Once again—never before—too late: Competing modalities of temporal comparison in German politics (1790–1945)

Abstract

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.

Visions of the good future

“…This study has shown how the major political parties in Sweden constantly used temporal comparisons and framed time in different ways. Previous research on the issue of ideological modalities of time is divided; however, the majority seems to lean toward the idea that there are no clear ideological differences in how time is framed (e.g., Clarke and Pammet 2020;Steinmetz 2021). The analysis has shown that all three modalities of time were used by the parties, none of them was monopolized by a certain party or ideology.…”

“…Drawing upon this principle, Steinmetz (2021) has put forward a typology for analyzing political arguments based on three modalities of temporal comparison: historical analogies, claims of unprecedentedness, and comparisons that postulate an anachronism in the present. 2 The first modality stresses similarities betweenor even equates -the past, present, and future.…”