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Bibliographic entry in Chapter 27: Race,…

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[German Version] From the middle of the 16th century to the last third of the 18th, when absolutism was the dominant form of government in Europe, the term itself was not used. Not until the 1790s, when absolutism was fundamentally challenged by the outbreak of the French Revolution, did people in France begin to use the term “absolutisme” to describe the notion of sovereignty that dominated the preceding period. In the 1830s and 40s, when the influence of absolutism was also waning in central Europe, the term was translated into English and German. Decades later, historians began to discuss the extent and significance of absolutism. At the same time, they replaced the pejorative connotations that had burdened the term with a positive assessment and sought to distinguish the age of absolutism from earlier and later periods. Wilhelm Roscher distinguished the “confessional” absolutism of Philip II and Ferdinand II, the “court” absolutism of Louis IV, and “enlightened” absolutism. Reinhold Koser, Otto Hintze, Friedrich Meinecke, and Fritz Hartung, and since 1950 Kurt v. Raumer, Gerhard Oestreich, Rudolf Vierhaus, and Karl Otmar Freiherr v. Aretin have criticized this categorization. The understanding of absolutism has been differentiated and made more precise. To the present day, scholars have used the term “absolutism” to describe the unique form of political sovereignty and political ambition d…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies In the 1960s, religious studies began to discuss the continuing decline of religious commitment in Europe intensively. In particular the writings of Bryan Wilson ( Religion in a Secular Society, 1966) and Peter L. Berger ( The Sacred Canopy, 1967), drawing on the ideas of M. Weber, É. Durkheim, and others led to formulation of a so-called theory of secularization, where secularization denotes a n…