Wie bestimmten Vertreter des frühen Luthertums den historischen Ort der Reformation? Wie hing die Geschichtsschreibung des Luthertums mit seiner »konfessionellen Identität » zusammen? Matthias Pohlig untersucht die Frage nach Argumentationsmustern eines lutherischen »Gedächtnisses« zum Zwecke der Identitätskonstruktion und die Frage nach dem Verhältnis dieses Gedächtnisses zur Geschichtsschreibung und -theorie des 16. Jahrhunderts. Lutherische Autoren wiesen der Geschichte unterschiedliche Funktionen zu: die aus dem Humanismus übernommene Überzeugung, die Geschichte lehre Moral, dann die Au assung, die Geschichte laufe entsprechend den biblischen Prophetien ab. Zentral war für lutherische Autoren die Au assung, daß ihre Kirche nicht neu, sondern die alte, wahre Kirche sei. Neben diese konfessionell funktionalisierten Aufgaben trat eine Beschäftigung mit der Historie zu Bildungszwecken. Die lutherische Geschichtsschreibung des 16. Jahrhunderts fand damit in einem Spannungsfeld von Gruppengedächtnis und relativ uninstrumenteller Gelehrsamkeit statt. Die lutherische Historiographie beruhte auf weithin geteilten Grundannahmen über die heilsgeschichtliche Bedeutung der Reformation, den päpstlichen Antichrist, die Hochschätzung der deutschen Kaiser sowie über prophetisch-biblizistische Grundlagen. Der Autor arbeitet zwei Arten lutherischer Identität im Medium der Geschichte heraus: die auf die endzeitliche Figur Luther konzentrierte Memoria und die Einordnung der Reformation in einen größeren Zusammenhang.

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This article has a twofold aim: first, to explain the concept of confessionalization that has been developed in recent decades in German historiography as an interpretive tool for the period and to review the main lines of its critique, which raise important questions for the discussion of “confessionalization and literature”; and second, to explore the connections between confessionalization and literature as well as the applicability of the concept of confessionalization to the history of literature, a little-understood but increasingly important question for early modern cultural history. The understanding of the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is greatly enhanced by the cooperation between literary scholars and historians. First, the literature of the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation was not yet an autonomous entity in society and therefore requires historical contextualization, particularly with regard to its social origins. Second, Germanists have extended the definition of early modern literature to include all kinds of Gebrauchsliteratur (functional literature), which are often important sources for historians. “Literature” and “confessionalization,” however, are difficult terms representing very complex phenomena. “Literature” is understood here as encompassing all printed works of the period, of which this article can of course only explore a sample; “confessionalization” denotes an interpretive concept, which has been criticized and modified in recent research. Given the exploratory purpose of this discussion, a good many questions will be raised for which we have no clear answers at the present time; we hope above all to further the exchange of ideas between literary scholars and historians working on the confessional age.

Decision-Making and History From antiquity on, decisions have been a central topic of historiography. On a conceptual level, historians have rarely thought about the questions what a decision is, how decisions are made, and if deciding has a history. Instead, the terms have been used in amore or less every day manner. After shortly presenting how decisions and decision making have been understood and discussed in historiography, we attempt to identify deciding as a specific type of social action. Deciding is orientated towards producing a decision. As trite as that sounds, it emerges that an explication of this definition could be away to outline deciding/decisions as an object of historical research. We argue that deciding is not as self-evident as it seems but that it is a processual activity based on a number of specific, culturally shaped conditions. The way how decisions are made and the conditions under which they are made are different according to social and cultural contexts. Thus, they have a historical dimension. At the same time, deciding is multidimensional and complex. In order to show this complexity, we present several dimensions that have to be taken into account: the framing of decision-making, its performance, its mediality, materiality, and resources. Finally, we discuss the historicity of decision-making with regard to the distinction between modernity and premodernity.

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