Begriffsgeschichte: Theory and Practice

Author(s): James J. Sheehan

Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 312-319
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Begriffsgeschichte: Theory and Practice'

James J. Sheehan
North western University

One of the principal characteristics of modern culture is a concern for what

Robert Musil once called the "'failure of language," an awareness that
"'words are merely accidental, mere evasions, and never the feeling itself."
In philosophy and psychology, literature and linguistics, there is an impres-
sive body of work which warns us not to take words for granted, not to
assume that language is a mirror of the world. Some historians, of course,
have always known this. Indeed, philological perplexities were one of the first
and most important sources of modern historical thought.2 Too often,
however, historians-and especially those of us who study the history of
modern western societies-have treated the problems of language with
insouciant neglect, apparently secure in the conviction that words are
reliable and unchanging labels, firmly attached to the things we want to
study and describe.
In the last few years, an increasing number of historians have become
aware of language, both as a methodological issue and as a subject of
research. As we should expect, the products of this awareness have been
shaped by the historiographical traditions in which they developed.
Raymond Williams, for example, uses the evolution of language to trace and
criticize the relationship between culture and social change in the modern
world. Regine Robin blends linguistic analysis with that close study of local
social history we have come to associate with the Annales school of French
scholarship.3 German historians' interest in language has resulted in what is
usually called Begriffsgeschichte. Its most influential avocates are the
editors of the work to be reviewed here: Otto Brunner, who turned to a
study of language and social change after a distinguished career as a
medievalist; Werner Conze, a specialist in the nineteenth century who has
worked on rural society, labor history, and political movements; and
Reinhart Koselleck, a philosophically inclined scholar whose major work
combines intellectual and institutional history.4

I Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche

Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur Politisch-Sozialen Sprache in Deutschland.
Volume 1: A-D; Volume 2: E-G (Stuttgart: Klett. 1972-). pp. xxvii+948; xii+ 1082.
DM 183.
2 On the role of philology in the emergence of a modem historical consciousness,
see Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law,
and History in the French Renaissance (New York and London, 1970), esp. chap. 1.
I Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (New York, 1958) and
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York, 1976). Regine Robin, La
Soc0te Fran(aise en 1789: Semur-en-Auxois (Paris, 1970). Robin also has written a
stimulating methodological essay on Histoire et Linguistique (Paris, 1973).
4 On the development of Begriffsgeschichte in Germany, see H. G. Meiser, "Beg-

[Journal of Modern History 50 (June 1978): 312-191

? 1978 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801/78/5002-0012$00.75

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 Reviewn Articles 313

When completed, the Historisches Lexikon will consist of five volumes

with articles on 130 Grundbegriffe; the two volumes now available contain
forty-two entries, from Adel to Grundrechte. While there are always some
difficulties in reviewing an incomplete work, I think the quality and scope of
this enterprise are now clear enough. Moreover, the appearance of these
volumes provides a good opportunity to consider some of the broader
methodological questions raised by Begriffsgeschichte.

* * *

In his programmatic introduction, Koselleck defines the subject of the

Lexikon as "leading concepts of historical movements which, in the course
of time, are the subject of historical research" (1:xiii). These volumes
include, therefore, articles on political slogans (Bruiderlichkeit, Freiheit,
Gleichheit), constitutional and legal terms (Autoritat, Eigentum, Gesetz),
social and economic categories (Arbeit, Bedirfnis, Fabrik), and a variety of
other cultural, ideological, and scholarly concepts (Aufklarung, Faniilie,
Geschichte, Gleichgewicht). In the last analysis, there is always something
arbitrary about selections of this sort; they are inevitably open to debate. On
the whole, however, I think the editors have done a thorough and imagina-
tive job in formulating their list of entries.
Both the selection of concepts and the organization of most articles reflect
the editors' assumption that "a deeply-rooted change in the meaning of
classical topoi took place after the mid-eighteenth century: old words ac-
quired new meanings, which no longer require translation as one approaches
the present" (1 :xv). Whenever possible, the contributors focus on the
century after 1750. Characteristically, an article will have a fairly brief
treatment of the concept in ancient and medieval times, an extensive
account of the period 1750-1850, and a brief survey of the years after 1850.
In a number of cases, this approach is impossible; in others it turns out to
be unfortunate, since extremely significant developments in the modern
period are slighted or ignored. The great advantage of this focus, however,
is that it provides a certain unity and coherence to a number of the articles,
which can be read together and related to one another. This is, of course,
especially true of those concepts like Freiheit and Gleichheit, which do
indeed achieve their most important political meanings in the late eighteenth
century.
Although the editors have tried to provide a common sense of purpose for
their contributors, there is a great deal of variety among the articles. First of
all, there are considerable differences in scale: the briefest entry is five
pages (Aittarkie, 1: 377-81), the longest 127 (Geschichte, 2: 593-719). These
differences are usually a reflection of the concept's relative historical sig-
nificance, but sometimes they seem to be the result of an author's personal
predilections. In any case, a number of the longest articles could and should

