Das 20. Jahrhundert in Grundbegriffen
Lexikon zur historischen Semantik in Deutschland
[The 20th Century in Basic Concepts. A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany]

The articles are continually published in open access in the Schwabe Verlag’s e-library. Following the project’s conclusion, the dictionary will be available in five printed volumes.

In terms of the history of concepts, the 20th century is yet to be surveyed. This is what the dictionary The 20th Century in Basic Concepts, a joint project lead by the ZfL in Berlin in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for the German Language (IDS) in Mannheim and the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF), aims to accomplish. In 150 keywords, the dictionary explores 20th century historical semantics in Germany characterized by asynchronicities, accelerated attrition, conceptual innovations, and terminological revolutions. As an interdisciplinary research endeavor, the dictionary does not only record secured knowledge. Instead, it provides a significant contribution to basic research in the humanities, cultural, social, and historical sciences. It explores exchange processes between scientific, political, literary-aesthetic, and everyday language—the entire variety of the generation, circulation and changing meanings of concepts. Here, the dictionary combines hermeneutic practices with digital methods that enable us to include very large text corpora that can then be systematically analyzed for concept-historical purposes.

Published articles

• Einleitung
  Ernst Müller, Barbara Picht, Falko Schmieder
• Alltag
  Moritz Neuffer
• Aufklärung/Gegenaufklärung
  Ernst Müller
• Demokratie
  Stefan Scholl
• Dritte Welt
  Benjamin Möckel
• Energie
  Rüdiger Graf
• Europa
  Kiran Klaus Patel
• Forschung
  Désirée Schauz
• Globalisierung, Welt
  David Kuchenbuch
• Grenze
  Falko Schmieder
• Innovation, Neuerung
  Susanna Weber
• Intellektuelle
  Gangolf Hübinger
• Kreativität
  Morten Bierganns
• Netz, Netzwerk, Vernetzung
  Alexander Friedrich
• Sicherheit
  Achim Saupe
• Westen, Abendland
  Jasper M. Trautsch

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