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| Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte | |
|---|---|
| Title | Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte |
| Discipline | Intellectual history; History of ideas |
| Language | German |
| Abbreviation | ABegr |
| Publisher | Vittorio Klostermann Verlag |
| Country | Germany |
| History | 1955–present |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Issn | 0000-0000 |
Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte
Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte is a German-language annual journal devoted to the historical study of concepts, terms, and semantic formations. It brings together scholarship on philosophical, legal, theological, and political vocabulary from antiquity to the modern era, situating lexical change in relation to intellectual actors, institutions, and events. The journal has served as a forum linking scholars working on philology, intellectual history, and the history of legal and political thought.
Founded in 1955 in the Federal Republic of Germany, the journal emerged in the postwar reconstruction of German scholarship alongside institutions such as the University of Frankfurt and the Humboldt University of Berlin. Early contributors included scholars affiliated with the Max Planck Society, the German Historical Institute, and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Over subsequent decades the journal published work engaging with the legacies of figures like Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Hannah Arendt. In the 1970s and 1980s its pages reflected dialogues with scholarship from the University of Oxford, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and the Institute for Advanced Study. Since German reunification the journal has attracted contributions from researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Cambridge, and the Princeton University history of ideas community.
The journal foregrounds the diachronic analysis of technical and ordinary terms as they appear in the writings of authors such as Cicero, Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury, Marsilius of Padua, Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas. It publishes studies on conceptual change tied to events like the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Peace of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna, and the Industrial Revolution. Thematic fodder ranges from analyses of legal vocabulary in texts by Ulrich Zasius and Samuel von Pufendorf to theological lexemes in writings by Martin Luther and John Calvin, and to political categories as deployed by Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and Antonio Gramsci. Methodologically the journal intersects with philological practice exemplified by editors at the Bodleian Library, archival research like that of the British Library, and conceptual history approaches associated with the Hamburg School and scholars at the Institute for Social Research.
The editorial board historically included professors from the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Heidelberg, the University of Tübingen, and the University of Cologne. Editorial decisions reflect peer review standards shared with journals such as The Journal of Modern History, Past & Present, and History of Political Thought. The publisher, Vittorio Klostermann, issues volumes annually with thematic dossiers and generalist contributions, and the journal collaborates with scholarly societies like the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Each volume typically features contributions in German with abstracts or summaries in multiple languages; comparable editorial practices appear in periodicals like Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft and Historische Zeitschrift.
Noteworthy articles have examined the semantic genealogy of terms such as "state," "law," "sovereignty," "reason," and "person" through readings of texts by Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Bodin, Samuel von Pufendorf, and Immanuel Kant. The journal has published influential pieces on concepts in economic thought engaging texts by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Marx, and on legal-constitutional terminology tied to the Weimar Republic, the German Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. Contributions have brought archival discoveries from collections at the Bundesarchiv, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek to bear on conceptual problems, and have featured close readings of manuscripts by Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Engels, Max Weber, and Hannah Arendt.
The journal is regarded within the scholarly community for advancing the study of Begriffsgeschichte alongside competing traditions like the Cambridge history of ideas and intellectual history programs at institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago. Reviews in periodicals such as The Journal of Modern History and citations in monographs published by presses like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press attest to its influence. The journal's methodological emphases have resonated with historians examining the semantic dimensions of revolutions such as the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, and with legal historians studying doctrines emerging from the Napoleonic Code and the Magna Carta.
Volumes are indexed in bibliographic services used by European and North American researchers, including databases affiliated with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the European Research Council registries, and library catalogs at the Library of Congress and the British Library. Back issues are held in university libraries such as the University of Oxford Bodleian Libraries, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and are discoverable via union catalogs and integrated library systems like WorldCat. Microfilm and digital holdings mirror archival practices at institutions including the Max Planck Digital Library and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.
Category:German academic journals Category:Intellectual history journals