riffsgeschichte," in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed. J. Ritter (Basel and

Stuttgart, 1971), 1:790-807. The best review of the Lexikon is by Helmut Berding.
"Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte," Historische Zeitschrift 223, no. 1 (1976):
98-110.

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314 Review Articles

have been shortened. Another kind of variety comes from the different
backgrounds and points of view which the authors brought to their assign-
ments. Dieter Schwab, for instance, treats Eigentum (2: 65-115) from a
legalistic perspective; Horst Stuke's entry on Aufklarung (1: 243-342) is
really old-fashioned intellectual history, the examination of what "en-
lightenment" meant to a series of important thinkers; Werner Conze's
articles on Arbeit and Beruf (1: 154-215, 490-507) are informed by his
interest in social history; and so on. Some of these differences were
inevitable, but I think the editors should have exercised more discipline to
enforce greater uniformity whenever it was possible and desirable.
Despite this diversity of purpose and perspective, the overall quality of
the Lexikon is high. The authors may have viewed their tasks differently,
but most of them do very well what they set out to do. Indeed, a few of the
articles could easily have been valuable publications on their own. These
two volumes are eloquent testimony to the editors' energy and the con-
tributors' learning. When it is finished, the Lexikon will surely take its place
with those indispensable reference works which assist scholars from a
variety of disciplines. This project, however, is not meant to be merely a
collection of articles or a reference book to help us with our teaching and
research. The Lexikon has been designed as an expression of and a stimulus
for a particular way of studying the past. To evaluate these volumes
properly, therefore, we must consider them in terms of Begriffsg
a historical method.
The clearest methodological statement on Begriffsgeschichte can be found
in Koselleck's introduction to the Lexikon and in his essay, 'Begriffsges-
chichte und Sozialgeschichte," which was also published in 1972.1 Accord-
ing to Koselleck, Begrijjsgeschichte is, first of all, a "specialized method of
textual criticism" required by the need to grasp the intended meaning of
words in their contemporary setting (Ludz, p. 120). As such, it contributes
to the study of social and political history and depends, in turn, on a clear
understanding of the social and political context. Once the meaning of
concepts has been grasped in their concrete historical situations, these
meanings can be ordered and arranged chronologically. At this point, Beg-
rijjfgeschichte emerges as an independent discipline with its own subject
matter. As Koselleck puts it: "The sum of concrete analysis of concepts is
only transformed into Begriffsgeschichte by the diachronic principle"
(l:xxi). And: "Only diachronic analysis of a concept in depth uncovers long
term structural changes" (Ludz, p. 122).
In the following pages, I will consider what the Lexikon can tell us about
the problems and possibilities of 'diachronic" analysis of concepts by
discussing three issues: the Begrijjf as a unit of analysis, the problem of
meaning, and the relationship between language and its historical context.

I. THE BEGRIFF AS A UNIT OF ANALYSIS

One of the strongest impressions one gets from reading these two volumes is
of the different sorts of problems posed by the various concepts. Some,
especially neologisms and technical terms, lend themselves to a lucid,

s The essay appeared in Soziologie und Sozialgeschichte: Aspekte und Probleme,

ed. Peter Christian Ludz (Opladen and Cologne, 1972), pp. 116-31. This will hereafter
be cited in the text as Ludz.

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 Review Articles 315

well-focused treatment. It is possible, for example, to establish when An-

tisemitismus was first used and why. Shifts in its usage and frequency can
be traced over time. Its connection to political, social, or economic trends
can be analyzed. Other Begriffe, however resist being treated in this way.
Sometimes it is because they are too narrow or because their usage has been
too discontinuous. Both of these factors undermined Hannah Rabe's brief
article on Autarkie (1: 377-81), which must analyze a term not widely used
in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although the idea of national
independence was important for many economic theorists, the concept of
Autarkie does not provide a useful means of following the history of this
idea. Somewhat similar difficulties arise in the article on Diktatur (1:
900-24). The fragmented quality of Ernst Nolte's treatment of this concept
comes in large part from the fact that tracing its changing usage does not
help us to understand the history of dictatorship, either as an idea or as a
set of institutions.

