not made intelligible to others. This epigram stands
in a long tradition which has concerned itself with the relation of
word and thing, of the spiritual and the lived, of consciousness and
being, of language and the world. Whoever becomes involved with
the relation of Begriffsgeschichte t o social history is subject to
the reverberations of this tradition. The domain of theoretical
principles is rapidly entered which here will be examined from the
point of view of current r e s e a r ~ h . ~
The association of Begriffsgeschichte and social history appears
at first sight a loose one, or at least complicated. For the first
concerns itself primarily with texts and words, while the second
employs texts as a means merely of deducing circumstances and
movements that are themselves not contained in the texts. Thus
social history for example investigates social formations or the
construction of constitutional forms, the relations of groups,
strata and classes, it goes beyond the immediate context of action
in seeking medium or long term structures and their change. Or
it might introduce economic theorems the use of which will
illuminate individual events and the process of political actions.
Texts and their attributed conditions of emergence possess here
only a referential nature. The methods of Begriffsgeschichte by
contrast derive from the spheres of a philosophical history of
terminology and historical philology, semasiology and onomasio-
logy; and the results of its work can be continually evaluated
through the exegesis of texts and is based on such exegesis.
This initial contrast is indeed striking. Methodological involve-
ment shows however that the relation of conceptual and social
history is more complex than would be the case if the one discipline
Economy and Society Volume 1 1 Number 4 November 1982
OR.K.P. 1982 0308-5147/82/1104-0409 $1 .SO11
 41 0 Reinhart Koselleck

could be reduced t o the other. This is immediately apparent from

the circumstances of the objective domains of the respective
disciplines. Without common concepts there is no society, above
all no political field of action. Conversely our concepts are founded
in politicosocial systems that are far more complex than would be
indicated by treating them simply as linguistic communities
organised around specific key concepts. A 'society' and its 'con-
cepts' exist in a relation of tension which is just as characteristic
of its assigned academic historical disciplines.
An attempt will be made to clarify the relation of both disci-
plines at three levels:
1 How far Begriffsgeschichte follows classical critical-historical
methods, but by virtue of its greater acuity contributes t o the
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tangibility of social historical themes. Here the analysis of con-

cepts is in a subsidiary relation to social history.
2 How far Begriffsgeschichte represents an independent disci-
pline with its own method, whose content and range is to be
defined parallel to social history, while both disciplines at the
same time mutually overlap.
3 How far Begriffsgeschichte poses a genuine historical claim
without whose solution an effective social history cannot be
practised.
There are two limitations on the following thoughts: firstly that
they do not deal with linguistic history, even as a part of social
history, but rather with the politico-social terminology relevant
to the current condition of social history. Secondly, emphasis
will be laid within this terminology and its numerous expressions
on concepts whose semantic 'carrying capacity' extend further
than the 'mere' words employed in the politico-social d ~ m a i n . ~
I The method of Begriffsgeschichte and social history
An example will be given here to demonstrate the critical-historical
implications of Begriffsgeschichte as a necessary aid to social
history. It comes from the time of the French and emerging
industrial revolutions, thus from an area that was to be decisive
for the development of both sociology and socio-historical ques-
tions.
Hardenberg in his well-known September Memorandum of the
year 1807 drew up guidelines for the reorganisation of the Prussian
state. The entire state was to be socially and economically re-
structured according to the experience of the French Revolution.
Thus Hardenberg wrote:
A rational system of ranks, not favouring one estate over
another but rather providing for the citizens of all estates -their
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 41 1

places alongside each other according to specific classes, must

belong to.the true needs of a state, and not at all to its immaterial
needs?
In order to understand what is, for Hardenberg's future reform
policy, a programmatic statement, an exegesis is required which
through a critique of the sources can unlock the specific concepts
which it contains. The transfer of the traditional differentiation
of 'true' from 'immaterial' needs from the order of estates to the
'state' was a conception then current for just a half century, and
will not be examined here. What is at first striking is that Harden-
berg opposes to the vertical ranking of estates a horizontal articu-
lation of classes. The order of estates is pejoratively viewed
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insofar as it implies the favouring of one estate above another,

while all members of estates are at the same time citizens and as
such should be equal. In this statement they do as citizens remain
members of an estate; their functions however should not be
defined according to estate but 'according to specific classes', and
in this way a rational system of ranks should arise.
Such a statement, sprinkled as it is with politico-social expres-
sions, involves on the purely linguistic level not inconsiderable
difficulties, even if the political point, exactly on account of its
semantic ambiguity, is clear. The established society of estates is
t o be replaced by a society of citizens (formally endowed with
equal rights), whose membership of (yet to be defined politically
and economically) classes should make possible a new (state-
based) system of ranks.
It is clear that the exact sense can only be established by
reference to the complete Memorandum; but it is also necessary
to take into account the situation of the author and of the addressee;
due regard must be paid t o the political situation and the social
condition of contemporary Prussia, just as finally to the use of
language by the author, his contemporaries and the generation
preceding him, with all of whom he occupied a specific linguistic
community. All of these questions belong to the customary
critical-historical, especially historical-philological method, even
if problems arise that are not soluble by application of this method
alone. This concerns in particular the social structure of contem-
porary Prussia, which cannot be adequately comprehended with-
out an economic, political or sociological framework.
The particular restriction of our investigation to the concepts
employed in such a statement renders decisive assistance in posing
and answering the social historical questions that go beyond the
understanding of such a statement. If we pass from the sense of
the sentence itself to the historical arrangement of the concepts
 41 2 Reinhart Koselleck

