Introduction to 'Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse'

The Conceptual History of Volk and Nation

This is a machine-assisted translation of the introduction to “Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse” in: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, hsg. v. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1992.

The entry is written by Fritz Gschnitzer, Reinhart Koselleck, Bernd Schönemann & Karl Ferdinand Werner; the introduction by Reinhart Koselleck.

I. Introduction

The conceptual histories of 'Volk', 'Nation' - and also of 'Masse' - together with their linguistic equivalents and neighboring terms are central to Western and - in the meantime - to the whole of world history. This is because these terms refer to the self-organization and self-perception of political units of action as well as to the other units of action or foreign groups that are excluded from them. Self-perception and the perception of others are often mutually constituted by the same terms. 'Nation' and 'mass' have even become naturalized internationally as loan words, while 'Volk' usually only appears in the respective equivalents of the national languages. In any case - beyond their emphatic self-use - 'Volk' and 'Nation' can denote both one's own unit of action and that of other peoples or nations. The terms therefore have a relatively high degree of abstraction, which allows them to be used generally, although in application they only ever refer to specific peoples or nations - or masses. This is why there is a theory of democracy, but hardly a theory of the nation or the people. There are, however, typologies of peoples and nations and their generalizable concepts. Only recently, under the title of "ethnogenesis", has something like a theory of the past three thousand years begun to emerge, in which an empirical-genetically oriented attempt is made to analyze the emergence, change and shift of those units of action that today are called "nation" or " Volk", and which are to be objectified scientifically as "ethnos". Ethnology and sociological ethnology, following the lead of the psychology of peoples (Völkerpsychologie), folklore and linguistics, reach out to analyze the constitutional modes of nations or peoples and the masses in general and comparatively.

The following conceptual histories are in the run-up to such a general theorization of 'nation' or in 'Volk' or in 'nationalism' and in 'mass'. But they contribute to it, because each of the thematized terms semantically contains a higher claim to generality than merely designating the respective nation, the respective Volk, the respective mass. This is why, on the other hand, the following history of concepts cannot be restricted to a purely diachronic history of word meanings and their successive application to concrete subjects, situations or situations to which the concepts always refer. Our conceptual histories can thus be located on two analytically separable levels, which generally coincide in everyday language: On the one hand, semantically steady, long-lasting, only gradually changing structures are brought to their tich resemble or repeat themselves under changing designations ('populus', 'natio', 'Volk' etc.). - On the other hand, very specific political and social modes of organization and patterns of interpretation are brought to their terms, and through their respective naming ('populus romanus', 'nation française, deutsches Volk', etc.), French also claims the distinctiveness and uniqueness of the concrete names, linked to the overarching concept of Volk or nation, their long-term temporal extension, which cannot be arbitrarily changed from one day to the next. The empirical immediacy of naming concepts and the structural generality of our basic concepts, which refer to many units of action and their self-perception at the same time, thus refer to each other. They are synchronically and diachronically intertwined in different ways.

Translations, as it were a hub of conceptualization, make a lasting contribution to this. The Greek terms, mediated by the Roman ones, and the Latin terminology are still present today, but are broken down differently depending on the vernacular languages. 'Democracy' ("rule of the people") or 'res publica/populi' ("republic", "common good", around 1800 also "welfare of the people") contain common theoretical assumptions and interpretations in all languages that have remained in force since antiquity. In contrast, the term 'natio', which initially referred to birth and origin, has slowly and over the long term, in German only since the formation of loanwords in the 15th century, undergone a revaluation and expansion, so that today it occupies a key political position in almost all languages, in which origin or birth only have a possible secondary meaning.

The traditional bilingualism of European histories has had very different effects on the Latin-based Western languages and the German-speaking world. In the West, Latin was incorporated into the mother tongues more smoothly than in German, where loan words had to be adopted or newly coined. Thus, from the Roman 'populus', which could mean both 'people of the state (Staatsvolk)' and 'population', only the latter meaning remains in French and English 'peuple' or 'people', while the same word was narrowed down to 'rabble' in German. Since around 1800, on the other hand, 'Volk' has undergone a revaluation that could or should encompass both the people of the state as a "nation" and the population, bringing 'nation' and 'peuple' to a common term, as it were. Behind this is the long-lasting power of Latin in Germany as the language of rule and scholarship. In the natural law tradition, 'Volk' becomes a translation term that maintains the old political meaning of 'populus' as the people of the state. This is why, in the revolutionary period around 1800, 'Volk' was able to become a parallel or even an opposite term to 'nation'. And that is why the religious overhang of the 'people of God (Gottesvolkes)', which remained alive in the theologically impregnated language of education, persisted almost unbroken in German.

