“Das 20. Jahrhundert in Grundbegriffen” – ein Lexikon im Open Access

A methodologically innovative approach to conceptual history and a century whose basic concepts have yet to be systematically and comparatively analyzed across both German states: these are the starting points of the project Das 20. Jahrhundert in Grundbegriffen. Lexikon zur historischen Semantik in Deutschland (The 20th Century in Basic Concepts: A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany).

This dictionary is the result of an interdisciplinary research initiative. Researchers from history, cultural studies, the social sciences, linguistics, media studies, and the natural sciences collaborate in order to examine the historical transformation of concepts central to political and social discourse in twentieth-century Germany. Entries for more than thirty such concepts (including democracy, energy, climate, and migration) are already available online. The dictionary has thereby already become an indispensable research resource and reference point for the humanities and social sciences. It is a reference point particularly for scholars interested in the complexity, contestedness, and historical dimensions of their field's key concepts. The dictionary’s entries are published individually, open access, through Schwabe Verlag. Once all entries have been published online, they will also be issued in a five-volume print edition.

The project's progress to date has confirmed that advancing the study of conceptual history beyond the approaches developed in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Basic Concepts in History) and the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Historical Dictionary of Philosophy) opens up new possibilities. Large digitized textual corpora, including the parliamentary records of the Reichstag and Bundestag, are analyzed with the help of digital tools. This makes it possible to trace shifts in meaning, semantic ruptures, and innovations in key concepts across an entire century, drawing on a broad range of sources. The project has also demonstrated that digital approaches to conceptual history cannot replace “classical” hermeneutic methods but instead complement them.

The conference will invite discussion of the concepts addressed in forthcoming entries. Some of these concepts were already examined in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, however they have remained formative for the 20th century and its social dynamics (such as nature or industry). Other concepts, while ‘new’ relative to Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, have nonetheless proved indispensable to societal self-understanding throughout the politically turbulent 20th century (for example, mass, pluralism, or camp). A third category concerns politically charged concepts that speak particularly to a cultural-studies approach, as they have traversed various disciplines and link diverse spheres of everyday culture (such as the concepts of equality, nature, or guilt).

Fig. above: Naomi Booth, Source: Pixabay