used there like 'Estate', 'Class' or 'Citizen', it quickly becomes

clear how many diverse levels of contemporary experience enter
into this statement.
When Hardenberg talks of citizens he is using a technical term
that had just been minted, which was not t o be found as a legal
term in the Prussian Civil Code and which registered a polemical
engagement with the old society of estates. This is hence a concept
which is consciously deployed as a weapon in the struggle against
the legal inequalities of the estates, without there at the same time
existing a set of civil rights which could have endowed the Prussian
citizen with political rights. The expression was novel, pregnant
with the future, it referred to a constitutional model yet t o be
realised. At that time, at the turn of the century, the concept of
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'estate' had an endless number of shades of meaning of a political,

legal, economic and social nature, such that no unambiguous
association can be derived from the word itself. Insofar as Harden-
berg conceived together estate and privilege he had, however,
undermined the traditional rights of domination of the upper
estates, while the contrasting concept in this context was that of
class. At this time the concept of 'class' possessed a similar variety
of meanings, which here and there overlapped with those of
'estate'. It can nevertheless be said for the language used by the
German, and especially the Prussian, bureaucracy, that a class at
that time was defined more in terms of economic and legal-
administrative criteria than in terms of political status or of birth.
In this connection for instance the physiocratic tradition must be
considered within which the old estates were first redefined
according t o economic criteria: a design which Hardenberg shared
in its liberal economic intention. The use of 'class' demonstrates
that here a social model is set in play which points t o the future,
while the concept of 'estate' is related t o a centuries-old tradition,
once again given legal expression in the Civil Code, but which
already displayed a fissured structure requiring reform.
The surveying of the space of meaning of each of the utilised
central concepts demonstrates a polemical thrust implicated in the
present, a planful element of the future, and lasting elements of the
social constitution descended from the past, the arrangement of
these components lending meaning to the statement. The activity
of temporal semantic construal at the same time involved the
establishment of the historical force contained within a statement.
Within the practice of text exegesis special attention t o the use
of politico-social concepts and the investigation of their meaning
thus gains a socio-historical status. The moments of duration,
change and futurity contained in a concrete political situation are
reconstituted linguistically. In this way - expressed more generally
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 41 3

- social conditions and their change become the objects of analysis.

A question relevant to Begriffsgeschicbte and social history is
that of when concepts can be used as indicators of politico-social
change and historical profundity as rigorously as in our example.
In German-speaking areas it can be shown that from 1770 onward
both new meanings for old words and neologisms proliferate,
altering with the linguistic arsenal of the entire political and social
space of experience, and establishing new horizons of expectation.
Without posing the question of priority in this process of change
between the 'material' and the 'conceptual' this is stimulating
enough. The struggle over the 'correct' concepts becomes socially
and politically explosive.
Our author, Hardenberg, likewise sets great store by conceptual
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distinctions, insisting on linguistic rules which have since the French

Revolution belonged t o the everyday business of politicians. Thus
he addressed noble estate owners in assemblies as well as in writing
as 'estate owners' (Gutsbesitzer), while he did not forbear from
receiving representatives of regional estate assemblies quite correctly
as estate deputies. 'By confusing the names the concepts also fall
into disorder,' stated Hardenberg's opponent Marwitz with irrita-
tion, 'and as a result the old Brandenburg Constitution is placed
in mortal danger.' While right in his conclusion, Marwitz consciously
overlooked the fact that Hardenberg was using new concepts and
hence initiating a struggle over the naming of the new social
organisation, a struggle which dragged on through the years
following in all written communication between the old estates
and the bureaucracy. Marwitz certainly recognised very clearly
that what was at stake in this naming of estate organisation was
the title rights which he sought t o defend. Hence he disavowed a
mission of his fellow estate members to the Chancellor because
they had announced themselves as 'inhabitants' of the Mark
Brandenburg. They could do that, he suggested, as long as the
question was 'the economic. If the issue however concerns our
rights then this single word - inhabitant - destroys the point of
the ~nission.'~Marwitz in this way refused to follow any further
the course which other members of his estate, on economic
grounds, were then inclined to take. They sought to exchange
their political privileges for economic a d ~ a n t a g e . ~
The semantic struggle for the definition of political or social
position and by means of such definition defending or occupying
position is one which certainly belongs to all times of crisis that
we can discover through written sources. This struggle since the
French Revolution has become sharper and has structurally
changed: concepts no longer merely serve to define given states of
affairs, they reach into the future. Increasingly concepts of the
 414 Reinhart Koselleck