Our conceptual histories thus draw on variously broken continuities and transfers as well as on new coinages, by virtue of which the common European tradition is conceptually fanned out. Behind both processes there are persistent commonalities of semantics that suggest similar or analogous structures of historical reality, even if the diachronic change of concepts has slowly or intermittently brought about irreversible innovations.

1. Semantically Developed Structural Similarities

The semantics of our conceptual bundle always refers to pre-givens, but in such a way that it linguistically defines or constitutes them. The modern scientific antithesis, whether a people is objectively given or whether it is only realized through subjective expressions of will, is undertaken by semantics. Semantics is both "objective" and "subjective" at the same time; its linguistic status contains the designated or named reality as well as the linguistic achievement of grasping and understanding reality in one way or another. It is now an astonishing finding of the following conceptual histories that structural features of the use of the words 'Volk', 'Nation' and 'Masse' appear repeatedly, even if the history actually taking place has changed slowly or rapidly. Such structural features are the opposition from above and below, from within and without, and since around 1800 also from earlier or later. "'Volk', 'nation' and 'mass' are repeatedly constituted across languages by the aforementioned oppositional terms. On top of that, the same words are used to transgress. The same words are also used to define these boundaries Words thus contain different terms depending on the political-social environment or perspective, which are mutually exclusive or analogously repeated, even if the actual specifications change profoundly.

a) Top-bottom Relation. The top-bottom relation is fixed again and again throughout the diachrony. 'Demos' means the politically and legally qualified community of citizens of a polis, which rules over itself and at the same time over the non-qualified lower classes (slaves, Metic, foreigners). Analogously, the Roman 'populus' (also called 'gens', 'natio', above all 'civitas') is "sovereign" downwards and outwards. Something similar was repeated in the so-called Middle Ages and in the so-called early modern period. The "aristocratic nations (Adelsnationen)", qualified by birthright and land rights, dominated completely heterogeneous classes or populations in modern terms. As a result, in the "democratically" legitimized modern era, the concept of the people is doubled to "Herrenvolk" (Max Weber), with which a claim to rule over minorities within the state or over peoples less qualified to rule outside the state was announced.

But the same words could also be used to define the top-bottom demarcation from bottom to top. "Demos", "populus" or "Volk" then meant not the legally and politically designated rulers, but the multitude of the governed or ruled. "Volk" then easily converged with "multitudo", "vulgus", "Bevölkerung", "Menge", "Masse" or "Pöbel". Then 'demos' == "plethos" against the citizens, 'populus', above all 'plebs', against the 'patres' or the church people ('plebs') against the ecclesiastical officials. Or 'people' meant, especially in the age of absolute princely rule - irrespective of its legal and social differentiations - the sum of the 'subjects'. And it is precisely this 'Volk' that becomes the object and addressee of the party-politically organized ruling elite in the age of totalitarian practices of rule. The same word, or a structurally analogous word, could thus be used over time to define mutually exclusive definitions from top to bottom or from bottom to top. 'Volk' or the terms that preceded it historically then indicated the rulers or the ruled or both at the same time. Political reality could be expressed in diametrically opposed terms using the same words. The linguistic possibilities were therefore limited; they captured completely heterogeneous findings with the same expressions. For this reason, the terms can only be deduced from the changing contexts. And the history of terms becomes particularly exciting where heterogeneous fields of meaning begin to overlap.

b) Inside-outside Relation. The same finding can be shown, albeit less contradictorily, for the uses of words that are supposed to conceptually define the contrast between inside and outside. The terms that serve the self-constitution of a political unit of action are often distinguished from those used to describe foreign units of action. This can be justified in terms of constitutional policy, for example when the 'demos' of Greek civil cities is distinguished from a 'koinon' or the 'ethnoi' of neighboring 'tribal states (Stammesstaaten)'; or when the Roman 'populus' as a ruling people is distinguished from 'gentes' or 'nationes' within or outside the empire. Structurally analogous conceptual divisions appear in the Middle Ages, for example when the Frankish 'populus' turns several 'gentes' in its empire into administrative units, as it were, into "provinces", which they do not become outside the empire, or when the "Roman Empire" of the Middle Ages unites several peoples ('gentes', also 'nationes') in itself "peoples", which are also designated beyond the royal-imperial domain. Or in modern times, it is common for several nations - as in Prussia or Austria-Hungary - to be part of one state nation, differentiated by customs, language and culture. Conversely, such 'nations' - such as the Danes or Poles - can also be members of other state nations. - In general, it can be said of our conceptual histories that the definitions and delimitations always required by constitutional policy and international law were based on the same basic concepts that were also used in the opposite direction by the respective neighbors.

