Die Aufgaben Der Kulturgeschichte

At the end of the 20th century, talk of the "cultural turn" in the humanities and social sciences became louder. The role of culture within the individual disciplines was to be given greater emphasis. A similar discussion had already taken place at the end of the 19th century: historians of the time debated whether political history or cultural history should take center stage. Eberhard Gothein intervened in this debate in his 1889 work "The Tasks of Cultural History." In doing so, he particularly distanced himself from his colleague Dietrich Schafer, who had prioritized political history in his work "The Actual Field of History." Gothein, on the other hand, advocated an interdisciplinary approach: "Political history requires expansion through precise cultural-historical work precisely if it is to fully grasp its goal of portraying the causal connections of state life" (p. 11).