Anonymous Forces of History: The Case of Infanticide in the Sturm und Drang

Abstract

This paper argues that the modem concept of history is a concept of institutions. While the older notion of history explained history as a matter of coincidence or fate, symbolized by a hammer coming from the skies, the notion of history that emerges in Germany (and elsewhere) at the end of the eighteenth century has its roots in the dynamics of institutions. Institutions are thereby not simply the objects of history, but also its agents. Institutions such as the nation state, school, or art become both the destroyed and the destroyer; the hammer hits the hand that holds the hammer.