future were created, positions that were to be won had t o be first

linguistically formulated before it was possible t o even enter or
permanently occupy them. The substance of many concepts was
thus reduced in terms of actual experience and their aspirations
t o realisation proportionally increased. Actual substantial experi-
ence and the space of expectation coincided less and less. It is
in this tendency that the coining of numerous 'isms' belongs,
serving as concepts for assembly and movement of newly ordered
and mobilised masses, stripped of the organisational framework
of the estates. The breadth of usage of such expressions stretched
- like today - from slogan to scientifically defined concept. One
needs here only to think of 'conservatism', 'liberalism' or 'socialism'.
Since society has been swept up by industrial movement the
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political semantic of its related concepts provides a means of

comprehension in the absence of which today the phenomena of
the past cannot be conceived. It is only necessary to think of the
shifts in meaning and function of the concept 'revolution', which
at first offered a model formula for the probable recurrence of
events, then was reminted as a concept of historical-philosophical
objective and political action, and is for us today an indicator of
structural change. Here Begriffsgeschichte becomes an integral
part of social history.
From this a methodological minimum claim follows: namely
that social and political conflicts of the past must be interpreted
and opened up via the medium of their contemporary conceptual
limits and in terms of the mutually understood past linguistic
usage of the participating agents.
Thus the conceptual clarification of the terms introduced by
way of example, such as Estate, Class, Estate Owner, Owner, the
Economic, Inhabitant and Citizen serves as a prerequisite for the
interpretation of the conflict between the Prussian reform group
and the Prussian Junkers. The fact that the parties involved
personally and socially overlapped makes it all the more neces-
say to clarify semantically the political and social fronts within
this stratum, to be able to seize upon hidden interests and inten-
tions.
Begriffsgeschichte is therefore initially a specialised method for
source criticism, taking note of the utilisation of terminology
relevant t o social and political elements, and in particular directing
itself to the analysis of central expressions having social or political
content. It goes without saying that historical clarification of past
conceptual usage must refer itself not only to the history of
language but also to social-historical data, for every semantic has
as such an involvement with non-linguistic contents. It is this that
creates its precarious marginality for the linguistic sciences (cf.
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 41 5

Chomsky, 1965, pp. 202ff.) and which is at the same time the
origin of its great advantages for the historical sciences. The
condensation effected by the work of conceptual explanation
renders past statements precise, bringing more clearly into view the
contemporary intentional circumstances or relations in their
linguistic form.

II The discipline of Begriffsgeschichte and social history

Up t o this point the emphasis has been laid on source criticism in
the determination of concepts as an aid in social-historical ques-
tions; Begriffsgeschichte is capable however of doing more than
this would indicate. More exactly it encompasses an autonomous
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sphere which exists in a relation of mutually stimulating tension

with social history. From the historiographic point of view the
specialisation of Begriffsgeschichte had no mean influence in the
posing of questions within social history. First of all it began as
a critique of a careless transfer of modern, context-determined
expressions of constitutional argument to the past (Bockenforde,
1961), and secondly it directed itself to criticism of the practice
of the history of ideas in treating ideas as constants, articulated
in differing historical figures but of themselves fundamentally
unchariging. Both elements prompted a greater precision in
method, such that in the history of a concept the contemporary
space of experience and horizon of expectations was surveyed
within which the political and social functions of concepts and
their specific modality of usage can be investigated - in brief,
such that a synchronic analysis also took account of the situation
and conjuncture.
Such a procedure is enjoined to translate words of the past and
their meanings into our present understanding. Each history of
word or concept leads from a determination of past meanings to
a specification of these meanings for us. Insofar as this procedure
is reflected in the method of Begriffsgeschichte the synchronic
analysis of the past is supplemented diachronically. It is a metho-
dological precept of diachrony that it scientifically define anew
for us the registration of the past meanings of words.
Over time this methodological perspective transforms itself
consistently and substantially into a history of the particular
concept in question. Insofar as concepts during this second phase
of investigation are detached from their situational context, their
meanings ordered according to the sequence of time and then
organised with respect to each other, the individual historical
analyses of concepts assemble themselves into a history of the
concept. Only at this level is the historical-philological method
 416 Reinhart Koselleck

superseded, and only here does Begn'ffsgeschichte shed its sub-

sidiary relation to social history.
The social historical pay-off nevertheless is increased. Precisely
because attention is directed in a rigorous diachronic manner to
the persistence or change of a concept the social historical relevance
of the results increases. How far has the intentional substance of
one and the same word remained the same? How far has it changed,
such that in the course of time a historical change has reconstructed
the sense of a concept as well? The persistence and valid force of a
social or political concept and its corresponding structure can only
be appreciated diachronically. Words which have remained in
constant use are in themselves no sufficient indication of stability
of substantial meaning. Thus the standard term Burger is devoid
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of meaning without an investigation of the conceptual change