The polemical intensification of the contrast between internal constitution and external demarcation only occurs when the basic terms are linked to names. This is why - in contrast to other articles in the lexicon - terms with names are also treated here. Only by individualizing the naming of other peoples are the terms charged with asymmetrical counter-concepts that distinguish one's own people. Mythical or scientific historical and origin legends, religious and missionary vocations, cultural-civilizational programmes or 'nationalist prejudices then all interact. Diachronically differently staggered and synchronically differently mixed, such legitimizations serve to constitute and motivate the political unit of action of a respective "people". The asymmetrical opposition of the Hellenes or the Romans to the "barbarians" is structurally repeated across the ages, even if the names change. The ecclesiastical opposition of "laos" versus "ethne" ("populus"/"plebs" versus "gentes"/"pagani") only makes sense because it distinguishes Christians from pagans. The asymmetry arises from the name of the Christians and from the naming of the "pagans", which legally or religiously polemically charge the respective folk terms. The same is repeated throughout the centuries, as the politically evolving nations and peoples of Europe invoke their Christianity in order to understand themselves. Whether in defense or attack, whether directed within Europe or outwards, the (national) ecclesiastical and Christian provisions constituted the units of action right into the 19th century. A sense of mission remained instilled in them, or at least retrievable. The 'patria', the fatherland related to origin or the princely lord, was potentially expandable.

2. Conceptualized Structural Change in Modern Times

All the definitions described so far have not referred to the historically unique, concrete cases of application. Rather, it has been shown that the semantic specifications for understanding historically unique units of action as 'populus', 'natio' or 'Volk' etc. allow only a limited and determinable range of variation. In a sense, our terms can be defined as stereotypes whose repeated use - and usability - suggest structurally similar challenges to so-called reality. Their slow and long-term change would then have a strong presumption for itself in the consistency of the terms used. In any case, political events take place at a faster pace than semantics can change, if it is able to conceptualize repeatable structures. The turn to the modern era testifies to the extent to which our concepts also capture structural change and, by doing so, also drive it forward. The four hypotheses of the lexicon, which inquire into this turning point, can be substantiated, irrespective of the fact that analogous findings can also be found earlier. The first hypothesis is democratization, which has been inherent in our concepts since antiquity. However, the decisive change has taken place since the Enlightenment, which was founded on natural law, and the French Revolution. Since then, 'people' has primarily encompassed all members of a 'nation', just as in French 'nation' or even more so in Jacobean times 'peuple' as 'people of the state' swallowed up all autonomous secondary meanings. Even if the 'people's soul' or participation in the linguistic community are used in German, 'Volk' is only now becoming a generic term that includes all estates or classes, the rulers and the ruled. Certainly, the consistently democratic concept of the people did not gain immediate acceptance; until 1918 it remained in reality a political party concept. However, its new claim to merge the heteronomous definitions of a single political nation and the legally and socially diverse population was groundbreaking.

It is precisely as a concept of struggle and party that 'people' makes a claim to universality: pushing back all other, hitherto dominant, coexisting meanings of estates, regions or social groups. Yesterday, brothers, you were just a bunch; today you are a people, O brothers¹. The transition from a concept parceled out by estates to a potentially democratic one was demonstrated without reflection in the naming of the 'Battle of the Nations' in Leipzig. When Colonel von Müffling introduced the new word into the army report in 1813, he certainly still had in mind the old meaning (going back to Germanic times) of using 'peoples' to designate the troops of absolutist rulers. Now, however, he saw whole peoples of Europe - and Asia too - fighting each other, conscripted by universal conscription.

The politicization of our conceptual field goes hand in hand with this. Although the constitution of political units of action is the central axis of meaning of 'demos', 'populus', later of 'natio' and (since the 18th century) of 'Volk', it has always allowed for other, non-political variants. This changed in modern times. The political content - primarily apostrophized with the article: la 'nation', 'the people' - appropriates meanings that were previously separately retrievable and specific to classes or groups. After a first wave around 1800, pervasive since the First World War, inescapable in totalitarian languages, 'Volk' as a determiner governs hundreds and hundreds of compounds, from 'Volksgeist' and 'Volksküche' via 'Volkswohlfahrt' to 'Volksgrenadier' and 'Volksarmee', which are intended to completely politicize everyday life. Even the seemingly pre-political 'language nation', also discovered around 1800, directly exercised a political function, directed against the French (state) nation, calling on the (as yet non-existent) 'German people' to unite. And in line with the democratic intonation, the formerly subordinate concept of the masses - now "masses" - is also upgraded to a political concept that challenges all governments and pushes for universal, equal voting rights for both sexes.