Problems of a somewhat different sort occur in Dieter Schwab's essay on

Familie (2: 253-301). There is no question that a rich and complex vocabu-
lary of familial relations has existed since the beginning of human society;
nor is there any doubt that a history of this vocabulary could tell us a great
deal about the history of family life. Unfortunately, the single concept
Fainilie does not appear to be a very good way of getting at this vocabulary.
The term is too amorphous, too closely tied to other concepts, too discon-
tinuous in its evolution. The result is that Schwab's article, while sometimes
interesting, lacks coherence and direction. It does not trace those "long
term structural changes" which Koselleck describes as the proper province
of Begriffsgeschichte.
Some articles run into trouble because the Begriffe they discuss are so
closely connected to others. This is true, for example, of the entries on
Entivicklung, Fortschritt, and Ges(hichte (2: 199-228, 351-424, 593-718). All
of these terms are part of a larger vocabulary dealing with change over time,
and their usages are inseparable. There is, therefore, a good deal of overlap
and even some distortion in the three articles, although each of them,
especially Koselleck's on Geschichte, is very well done. This kind of
difficulty is even more apparent in the articles on social concepts. Werner
Conze's fine analysis of Abeiter, (1: 216-42), for instance, is clearly inhib-
ited by his knowledge that other articles will treat concepts like "class" and
"proletariat," which are essential parts of his subject.

Although this kind of overlap was probably unavoidable in an alphabeti-

cally ordered Lexikon, it could have been alleviated if the editors had
grouped closely related concepts into a single article. Rather more important
are the questions this issue raises for Begriffsgeschichte as a method. On the
basis of the Lexikon, it would seem that a great many concepts, and
especially those which refer to social phenomena, cannot be easily extracted
from their linguistic context. Because these terms are so deeply enmeshed in
a larger vocabulary, isolating them produces distortion and confusion. In
these cases, therefore, the appropriate unit of research is a particular sector
of the language, a vocabulary composed of a cluster of terms and expres-
sions. Broadening the focus of inquiry, however, considerably increases the
difficulty of following changes in meaning over time, which is supposed to
be the real purpose of Begriff ges(hichte.

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316 Review Articles

II. THE PROBLEM OF MEANING

The difficulty of tracing meanings over time is also increased when we recall
that words do not have "meanings" in the same sense that objects have
shape or color. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's influential phrase, what we call
meaning is really a word's "use in the language." For the sort of concepts
included in the Lexikon, this philosophical point has profound meth-
odological implications. To study the history of a word like "freedom" or
''worker," one cannot simply point to some contemporary source or other;
rather, one must trace the term's range of meanings by considering as many
examples of its use as possible. As Wittgenstein put it: "Let use teach you
the meaning.''6
Koselleck seems to approach this point in his introduction when he notes
that "The Begriff . . . must retain multiple meanings in order to be a Begriff.
. . .The meanings of words can be defined more exactly, concepts can only
be interpreted" (1: xxii-xiii). Unfortunately, a number of his coauthors do
not confront the full implications of this problem and set out to define the
meaning of their concept by quoting a series of supposedly representative
sources. We are not told why these particular sources were chosen nor how
the author knows that they are in some way representative of their period.
The selected sources are, of course, by prominent thinkers, but prominence
is not typicality.
The question of typicality is rendered especially troublesome by two
processes which occurred in the late eighteenth century: an extraordinary
growth in the production and consumption of printed matter and a fragmen-
tation of the literate public. Not only did these two developments multiply
the number of sources within which usages must be sought, but they also
encouraged semantic variety and fragmentation among subgroups of users.
This fact does not loom as large as it should in the Lexikon-which is, after
all, supposed to be concerned with the historical era in which the impact of
these changes first began to be felt. Too many of the authors proceed across
the centuries from Aristotle to Marx (via Kant and Hegel) as if the
"'representativeness" of these thinkers was more or less the same. Of
course this is not true: we must accept Aristotle's concept of "civil
society" as representative of fourth-century Athens because we know so
little about what it meant to his contemporaries. Hegel and Marx, on the
other hand, certainly provided inflluential formulations of the term, but it is
by no means certain that their usage was in any way '"typical."
Representative usages are easier to find for some words than for others:
neologisms, which are invented for a particular purpose; technical terms,
which are usually confined to a specialized group of users; political slogans,
which can often be directly tied to a historical crisis. Widely used terms,
terms with a long history of use, and terms which refer to complex social
groups or processes all pose particularly knotty problems of analysis.
Unhappily, some of the articles in the Lexikon deal with the history of these
difficult but important Begriffe by assembling a series of quotations from a
predictable and arbitrarily selected list of "great" thinkers.