undergone by the expression 'Biirger': from (Stadt-)Burger
(burgher) around 1700 via (Staats-)Burger (citizen) around 1800
to Burger (bourgeois) as non-proletarian around 1900, to cite as an
example a very crude framework only.
Stadtburger was a concept appropriate to the estates, in which
legal, political, economic and social definitions were indifferently
united - definitions which with other contents made up the
remaining concepts of estate.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Stadtburger was
in the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussian Code) no longer defined
in terms of a listing of positive criteria (as in the draft) but rather
negatively, as belonging neither to the peasant or noble estate. In
this way a claim was registered in a negative fashion for a higher
generality which was then conceptualised as Staatsbiirger. The
negation of the negation was accordingly achieved as - in 1848 -
the Staatsbiirger assumed positively determined political rights,
which were henceforth however to be only enjoyed as 'inhabitant'
and shareholder of a free economic society. Against the background
of the formal legal equality of a liberal economic society under-
written by the state it was then possible t o assign this 'Biirger' in
a purely economic fashion to a class from which political or
social functions only then were derived. This is true in general
for both the system of voting by class and for Marx's theory.
It is the diachronic disposal of elements which discloses long-
term structural changes. This is for instance characteristic of the
slow creeping transformation of meaning of 'societas civilis' as
politically constituted society t o 'biirgerlichen Gesellschaft'
sine imperio, which can finally be conceived as an entity separate
from the state; this is a piece of knowledge relevant to social
history which can only be gained on the reflective level of con-
ceptual history (cf. Riedel, 1975).
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 41 7

Hence the diachronic principle constitutes Begriffsgeschichte

as an autonomous domain of research, which has methodologically
in its reflection on concepts and their change to initially disregard
their extra-linguistic content - the particular sphere of social
history. Persistence, change or novelty in the meaning of words
must first be grasped before they can be used as indices of this
extra-linguistic content itself, as indicators of social structures or
situations of political conflict.
Purely temporally, social and political concepts can be arranged
into three groups: firstly traditional concepts such as those of
Aristotelian constitutional thought whose meanings have in part
persisted and which even under modern conditions retain an
empirical validity. Secondly there are those concepts whose con-
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tent has changed so radically that despite the existence of the

same word as a shell the meanings are barely comparable, and can
only be recovered historically. The variety of meanings attached
today to the term 'Geschichte', which appears to be its own subject
and object comes to mind - by contrast with the 'Geschichten'
and 'Historien' which deal with concrete realms of objects and
persons; or one can cite 'class7as distinct from the Roman 'classis'.
Thirdly there are the recurrently emerging neologisms reacting to
specific social or political circumstances, which attempt to register
or even provoke the novelty of such circumstances. Here 'commu-
nism' or 'fascism' can be invoked.
Within this temporal scheme there are of course endless transi-
tions and superimpositions. The history of the concept of 'demo-
cracy' can for example be considered under all three aspects. Firstly
ancient democracy as a constantly given potential constitutional
form of the Polis; here are definitions, procedures or regularities
that can still be found in democracies today. The concept was
modernised in the eighteenth century to characterise new organi-
sational forms typical of the modern large state and its social
consequences. Invocation of the rule of laws and the principle of
equality took up and modified old meanings. With regard to the
social transformations following the industrial revolution however
the concept assumed new valencies: it became a concept charac-
terising a state of expectation, which in historico-philosophical
perspective - whether legislative or revolutionary - claimed to
satisfy newly-constituted needs in order to validate its sense.
Finally 'democracy' became a general concept replacing that of
'republic' (= politeia), and which consigned to illegality all other
constitutional types as forms of rule. This global universality,
usable by a variety of distinct political tendencies, made neces-
sary a refurbishment of the concept through the addition of
qualifying definitions. Only in this way could it retain any func-
 418 Reinhart Koselleck

tional political effectiveness; hence representative, Christian, social,

people's democracies (and so forth) arise.
Persistence, change and novelty is thus conceived diachronically
along the meanings and usage in speech of one and the same word.
Temporally testing a possible Begriffsgeschichte according to
persistence, change and novelty leads to the disposition of persisting,
overlapping, discarded and new meanings which can only become
relevant for a social history if the history of the concept has been
subject to a prior and separate analysis. As an independent discipline
therefore Begriffsgeschichte delivers indicators for social history
by following its own methods.
The restriction of analysis t o concepts has to be elaborated
further so that the autonomy of the method can be protected
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from a hasty identification with social-historical questions related

