Identität und historischer Blick Zur Position der Kirchengeschichtsschreibung in der Spätaufklärung

At the turn of the 18th to 19th century, a fundamental and very complex change took place in church history: there was a change from a pragmatical-exemplarical to a genetical kind of historical thinking, which prepared the way for historism. The step from exemplarical to genetic ideas is a very complex one: elements of both are mixed together and can not be separated, something that the connection between pragmatism and the theory of ideas proves vividly.