It is only in this environment that the old, hidden term 'nationalism', first in France around 1900 and then in Germany in the 1920s, is taken up voluntaristically and aggressively charged - even if corresponding behaviors also existed in pre-democratic times. This is why the political concept of the 20th century can also be applied to past eras in terms of scientific terminology.

The same applies to ideologization, whose factual prehistory points back to rhetoric, but whose specific modernity stems from the new political claim to exclusivity of our terms. Once accepted as an irreplaceable basic concept, 'Volk' or 'nation' compel us to define differences - to be Christian, liberal, since around 1900 also ethnic, democratic, even popular-democratic or something else - definitions of difference that exclude each other to some extent or completely, but are nevertheless intended to qualify the same basic concept. This kind of semantics forces or at least enables a mutual ideological critique in order to be able to book the general term in a partisan way. The question of the true, the actual people is very familiar to all parties, and each party finds the true, the actual people where it finds its own views or at least willing tools for its purposes². Thus Bismarck defended himself in the Reichstag in 1873 against the liberal parliamentarians' claim to represent the people: We all belong to the people, I also have people's rights, His Majesty the Emperor also belongs to the people; we are all the people, not the masters who represent certain old, traditionally liberal and not always liberal entitlements. I refuse to monopolize the name "people" and exclude myself from it!³ Politically certainly not a democrat, he semantically uses the democratic all-encompassing basic concept, which allows him - rhetorically - to question his liberal opponents. Bismarck provided a critique of ideology that he was able to derive directly from the total concept of the people.

Ultimately, our concepts, above all 'German people', are caught up in the historical-philosophical maelstrom of temporalization. Until well into the 18th century, our concepts captured - often vividly given - contents of experience. With the view of a linguistic-cultural individuality that had not yet received a political form as a 'people', and even more so with the democratic concept of 'people' - or 'nation' - that was only to be realized in the future, the concept became an anticipation, a concept of expectation that did not yet correspond to any experience in reality. It was an "imagined order" (Francis). At best, the French nation served as a criticized model that was to be caught up with in a better way. Thus Lessing soberly stated in 1768 that we Germans are not yet a nation!⁴ And Campe confirms this: "Germany knows no common 'people', consists only of a 'peoplehood', as the federally coherent collective singular was then called!"⁵. In German, 'Volk' therefore becomes a future concept that draws its dynamic justification from the temporal determinants of 'movement', 'history', 'development or progress'. "Völkerfrühling" is a democratic catchphrase, just as "Volk im Werden" coagulates into the ideological topos of völkisch and Nazi language. Throughout all constitutional changes, new expectations crystallize around the term 'Volk' in German, including a religious overhang of the need for redemption and liberation with the resulting sense of mission. Thus, even the modern temporalization of our concept of the people points back to the theological "prehistory" of the "people of God". The terms also store long-term temporal specifications from which they draw their thrust into an open future.

3. The German Name as a Concept

The structural change of the modern era as demonstrated by our four hypotheses has already shown that 'Volk' only became a basic concept in German around 1800. It aims to unite the various state peoples (Staatsvölker) of the disintegrated empire into a 'people'. The term derives its emphasis from the claim to refer to and generate 'the German people', just as 'Germanness' and 'Volkstum' are parallel concepts that explain each other. 'Volk' becomes, as it were, a specifically German compensatory term, which was intended to redeem what the French neighbor had not only brought to the concept with 'nation', but also seemed to have realized. The vagueness of the word exchange between 'Volk' and 'Nation' in Germanism therefore testifies to structural similarities with the neighbors as well as the will to specifically identify and distinguish oneself as a 'German people'. If the cultural and above all the linguistic nation was discovered in the process, this can be well explained in view of the diversity of "German" state peoples after 1806, whose comprehensive bond was certainly to be found in the common (written) language and its literature.

It is not just an irony of the history of concepts that it was precisely the proper name of the 'German', which appeared last in the European "family of nations", that initially resulted from a language name. For political, social and constitutional history, this semantic finding, once rigorously taken at its word and analyzed, has considerable consequences - as in the following article.