to extra-linguistic content. Naturally a linguistic history can be
outlined which itself can be conceived as social history. A Begriffs-
geschichte is more rigorously bounded. The methodological
limitation to the history of concepts expressed in words must have
a basis that renders the expressions 'concept' and 'word' distin-
guishable. However, the linguistic triangle of word (signification)
- meaning (concept) - object is employed in its different variants,
a straightforward distinction - initially pragmatic - can be made
in the sphere of historical science: socio-political terminology in
the source language has a series of expressions, that on the basis
of critical exegesis of the sources stand out definitively as concepts.
Each concept is associated with a word, but not every word is a
social and political concept. Social and political concepts possess
a substantial claim of generality and always have many meanings
-- and both for historical science occasionally in modalities other
than words.
Thus it is possible to articulate or create linguistically a group
identity through the emphatic use of the word 'we', while such a
procedure only becomes intelligible conceptually when the 'we' is
associated with collective terms such as 'nation', 'class', 'friendship',
'church' and so on. The general utility of the term 'we' is substan-
tiated through these expressions, on a level of conceptual generality.
The stamping of a word as a concept might occur without
noticeable disturbance, depending on the linguistic use of sources.
Primarily this is because of the ambiguity of all words, a property
shared - as words - by concepts. Their common historical quality
is based on this. According to whether a word can be taken as a
concept or not, this ambiguity is readable in different ways.
Intellectual or material meanings are indeed bound to the word,
but they feed off the intended content, from the written or
spoken context, from the historical situation. This is equally true
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 419

for both word and concept. In use however a word can become
unambiguous. By contrast a concept must remain ambiguous in
order to be a concept. The concept is bound to a word, but is at
the same time more than a word: a word becomes a concept when
the plenitude of a politico-social context of meaning and experi-
ence in and for which a word is used can be condensed into one
word.
Consider the variety of objects that enter the word 'state' so
that it may become a concept: domination, zone, bourgeoisie,
legislation, jurisdiction, administration, taxation, army - invoking
only current senses. A variety of circumstances with their own
terminology (and conceptuality) are taken up by the word state
and made into a common concept. Concepts are thus the con-
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centrate of several substantial meanings. The signification of a

word can be thought of distinct from the signified. Signifier and
signified coincide in the concept insofar as the diversity of historical
reality and of historical experience enter a word in such a manner
that they can only receive their meaning in this one word, can
only be grasped by this word. A word presents potentialities for
meaning, a concept unites within itself a plenitude of meaning.
Hence a concept can possess clarity but must be ambiguous. 'All
concepts escape definition which summarise semiotically a whole
process; only that which has no history is definable' (Nietzsche).
A concept binds together the variety of historical experience with
a collection of theoretical and practical references into a relation
that is as such only given and actually ascertainable through the
concept.
It becomes plain here that while concepts have political and
social capacities, their semantic function and performance is not
uniquely derivative of the social and political circumstances to
which they relate. A concept is not just indicative of the relations
that it covers, it is also a factor within them. Each concept estab-
lishes a particular horizon t o potential experience and conceivable
theory, and in this way sets a limit. The history of concepts is
therefore able to provide knowledge which is not obtainable from
empirical study (Sachanalyse). The language of concepts is a consis-
tent medium in which potential experience and theoretical stability
can be assessed. This can be done of course with socio-political
ends in view, but sight must not be lost of the method of Begriffs-
geschichte.
Naturally the autonomy of the discipline must not be allowed
to lead to a diminution of actual historical materiality - on account
of the latterbeing excludedfor a specific section of the investigation.
On the contrary. These are given voice by withdrawing the
analytical frame to the linguistic constitution of political situa-
 420 Reinhart Koselleck

tions or of social structures. As historical discipline Begn'ffs-

geschichte is always concerned with political or social events or
circumstances, that is with those that have been conceptually
constituted and articulated in the source language. In a restricted
sense it interprets history through its one-time concepts - even if
the words are used today - while in turn treating these concepts
historically - even if their earlier usage must be defined anew for
us today. If we were to formulate this in a somewhat exaggerated
manner, we could say that Begn'ffsgeschichte deals with the
convergence of concept and history. History would then be only
what has already been conceived as such. From an epistemological
position this would mean that nothing can occur historically that
is not grasped conceptually. But apart from this overvaluation of
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written sources, which can be sustained neither theoretically nor

historically, there lurks behind this theory of convergence the
danger of an ontological misunderstanding of Begriffsgeschichte.
This would dissipate the critical impulse to revise the history of
ideas or intellectual history in a social historical manner, and along
with this the potential critique of ideologies that Begriffsgeschichte
can initiate.
The method of Begn'ffsgeschichte moreover breaks out of the
naive circular movement from word to thing and back. It would be
a theoretically irredeemable short circuit if history was to be
solely constructed out of its own concepts, in a kind of identity
between linguistically articulated Zeitgeist and the conjunction of
events. There exists rather between concept and materiality a
tension which is now superseded, now breaks out afresh, now
appears insoluble. Between linguistic usage and the social materia-
lities upon which it encroaches or targets itself a hiatus can always
be registered. The transformation of the meaning of words and the
transformation of things, change of situation and the urge to
rename correspond in diverse ways with each other.
From this there arise methodological complications. The investi-
gation of a concept cannot be carried out purely semasiologically,
it can never limit itself to the meanings of words and their changes.
A Begn'ffigeschichte must always keep in view the need for research
findings relevant to intellectual or material history - above all the
semasiological approach must alternate with the onomasiological.
That is Begriffsgeschichte must register the variety of names for
(identical?) materialities in order for it to be in the position to
show how concepts are formed. So for instance the phenomenon
of Sakularisation cannot be investigated solely on the basis of this
expression (cf. Liibbe, 1965; Zabel, 1968). For the historical
treatment of words parallel expressions like Verweltlichung
(secularisation) and Vemeitlichung (temporalisation) must be
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 421

