History in the Plural

Niklas Olsen received his PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen working on a project on the variants of liberalism in Denmark and Western Europe, 1945 - 1990.

• Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Family - war - university: the various educations of Reinhart Koselleck Chapter 2. Explaining, criticizing and revising modern political thought Chapter 3. Social history between reform and revolution Chapter 4. Program - project - straight jacket: the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Chapter 5. Theorizing historical time and historical writing Chapter 6. Commemorating the dead: experience, understanding, identity Chapter 7. The foundations and the future of Koselleck's scholarly program Bibliography Index

"Given the widespread appreciation of Koselleck's work, especially by his contemporaries and disciples, it was not an easy task for Niklas Olsen to be the first to deliver a comprehensive overview of his multifaceted uvre. The author succeeded in this, and it is his achievement to present Reinhart Koselleck to the English-language professional public as one of the most important German historians of the postwar period." * H-Soz-u-Kult "This is the first intellectual biography, in any language, on post-war Germany's greatest theorist of history, Reinhart Koselleck. It not only illuminates Koselleck's role in founding conceptual history, but also introduces his important accounts of historical time, of historical anthropology, and of political iconology. Both students of post-war German intellectual history and, broadly speaking, of philosophies of history will find this an immensely rich and stimulating volume." * Jan-Werner Muller, Professor of Politics and Founding Director, Project in the History of Political Thought, Princeton University "This is a very thorough and, at the same time, original take on Reinhard Koselleck's work - As the major representative of German Begriffsgeschichte, he deserves to be better known in the English-speaking world, and this volume will go a long way to achieve this aim - It is an excellent contribution to historical theory and the history of historiography." * Stefan Berger, University of Manchester " - an impressive book, especially in the way in which the author succeeds in integrating biographical, historical, and philosophical elements in an elegant and lucid way - something achieved by only the best introductions to Western thinkers and intellectuals." * Helge Jordheim, University of Oslo