Concepts of Culture

Mattias Pirholt is a professor of Literature at Uppsala University (Sweden). He has written extensively on Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Karl Philipp Moritz, and the German Romantics. His book publications include Metamimesis: Imitation in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Early German Romanticism (2012), Grenzerfahrungen: Studien zu Goethes Ästhetik (Winter, 2018), Art, Nature, and Self-Formation in the Age of Goethe (co-ed. with Camilla Flodin and Gerad Gentry, 2024), and Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture (co-ed. with Thorsten Carstensen, 2025).

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionMattias Pirholt and Michael LipkinChapter 1. Dream, Lies, and Secrets: Koselleck’s FictionsHelge JordheimChapter 2. The Temporal Synopsis of Concepts: The Image as a Modelling Framework in Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte and Theory of Historical TimesBettina BrandtChapter 3. Koselleck’s Inventories: Notes on the Media Practices of Conceptual HistorySean FranzelChapter 4. The Tragedy of the Commonplace: On the Erosive Use of Language in ModernityJakob NorbergChapter 5. When Time Becomes Form: Pseudomrophosis in Spengler, Jonas, and BlumenbergEva GeulenChapter 6. Genealogies of the ArtificialStephan KammerChapter 7. Das Volk dichten: Herder’s Volksbegriff and the Metaphorology of Conceptual HistoryChloe VaughnChapter 8. “Is everything then poetry?”: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses of the Early Romantic Concept of PoesieMattias PirholtChapter 9. Realism as VersittlichungMichael LipkinChapter 10. The Rise and Fall of the Youth Concept: Intergenerational Conflict in Walter Hasenclever’s Der Sohn and Hanns Johst’s SchlageterLeonie EttingerChapter 11. Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and the Idea of History as “Permanent Catastrophe”Jonathon CatlinConclusionMattias Pirholt and Michael LipkinIndex