Von der Geschichte der Zukunftsvorstellungen zur Geschichte ihrer Generierung

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes the history of the future in the twentieth century. The present future is always multi-faceted: produced by diverse actors, it concerns different aspects of the world, and is articulated in many ways. We suggest a divergence from the Koselleckian notion of a unified horizon of expectation. Rather than concentrating on the contents of visions of the future, we focus on the processes by which the future is generated. Distinguishing between futures of expectation, creation, risk, and conservation, we offer both a systematic account and a heuristic to analyze the pluralization of the future in the twentieth century. Vor allem in der deutschsprachigen, aber auch in der internationalen Geschichtswissenschaft boomt seit einigen Jahren die Geschichte der Zukunft, die mit Niklas Luhmann und Reinhart Koselleck nicht als "future present", sondern als "present future" verstanden wird. 1 Während die Bedeutung von Zukunftsvorstellungen im Anschluss an Kosellecks Arbeiten zur Verzeitlichung des politisch-sozialen Vokabulars in der sogenannten Sattelzeit zunächst insbesondere für das 18. und 19. Jahrhundert untersucht wurde, gerät zunehmend auch die Zukunft des 20. Jahrhunderts in den Blick. 2 Angesichts von wissenschaftlich-technischen Modernisierungsprozessen, planvollen Umgestaltungen von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft und den politischen Versprechen von Kommunismus und Faschismus spielen Zukunftsvorstellungen in

Agency, Free Will, Self-Constitution: New Concepts for Historians of German-Jewish History between 1914 and 1938?

“…Likewise, recent literature on the predominantly optimistic perceptions of the future, as much as it is a welcome reminder of expectations that saw crisis as an opportunity rather than as an emergency, tends to downplay the relative merits of certain scenarios. 79 Accounting for the many projections and fantasies is one thing, accounting for the growing historical impact of certain visions another. 80 In the case of Germany's Jews, different expectations reflected different ideological predilections, religious affiliations, and emotional make-ups.…”

State of the Field: Histories of the Future

“…70 To Rüdiger Graf and Benjamin Herzog, a history of the future should be understood as a history of the mental, linguistic and practical structures and procedures that frame how people referred to or produced the future. 71 A large German graduate programme based at the university of Duisburg-Essen titled 'Precaution, foresight, prediction. Coping with contingency through future action' focused on these praxeological approaches to the history of the future.…”

“…We can envisage, plan, design, anticipate, intend, aim and steer towards future actions, but we can also prophesise, announce, proclaim, reveal, forecast, predict or foretell. 102 If a grammatical future tense is not available, we can still talk about the time to come by using simple markers of time like 'tomorrow' or 'next year'. This overview is just the tip of the iceberg because future events and aspirations can be linguistically expressed in a myriad of ways that are subject to regional and, of course, chronological variation.…”

4. Events Getting Ahead of Themselves: Rethinking the Temporality of Expectations

“…As Rüdiger Graf and Benjamin Herzog have noted, it is time to shift our attention from the content of the colorful images of the future to the manifold ways in which the future was made present in the past-that is, from the what to the how of historical expectations. 12 This change of perspective entails an empirical differentiation of the thematic subjects of expectation, of the actor groups involved, and especially of the variety of settings in which expectations about the future are generated. In response to such demands, a wealth of new empirical research has recently addressed the impact of social positions and hierarchies, institutions and networks, media settings, discourses, technologies, and cultural frameworks on the production of futures in past societies.…”