The German people as a subject of action that names itself and understands itself in this way only emerged in the 19th century. All backward-looking interpretations are now - in terms of conceptual history - under suspicion of ideology. Semantics requires considerable differentiation. It is therefore worth recalling some well-known findings in advance.

"German" - first documented in Latin as 'theodiscus' in 786 - initially meant "vernacular", referring to the non-Latin lingua vulgaris, including the lingua gentilis of the pagans. In the 9th century, the "Frankish tongue" is referred to in this way. It was not until 1080 (Annolied) that the purely linguistic designation came close to being a name, when "German people" and "German lands" were mentioned, without a substantive proper name for political self-determination having emerged from this. There is talk of an overarching "gens teutonica" for the first time around 1100. In the Sachsenspiegel (after 1220), the adjectival name is substantivized to the 'Germans' as a collective name for the princes of the empire, who presided over their lands, were entitled to elect kings and were obliged to travel to Rome. In contrast to the foreign names derived from Latin ('Germania', 'Teutonia', 'Alemannia'), the 'gentes', 'populi', 'Völker' or 'Nationen' grouped together in the 'Holy Roman Empire' lacked their own collective name. The internal overarching and external delimiting definition of the "Empire, German Nation" only emerged in the 15th century. The term "patria", " Vaterland" (fatherland), which initially referred to the territories and their lords, was not displaced afterwards, but rather overarched by the "German fatherland", which had to defend itself externally against the Turks, Swedes and French, and which had to find its inter-confessional peace internally. The dynamic term 'patriotism', adopted from France and the first modern concept of a movement, was not coined until the 18th century.

In Moser's words, this patriotism was to generate what had long since characterized the British, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden: a love of the fatherland that would encompass the entire Reich and all fellow citizens and fellow Germans at the same time. In doing so, he encountered a structurally long-term problem in German constitutional history. For what he found was the inverted and harmful concept of a double fatherland, because it was federally and confessionally divided. For the princes and their separatist way of thinking (which could only now be described as such!), this fatherland was merely a dead name; only the citizens of the imperial cities asked for Germany. - Moser argued from an "imagined order"; "Volk" became a concept of experience. He therefore appealed to the will to achieve what had been repeatedly invoked in vain since humanism, the transformation of the heterogeneous constitutional elements of the empire into a common 'state'. In order to justify his - still rather vague - program politically, he brought the convergence of the people, its German proper name and its language to a common concept: We are one people, of one name and language. His enlightened patriotism was no longer aimed at the imperial constitution or the territorial states, as before, but at the future. 'Volk', with its German name and common language, became a concept of political action, which it had not been before. Through action and a change of attitude, it was to help create something that all previous experience had been opposed to. In this respect, the new concept of the people also had an inherent utopian element that was to stimulate subsequent history. The outlook shows where it has led so far.

Reinhart Koselleck

1. Noch gestern, Brüder, wart ihr nur ein Haufen; ein Volk, o Brüder seid ihr heut.

Ferdinand Freiligrath (1858), zit. Trübner Bd. 7 (1956), 691f., Art. Volk.

2. Die Frage nach dem wahren, dem eigentlichen Volk, pflegt allen Parteien sehr geläufig zu sein, und jede Partei findet das wahre, das eigentliche Volk da, wo sie ihre eigenen Ansichten oder wenigstens bereitwillige Werkzeuge für ihre Zwecke findet.

Rochau, Realpolitik (e. Anm. 2), 57

3. Zum Volke gehören wir alle, ich habe auch Volksrechte, zum Volke gehört auch Seine Majestät der Kaiser; wir alle sind das Volk, nicht die Herren, die gewisse alte, traditionell liberal genannte und nicht immer liberal seiende Ansprüche vertreten. Das verbitte ich mir, den Namen Volk zu monopolisieren und mich davon auszuschließen!

Bismarck, Rede v. 16. 6. 1873, Werke, hg v. Gustav Adolf Rein u. a., Bd. 5, hg. v. Alfred Milatz (Darmstadt 1973), 358f.

4. [W]ir Deutsche noch keine Nation sind!

Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie. 101.-104. Stück (19. 4. 1768), Sämtl. Schr., 3. Aufl., Bd. 7 (1886), 419; vgl. Grimm Bd. 7(1889), Ndr. Bd. 13 (1984), 425, Art. Nation.

5. Völkerschaft', wie der föderal stimmige Kollektivsingular damals lautete!

Vgl. Campe Bd. 5 (1811; Ndr. 1970), 433, s.v. Volk.