Ernst Troeltsch and Eastern Europe
On a Region’s Appropriation of a German Historical Thinker
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In the interwar era brought with it a reorganisation of historical knowledge. After the experience of the First World War and the revolutions that followed, the question had arisen as to how a reconstruction of the past could provide guidance for the future. In his late work "Historicism and Its Problems" (1922), Ernst Troeltsch, a German philosopher of history, developed an answer that was widely discussed in Eastern Europe. The different interpretations and appropriations of Troeltsch’s work in the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere, show the role that the transnational transfer of knowledge played in various national historical cultures. The exchange extended to the micro level of terminology. Troeltsch’s work is thus an intersection of European intellectual history and national intellectual histories in Europe.
(Osteuropa 8-9/2025, pp. 169–184)