Volume 300, Issue 2

The paper argues that in narrative historiography from Thucydides (about 400 BC) up to the present specific pattern of conceptualizing and writing history can be observed which appear if their authors write against a background of events that they had perceived as an existential threat to themselves and that they, therefore, describe in a particularly emotional manner. Such patterns can creep in unconsciously, sometimes even against the intention of the author. One of these patterns is what this paper calls condensation of time. To prove this argument, the paper analyzes four representative historians of different periods: Thucydides, Orosius, Eduard Schwartz, and Reinhart Koselleck.

The strategies used in early modern societies in order to determinate the differences between humans and animals, as well as the instability and fragility of these boundaries have been the object of recent research in the field of human-animal-history. Horses for the manege and for dressage, their breeding, care and exhibition, are in the focus of the sources that are discussed in the present article. But manege-horses do not fit well to the image of the animal’s wilderness and irrationality, which traditionally were put forward in order to legitimate the dominion of humans over animals. The present article addresses this topic with the example of the horsemanship-treatises and of the horse-discourse which is present in early modern England (e.g. at the Stuart-court and in the Cavendish-circle). However, its object is to extend the focus beyond the issues of animal-history-studies in order to emphasize the relevance of horsemanship for historical scholarship in general. Different branches of research can be alleged, where horsemanship matters for the historian. This is the case for the study of the historical change of the concept of nature and the implications of this change for the political realm or for the study of the semantic and symbolic representation of the nobility and of the estate-based society in general. Horses were used in early modern England in order to represent semiotically the higher estates and in order to legitimate their privileged social position as well as their political power. Hence horses were at the ground of social, economical and political conflicts that afflicted English society in the 17th century.

Joachim von Ribbentrop, head of the German Foreign Ministry 1938–1945, still represents all the elements responsible for the decline of diplomacy in the „Third Reich“: His deep hatred against England shattering all possibilities for peaceful change; the blind obedience to the „Führer“ that undermined all alternatives to the dangerous course of Hitler’s policy; and finally the use of threats and blackmail as cornerstones of the German foreign policy which lead directly into the Second World War. Actually, the influence of Ribbentrop on German policy goes back to the year of 1934, when he tried to negotiate between Berlin and London as an unofficial ambassador. An analysis of this time brings up a new interpretation of Ribbentrop’s political conceptions. It reveals that Ribbentrop worked hard on an Anglo-German arrangement covering military aspects and security questions as well. The bilateral arms convention limiting German and British military forces should be, in Ribbentrop’s mind, the first step to an Anglo-German alliance of which Hitler always dreamed; with his willingness to conclude a guarantee pact with Belgium and other security treaties like an Eastern pact Ribbentrop inclined to share the views of the Foreign Ministry that Germany should not be without a state of legal relations. In this respect, Ribbentrop’s political conceptions of the year 1935 formed a bridge between the ideological „program“ of Hitler and the conceptions of the diplomats in the Wilhelmstraße. But even then Ribbentrop’s failure was clear to the open eye due to his inability to bring in harmony his own political thoughts with the principles of the British policy on the continent.