,(Ent)konfessionalisierung‘ (1935) und ,Konfessionalisierung‘ (1981)

Cornel Zwierlein

doi:10.14315/arg-2007-0109

ABSTRACT

This article is a contribution to the historical understanding of the confessionalization paradigm overwhelmingly successful in the German and also in the international historiography since it was first formulated in 1981 by Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard. The standard accounts of the genesis of this concept refer back no further than to Ernst Walter Zeeden’s Post-War concept of confessions’ formation (Konfessionsbildung|) developed in the 1960s. The argument developed here seeks out earlier roots in the Pre-War-Period. Interpreting confessionalization as a theoretical discourse in the sense set out by A. J. Greimas and P. Zima possessing its own discursive structure, its typical actors and modalities, a comparison is developed between this theoretical| discourse of the 1980s and the ideological| discourse of deconfessionalization and confessionalization presented in the Nazi Period after 1935. The suggestion is not made that there are direct ‘Nazi relics’ in Schilling’s and Reinhard’s confessionalization discourse in the sense of complete identities of meanings and certainly there are no ideological continuities. But the comparison of the discourses does show structural similarities regarding the notion of ‘confessionalization’ in terms of its being brought about spontaneously or by design, of its assumption of functional comparability between the confessions, of its description of the state-church relationship, and of its concentration on social disciplining as the major modernization element of confessionalization.

,(Ent)konfessionalisierung‘ (1935) und ,Konfessionalisierung‘ (1981)

ABSTRACT

Articles in the same Issue

Articles in the same Issue