6 The quotations are from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Oxford,

1963), par. 43, and Hanna Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley, 1972), p. 84.
There is a good statement of this position in Quentin Skinner's article, "Meaning and
Understanding in the History of Ideas," History and Theory, 8, no. 1 (1969): 37.

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 Review Articles 317

The notion that concepts have a meaning is also misleading, because it

implies a clarity and specificity which often does not exist. Indeed, many
political and social Begriffe are widely used because they can be taken to
mean so many different, even contradictory things. Ideological resonance
often depends on descriptive imprecision. John Pocock has a neat statement
of this point: "Because factual and evaluative statements are inextricably
combined in political speech, and because it is intended to reconcile and
coordinate different groups pursuing different values, its inherent ambiguity
and its cryptic content are invariably high.'"7 What Pocock says about
political speech is equally (if not more) true of social categories, which are
also used in a variety of ways to illuminate or obscure a multiplicity of
phenomena.
The question of "meaning" is especially complicated for those social and
political Begriffe which were used as both ideological and descriptive cate-
gories. Concepts like Arbeiter (and, even more, Proletariat), Burger, and
Demokratie, for instance, were employed to refer to political goals, states of
consciousness, or moral conditions. But these concepts were also used to
record and measure what people took to be the realities of their social and
political worlds. Of course these two forms of usage were often blurred-
indeed, it is usually in people's interest to confuse them. Historians, how-
ever, must recognize this confusion without falling victim to it. We must
know what "proletariat" meant within the context of Marx's thought, but
we must also know how this concept fits or fails to fit with what we can find
out from other sources about the society in which he lived. Clearly, we are
involved here in one of those tangles which an examination of language so
often uncovers: we must analyze what Marx thought, how his ideas were
related to what he observed, and how what he observed is related to what
we can observe. Since we must do all of this with words, the potential for
confusion is immense.
Too many of the Lexikon authors underestimate the inherent ambiguity of
the words they discuss. Consider, for instance, the concept Burger, which,
as Manfred Riedel correctly points out, nineteenth-century German liberals
often defined as someone who was "independent' (1: 712). What Riedel
does not make clear is that "independence" was itself a most ambiguous
and amorphous concept, which was used to refer to a wide range of social
and economic conditions as well as to a vaguely conceived set of moral
virtues. Thus, when liberals were faced with the necessity of using "inde-
pendence' to formulate suffrage restrictions, they found it impossible to
agree on a specific meaning for the term.8
In order to be successful, the practitioner of Begriffsgeschichte will have
to develop methods broad enough to cover the multiplicity of usage charac-
teristic of modem social and political concepts and also delicate enough to
uncover their evasiveness and ambiguity. It is significant that the works
which seem best able to combine this breadth and depth cover a narrow
chronological period or focus on a set of specific historical documents: one

7 J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time (New York, 1971), p. 17.

8 The problems of defining "independence" can be clearly seen in the suf
debate at the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848: see Carol Rose, "The Issue of Parliamen-
tary Suffrage at the Frankfurt National Assembly," Central European History 5, no. 2
(1972): 127-49.

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318 Reviewt Articles

thinks, for instance, of Jean Dubois's study of political language in France

from 1869 to 1872 or Robin's analysis of the revolutionary cahiers from
Semur.9 Neither of these works has the chronological range which Koselleck
regards as essential for Begriffsgeschichte, but both do provide a rich and
complex analysis of the relationship between language and historical change.

