Chapter 36 reflects on the ways in which Goethe’s meaning and value have evolved. Analysis of Goethe’s legacy and reception demands that we attend to the historical situation of the readers too, and that we remain alert to the role of politics in shaping responses to and uses of his work. The chapter considers Goethe’s afterlife in a variety of contexts, from his prominence in German secondary education between 1871 and 1914 to the mixed feelings of German-Jewish readers in the 1930s. It also analyses Goethe’s own interventions in his reception.

This chapter begins by summarising the development of the history of ideas out of which conceptual history emerged. It discusses in detail the founding figure of conceptual history, Reinhart Koselleck, and compares his approach to that of the influential Cambridge school, in particular Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock, and their ‘contextualism’. The bulk of the chapter is then dedicated to a discussion of a range of examples of how conceptual histories have helped to deconstruct a rainge of collective identities, including class, religious, racial and gender identities. In all of these areas we have seen an intense interest in linking the history of conceps with the study of emotions, social practices and the problematisation of the national container for historical studies. In particular the move to a transnational history of concepts has contributed in a major way to de-essentialising collective national identities but also transnational, i.e. European ones. Furthermore, conceptual history has been emphasising the importance of studying the translation of concepts into different languages and cultural spheres.