introduced, historically the domain of church and constitutional

law must be taken into account, in terms of intellectual history
the ideological currents which crystallised around this expression
must be examined - all before the concept Sakularisation is
sufficiently worked up as factor and indicator of the history to
which it relates.
Or to take another phenomenon: the federal structure of the
old Reach belongs to the long-term political and legal relevant
facts that have, from the late Middle Ages up to the Federal
Republic, laid down a particular framework of political possibilities
and political behaviour. The history of the word Bund is, however,
on its own insufficient t o clarify conceptually the federal structure
in the course of history. This can be very roughly and simply
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sketched here. The term Bund was a relatively late creation of

German jurisprudence in the thirteenth century. Bundesabmach-
ungen (Einungen) to the extent that they could not be subsumed
under Latin expressions like 'foedus', 'unio', 'liga', 'societas' etc.
could in such legal language be only at first employed verbally. It
was initially the aggregation of completed and named Verbundnisse
that resulted in the condensation into the institutional expression
Bund. Then with increasing experience of Bunde linguistic generali-
sation was possible which then was available as the concept ~und.'
But this possibility was in the waning Middle Ages hardly used.
The centre of gravity of the concept remained associated with
estate rights, in particular designating Stadtebunde (town unions)
as opposed to furstlichen Einungen (unions based on the state
rulers as components) or ritterschaftlichen Gesellschaften (societies
of knights). The religious loading of the concept of Bund in the
Reformation era resulted - by contrast with the Calvinist world -
in its corrosion politically. As far as Luther was concerned only
God was capable of creating a Bund, and it was for this reason that
the Schmalkald Vorstand never characterised itself as a Bund. It
only became known as such later historiographically. The simul-
taneous and emphatic religious and political use of the expression
by Miintzer and the peasants of 1525 led moreover to discrimina-
tion against its use in the form of a taboo. As a technical term of
constitutional law it thus went into retreat, the confessional forces
assembled themselves under the initially interchangeable and
neutral expressions Liga and Union. In the following bloody contro-
versies these expressions congealed into religious battle slogans
which then in turn became notorious in the course of the Thirty
Years' War. From 1648 French terms like Allianz permeated the
constitutional law of the states in the Empire. It was penetrated
by criteria drawn from the law of nations and covertly changed.
Only with the dissolution of the old Imperial order of estates did
 422 Reinhart Koselleck

the expression Bund reemerge, and this time simultaneously on

the levels of society, state and law. The social expression bundisch
was coined (by Campe), the legal distinction of Biindnis and Bund
- earlier equivalent in meaning - could now be articulated, and
ultimately with the end of the Reich the term Bundestaat was
discovered, whereby the earlier insoluble constitutional aporia
were first brought into a historical concept that was oriented to
the f ~ t u r e . ~
'This brief outline should be sufficient to indicate that a history
of the meanings of the word Bund is not adequate to a history of
the problems of federal structure as they were 'conceptualised' in
the course of Reich history. Semantic fields must be surveyed and
the relation of Einung to Bund, of Bund t o Bundnis, the relation
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of these terms to Union and Liga or to Allianz likewise investi-

gated. The question must be posed of the - changing - concepts
in apposition, thus clarifying the political fronts and religious or
social groupings that have formed up within federal potentialities.
New constructions must be interpreted, e.g. the question must be
answered of why the expression Foderalismus, entering in the later
eighteenth century, did not in the nineteenth become a central
concept of German constitutional law. Without the invocation of
parallel or opposed concepts, without ordering general and special-
ised concepts, without registering the overlap of two expressions it
is not possible to deduce the structural value of a word as 'concept'
either for the social framework or for the disposition of political
fronts. Through the alternation of semasiological and onomasio-
logical questions Begriffsgeschichte aims ultimately at Sach-
geschichte .9
The variant valency of the expression Bund can for instance be
then especially suggestive for those constitutional conditions
formulable as a concept only in this expression - or not. Retro-
spectively-oriented clarification and modern definition of past
usage provides then insight into constitutional history; discovering
whether the expression Bund was used as a concept associated
with estate rights, whether it was a concept of religious expecta-
tion, whether it was a concept of political organisation or an
intentional concept based on the law of nations (as in Kant's
minting of Volkerbund) - clarifying such things means discovering
distinctions which also 'materially' organise history.
Put in other terms, Begriffsgeschichte is not an end in itself,
even if it follows its own method. Insofar as it delivers indices and
components for social history, Begriffsgeschichte can be defined
as a methodologically-independent part of socio-historical research.
This autonomy gives rise to a specific methodological advantage
which is related t o the joint theoretical premises of Begriffs-
geschichte and social history.
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history

