Der Aufsatz bietet zunächst einen Überblick über neuere Tendenzen und offene Fragen der internationalen begriffsgeschichtlichen Forschung und plädiert für Historische Semantik als Disziplinbezeichnung für das sich über die klassische Begriffsgeschichte hinaus erweiternde Feld. Gefragt wird sodann nach Erklärungsmodellen für semantischen Wandel in der Geschichte. Drei Modelle von Wandel werden genauer erörtert: Plausibilitätsverlust von Redeweisen durch überraschende Ereignisse und Umbrüche, Zunahme des strategischen Gebrauchswerts von Redeweisen in wiederkehrenden Kommunikationssituationen, Irritation des Wort-und Bedeutungshaushalts einer Sprache durch Wortimporte aus einer anderen Sprache. Ausgehend vom letztgenannten Modell werden abschließend Theorieprobleme diskutiert, die sich aus der Forderung nach einer transnationalen bzw. vergleichenden historischen Semantik ergeben.

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Comparisons across historical times can appear in various shapes. Apart from simple then/now contrasts, three basic modalities may be distinguished: (1) Comparisons that stress similarity and repeatability (“once again”), (2) comparisons that claim absolute novelty, if not incommensurability between present and past (“never before”), and (3) comparisons that suggest a time lag between two entities which, although synchronous in calendar time, appear nonsynchronous in other respects (“too late”/“not yet”/“far ahead”). Relying on a broad range of comparison-performing utterances by leading politicians and observers, this article will assess the conjunctures of those three modalities of temporal comparison in 19th- and 20th-century German politics. Prima facie, one might expect an increase in the use of novelty claims (“never before”) and comparisons of the “too late”-type in that period of frequent upheavals. By contrast, the “once again”-variant should be declining because it builds on the historia magistra vitae topos which, according to Reinhart Koselleck, was dissolved in the post-1789 age of revolution. However, there is abundant evidence to show that historical examples and analogies continued to play a significant role all through the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas allegations of absolute novelty or of being too late remained limited to situations of imminent crisis. Even though the examples presented in this article refer to Germany’s special case, it will be argued that the pattern is typical for Western modernity at large: Modern political rhetoric and action are characterized not by one dominant regime, but a copresence of all three—competing—modalities of temporal comparison.

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