Various positions of Droysen’s Historik

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of Johann Gustav Droysen’s famous essay »Historik«. Using a combination of praxeological and discourse analytical tools this article presents a close reading of this classic text which reveals specific and crucial preconditions of the making of this oeuvre. Droysen’s »Historik« has to be situated first between the spoken lectures and the various kinds of writings and rewritings of the text. This distinction is used to describe both the speaker and writer Johann Gustav Droysen and the specific characteristics of the »Historik« as a text which has been a series of lectures before its publication. Furthermore, the »Historik« has to be embedded into the history of its reception and transmission: the genealogy of the traditional academic family provided a model for the rules of inheritance and tradition of the »Historik«. The second part of the article focuses on aspects of historiographical and media techniques that are ingrained in the »Historik«: first, the distinction between spectre/spirit (»Geist«) and nature constituted an epistemological war between natural sciences and humanities, and second, the misery that came into the world of representation of the past triggered by the »photographic similarity« produced by the camera.