Abstract

The Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur at Mayence, founded in 1949, installed a project for a Dictionary of concepts under the direction ofErich Rothacker, who, during the 1920s, had planned such a dictionary for the terminology of the Geisteswissenschaften in various approaches. The drafts andpresentations of the project, among them a lecture, held in 1927 at the Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg, are presented here for the first time. It is shown inwhich way Rothacker’s dictionary project failed, was substituted by the Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte and finally by Joachim Ritter’s Historisches Wörterbuchder Philosophie. Though originally not linked with Rothacker, Ritter’s Wörterbuch was 1974 until its completion as well institutionally supervised and fosteredby the Academie Mayence and its Commission for Philosophy. In this institutional perspective the connections between the protagonists of the rising history of concepts in philosophy come out in their complexity. Hans Blumenberg’s role for the history of concepts as Rothackers successor in the Academie is heredocumented for the first time.