I I I On the theory of Begriffsgeschichte and of social history

All examples introduced so far - the history of the concepts of
Burger, democracy and Bund - have one thing formally in
common: they treat (synchronically) circumstances and (along the
dimension of diachrony) their transformation. In this way they are
organised in terms of what in the sphere of social history might
be called structures and their change. Not that the one may be
directly deduced from the other, but Begriffsgeschichte has the
advantage of reflecting this connection between concept and
actuality. Thus there arises for social history a productive tension,
pregnant with knowledge.
It is not necessary for persistence and change in the meanings of
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words to correspond with the persistence and change of the struc-

tures that they specify. Because words which persist are in them-
selves insufficient indication for stable contents and because -
vice versa - contents undergoing long-term change can be expressed
in very different ways, the method of Begriffsgeschichte is a
conditio sine qua non of social historical questions.
One of the advantages of Begriffsgeschicbte is that by shifting
between synchronic and diachronic analysis it can help to disclose
the persistence of past experience and the viability of past theories.
By changing perspective dislocations can be made visible between
words whose meaning is related to a diminishing content and the
new contents of the same word. Note can then be made of mori-
bund meanings which no longer correspond to reality, or of
realities which emerge through concepts whose meaning remains
unrecognised. This diachronic review can reveal layers which are
concealed by the spontaneity of'everyday language. Thus the
religious sense of Bund was never completely abandoned after the
term became a term of social and political organisation in the
nineteenth century. This was acknowledged by Marx and Engels
when they created the 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' out of
the 'articles of faith' of the Bund der Kommunisten.
Begriffsgeschichte is therefore able t o clarify the multiple
stratification of meanings which descend from chronologically
different periods. This means that it goes beyond a strict alterna-
tion of diachrony and synchrony and relates more to the synthesis
of difference (Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleicbzeitigen) which can be
contained in a concept. Put differently, it deals with the theoretical
premises of social history when it seeks to evaluate the short,
medium or long term, or weigh events and structures against each
other. The historical depth of a concept, which is not identical
with the chronological succession of its meanings, in this way gains
a systematic import of which all socio-historical research must
take account.
 424 Reinhart Koselleck

Begriffsgeschichte thus takes as a theoretical principle that

persistence and change must be weighed against each other, and
measured in terms of each other. To the extent that this is con-
ducted in the medium of language (that of the original source and
of scientific discourse) it reflects theoretical presuppositions with
which even a social history concerned with 'materiality' must
come to terms.
It is a general property of language that each of the meanings of
a word reach further than the singularity t o which historical events
can lay claim. Each word, even each name displays a linguistic
potentiality beyond the individual phenomenon that it charac-
terises or names at a given moment. This is true also of historical
concepts even if - initially - they serve to comprehend con-
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ceptually in their singularity complex structures of events. A

concept once 'minted' contains within itself purely linguistically
the possibility of being employed in a generalised manner, con-
structing types or disclosing comparative insights. The reference
t o a particular party, a particular state, a particular army involves
linguistically a plane which potentially includes parties, states or
armies. A history of related concepts leads t o structural questions
which social history has t o answer.
Concepts do not only teach us the uniqueness of past meanings
but also contain the structural possibilities, treat the synthesis of
difference, which cannot be traced in the flow of events in history.
For the social historian who thinks with them concepts - seizing
past facts, relations and processes -become formal categories which
determine the conditions of possible history. It is only concepts
which demonstrate persistence, repeatable applicability and
empirical' validity - concepts with structural claims - show the
way that a once 'real' history can today appear generally possible
and be represented as such.
This becomes even clearer if the method of BegnjCfsgeschichte is
applied t o the relation of the language of original source and the
language of analysis. All historiogrkphy operates on two levels: it
either investigates circumstances already articulated at an earlier
period in language, or it reconstructs circumstances which were
not articulated into language earlier but which can be worked up
with the help of specific methods and indices. In the first case
the received concepts serve as a heuristic means of access t o the
understanding of past reality. In the second case history makes
use of categories constructed and defined ex post, employed
without being present in the source itself. This involves for example
principles of theoretical economics being used t o analyse early
phases of capitalism in terms of categories unknown at the time.
Or political theorems are developed and applied t o past consritu-
 Begriffsgeschichteand social history 425

tional relations without thereby resorting t o a retro-history. In

either case Begriffsgeschichte makes plain the difference prevailing
between past and present conceptualisation, whether it translates
the older usage and works it up definitionally for modern research,
or whether the modern constructions of scientific concepts are
examined for their historical viability. Begriffsgeschichte covers
that zone of convergence occupied by past and present concepts.
A theory is therefore required for the understanding of the modes
of contact and separation in time.
It is clearly insufficient, t o cite a known example, to move from
the usage of the word Staat (status, h a t ) t o the modern state, as
has been demonstrated in detail in a recent study (Weinacht,
1968). The question of why at a particular time particular pheno-
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mena are brought into a common concept remains a suggestive