ILL. WORDS AND THE WORLD

According to Koselleck, concepts must be interpreted within a concrete

historical setting. This is what distinguishes Begriffsgeschichte from ordinary
linguistic analysis: "It deals with the relationship of the 'word' to the
'object' (Vo) 'Wort' zur 'Sache'), the concept is seen in terms Qf its
sociopolitical not its linguistic function" (1: xxi). In fact, one could go
further and say that concepts and contexts are essentially inseparable: the
world as we see and experience it is shaped by the words we use to think
and talk about it. Apprehension and understanding of things, relationships,
and abstractions-especially when they are complex-requires an appropri-
ate language. It is misleading, therefore, to speak as though language and
the world were distinct kinds of realities, the one "intellectual" and the
other "material." To quote Pocock once again, ". . . the paradigms which
order 'reality' are part of the reality they order . . . language is part of the
social structure."'0
How well do the contributors to the Lexiko)n grapple with the relationship
between Wort and Sache? A few of them ignore this issue entirely and
produce what amounts to a traditional history of ideas in which the idea has
been renamed a Begriff. This, as I pointed out earlier, is the situation in
Horst Stuke's article on the Aufklftrung, which is interesting enough but has
rather little to do with Begriffsgeschichte. Some authors succeed very well
in putting their concept in a political context. For instance, Lothar Gall,
Dirk Blasius, and Krista Segermann give us a concise account of how
Einheit was used by prominent political leaders in the first half of the
nineteenth century (2: 117-51). Others are able to show how their terms fit
into the general context of social and political thought at the end of the
eighteenth century: here one might mention Koselleck on Geschichte, Riedel
on GesellschaJt (2: 719-800) and Conze et al. on Freiheit (2: 425-542).
As usual, when one seeks to weigh the relative merits of the articles, one
is struck by how different Begriffe present very different sorts of problems.
Indeed, these differences are especially apparent with regard to the inter-
action of concept and context. Once again. we find that neologisms and
technical or specialized terms are the easiest to deal with: one knows when
they began to be used and by whom. Most political Begriffe, while they
pose severe interpretive problems, can be linked to a visible set of events.
No one would doubt, for example, that the revolutionary era was of central
importance for the uses of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." Social
concepts, on the other hand, are much more difficult to fix in a particular
historical time or place. For example, as Dietrich Hilger's entry shows,
changes in the usage of Fabrik were tied to social and economic processes
which were both regionally diverse and chronologically discontinuous (2:

9 Jean Dubois, La Vocabulaire politique et social en France de 1869 a 1872 (Paris,

1962). Robin's book is cited above, n. 3.
10 Pocock, p. 38. See also Pitkin, p. 115.

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 Reviewn Articles 319

229-52). In the light of these difficulties, it is not surprising that many of the
articles on social concepts emphasize their role in political debates or social
thought. To relate these words to their social world would require a kind of
close and detailed analysis inappropriate for the Lexikon and perhaps for the
method of Begrijfsgeschichte as a whole.

* * *

Each of the issues I have discussed suggests some important problems in

the theory and practice of Begriffsgeschichte. Because many concepts are so
difficult to extract from their linguistic context, a number of Begriffe cannot
be studied in isolation but must be seen as a part of a larger social or
political vocabulary. Because the usage of concepts is so varied and am-
biguous, the search for historical "meaning" will often involve an exhaus-
tive survey and a meticulous analysis of a large number of sources. And
because words are shaped by, and in turn shape, the historical world of
which they are a part, setting them in their proper context will be a task of
extraordinary range and complexity. Although none of these difficulties is
insuperable, all of them raise questions about the historical integrity of the
Begriff and the possibility of tracing its development over an extended
period of time.
Despite its many virtues, the Lexikon does not convince me that Beg-
riffsgeschichte will establish itself as an independent branch of historical
inquiry with its own subject matter and methods. It will, I think, usually be
drawn into the orbit of other methods. On the one hand, if Begriffsges-
chichte is to have that chronological sweep which Koselleck regards as the
method's definitive characteristic, it will be pushed toward selectivity and
abstraction and will strongly resemble the history of ideas. On the other
hand, if it is to provide a concrete analysis of a concept's usage and
historical context, it will become part of an intensive and wide-ranging
analysis which will be difficult to distinguish from social, political, or
economic history. Although the methods of Begriffsgeschichte may work for
some concepts, I suspect that its chief contribution will be as a source of
stimulation for other kinds of historical analysis. And this is, in my opinion,
as it should be. After all, historians must begin and end their work with
words, from what Marc Bloch called our "crossexamination" of the sources
to our efforts to communicate the results.'" In this important sense, all
history is Begriffsgeschichte.

I There is a good discussion of the problems of language in historical research in

George Steiner, After Babel (London, Oxford, and New York, 1975), pp. 134 ff.

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