History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck

by Niklas Olsen

Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006) was one of most imposing and influential European intellectual historians in the twentieth century. Constantly probing and transgressing the boundaries of mainstream historical writing, he created numerous highly innovative approaches, absorbing influences from other academic disciplines as represented in the work of philosophers and political thinkers like Hans Georg Gadamer and Carl Schmitt and that of internationally renowned scholars such as Hayden White, Michel Foucault, and Quentin Skinner. An advocate of -grand theory, - Koselleck was an inspiration to many scholars and helped move the discipline into new directions (such as conceptual history, theories of historical times and memory) and across disciplinary and national boundaries. He thus achieved a degree of international fame that was unusual for a German historian after 1945. This book not only presents the life and work of a -great thinker- and European intellectual, it also contributes to our understanding of complex theoretical and methodological issues in the cultural sciences and to our knowledge of the history of political, historical, and cultural thought in Germany from the 1950s to the present.

Genres: History

346 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2011

Reviews

[Sense of History]

I knew Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006) mainly from his theory of temporality, that contains the basic concepts of 'space of experience', 'horizon of expectance' and the 'simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous'. Koselleck developed these concepts in his most important work, 'Vergangene Zukunft/Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time', published in 1979. This intellectual biography by Niklas Olsen made it clear to me that Koselleck apparently stands for a lot more and that his temporality theory is not really a detailed theory, but an unsystematic whole of views, inspired by a clear understanding of Western modernity, especially in the aspect of the experience of time, thus temporality. That disappointed me a bit, but so be it.

Olsen sketches the evolution of the career and the work of Koselleck in great detail. But his greatest merit is that he situates Koselleck very well within the different era’s he went through. That means, of course, post-war Germany: from the famous 'Stunde Null', through the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, to the great social shifts in the 1970s. It is striking that Koselleck has always gone his own way, and is therefore not really representative of the evolution of German historiography in general. For example, he explicitly distanced himself from the ‘Gesellschaftsgeschichte’ (Social History) which was so popular, especially at the University of Bielefeld where he worked: Olsen addresses the confrontation of Koselleck with his colleagues Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka. Nor was he an adept of the popular thesis of the German ‘Sonderweg’.

Olsen sees the personal experiences of Koselleck as the main explanation for that separate position: his commitment to the Hitler Jugend in his youth, his bitter experiences at the front in 1942-1945 and especially his tough period of captivity in the Soviet Union in 1946. For Olsen Koselleck's oeuvre can be explained as a constant reflection on those experiences, and of course also as a redemption.

The second central thesis of Olsen's book is that Koselleck has always advocated a multiple view of history. That is also related to his temporality analysis. Until the 18th century there were only "histories", in the plural. But through the process of Enlightenment and modernity these were narrowed down to "the history/die Geschichte" (singular): a linear sequence of events in a cause-effect relationship, embedded in a story of progress thinking, focused on the future. Ever since his first work, ‘Kritik und Krise’, to Koselleck that was one of the great aberrations of modernity, because the utopias based on that temporality led to catastrophic consequences in the 20th century. Hence the emphasis on pluralism, says Olsen: “The crucial point is that Koselleck insisted that history must be plural, and that it must be written from viewpoints that are also plural. From this perspective of pluralism and in contrast to relativism, he wanted to carve out a stable, non-relativistic common viewpoint from which historical change could be described and a parameter of judgment on the basis of which the past and the present could be discussed, without falling into the pitfalls of utopianism". The pluralism theme is, moreover, one of the reasons why Koselleck distanced himself from the much too simplistic 'Sonderweg' thesis.

In short, Olsen offers a very penetrating intellectual biography of a not so easy writer. The disadvantage, of course, is that this book is moving at a very abstract level. Olsen also deals extensively with other German historians, so that at certain moments the book starts to look like a fallen bookcase. An additional limitation is that Olsen based his book only on the works of Koselleck himself and on his correspondence with the controversial conservative philosopher-politologist Carl Schmitt. This book is therefore rather an intellectual study, and certainly not a definitive biography. But as an introduction it is definitely worth the read.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This seems like an excellent introduction to the work of one of the most important German historians since the Second World War. It is primarily an intellectual biography that follows the chronological line and is based on the published books and articles by Koselleck, supplemented with some correspondence and interviews. The theoretically oriented work of Koselleck is extensively presented and analysed, and especially situated within the developments in history studies in Germany. Now on to the work of Koselleck itself!
For a more elaborate review, see my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...