one. So for instance it was only in 1848 that the Prussian states
were legally established by Prussian jurisprudence as a state, in
spite of the established existence of the army and the bureaucracy:
i.e. at a time when liberal economic society relativised the distinc-
tions associated with the estates and had given rise to a proletariat
which penetrated every province. Jurisprudentially it was in the
form of a bourgeois constitutional state that the Prussian state as
such was first baptised. Singular findings of this nature certainly
do not prevent historical discourse from scientifically defining
established historical concepts and then deploying them in other
periods and domains. If the extension of the term is warranted
by Begriffsgeschichte it is possible to talk of a 'state' in the high
Middle Ages. Naturally in this way Begriffsgeschichte drags social
history with it. The extension of later concepts to cover earlier
periods, or vice versa with the extension of earlier concepts t o
cover later phenomena (as is today customary in the usage of
feudalism) a minimum of common ground is established, at
least hypothetically, in their objective domains.
The live tension between actuality and concept re-emerges then
at the level of the language of the source and of the analysis. Social
history, investigating long-term structures, cannot afford to neglect
the theoretical principles of Begriffsgeschichte. In every social
history that deals with trends, persistence and terms the level of
generality at which one operates is given only by reflection on the
concepts in use, theoretically assisting clarification of the temporal
relation of event and structure or the succession of persistence and
transformation.
For example Legitimitat was first of all a category in juris-
prudence, and was subsequently politicised in terms of traditional-
ism and employed in struggles between parties. It then assumed a
historico-theoretical perspective and was coloured propagandisti-
 426 Reinhart Koselleck

cally according to the politics of whoever used the expression.

All these mutually overlapping layers of meaning existed when Max
Weber neutralised scientifically the term, making possible the
establishment of typologies of forms of domination. He thus
quarried out of the available reserve of possible meanings a scien-
tific concept; this was simultaneously formal and general enough
to describe constitutional potentialities long and short term,
shifting and overlapping, which then on the basis of their internal
structures disclosed historical 'individualities'.
The theoretical principles of Begriffsgeschichte provokes
structural evidence with which a rigorous social history must come
to terms if it is to exist.
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Translated by Keith Tribe

'Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte' was first published in

Sonderheft 16 of the Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie (1972,
pp. 116-31). It was republished in a collection of Koselleck's
writings entitled Vergangene Zukunft (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt
a.M. 1979 pp. 107-29).

Notes
1. Encheiridion, c. V. The German term Begriffsgeschichte, which might be
translated as 'conceptual history', is retained here for the sake of accuracy;
cf. Veit-Brause (1981). [Trans.]
2. The following reflections are based on editorial work associated with the
Lexikon edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and myself, Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe 6 vols, Stuttgart 1972-. Further points in elaboration can be
found in the introduction to Volume 1. For an account of the evolution and
present state of Begriffsgeschichte - not merely as a historical discipline -
cf. Meier (1971).
3. A clear and bibliographically solid analysis of political semantics can be
found in Dieckmann (1969). Special mention in the area of method and
theory may be made of Koebner (1953); Cattaneo (1967); Girard (1963)
which is a review of Dubois (1962). See also Koselleck (1978).
4. Winter (1931, Bd.1, p. 316). The original reads:
' ~ b e r h a u pgehort
t eine vernunftige Rangordnung, die nicht einen Stand
vor d e m anderen begiinstigte, sondern den Staatsbiirgern aller Stande ihre
Stellen nach gewissen Klassen nebeneinander anwiese, zu den wahren und
keineswegs zu den auj3emoesentlichen Bediirfnissen eines Staates'.
For the socio-historical context cf. my book (1967, pp. 158, 190f.) and its
Appendix 11 for the conceptual categorisation of Staatsbiirger and similar
terms.
5. Friedrich Meusel (ed.) Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz 3 Bde.,
Berlin 1908-13; Bd.11, 1 , p. 235f.; Bd.11, 2, p. 43.
6. Koselleck makes a play on the word Recht here: by writing (Vor)Rechte
he draws attention to the fact that the rights of the estates were simultaneously
 Begriffsgeschichte and social history 427

privileges, running them together in the way that Hardenberg is shown t o

above. [Trans.]
7. From then on it was possible t o reflect conceptually on the relation of a
Bund t o the R e i c h and on the constitution of the R e i c h in the form of a
Bund.
8. Cf. my article on this (1972, pp. 582-671).
9. Sachgeschichte is 'factual' or 'material' history. [Trans.]

References
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verfassungsgeschich tliche Fonchung i m
19. Jahrhundert , Berlin.
Cattaneo, M. A. (1967) 'Sprachanalyse
und Politologie' in R. H. Schmidt (ed.):
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Semantik und Begriffsgeschichte, Stuttgart.
Liibbe, H. (1965) Sakularisienmg,
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Meier, H . G. (1971) 'Begriffsgeschichte'
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