Abstract

After its creation in 16th century Poland, the term of »Dissidents« remained subject of political debates. This article traces its history and focuses especially on the reintroduction of the concept in the German political discourse around 1848 and on its different meanings in the German political Janguage afterwards. The notion first defined separatist groups in both the Protestant and the Catholic confessions; later it became a legal term and a concept of self-identification among materialistic and atheistic groups face to society and churches, before finally being banned from public discourse in 1936. Even though the concept made a new appearance in the German language in the l 970s, I will deal with this most recent history of the conccpt only briefly, since it is not linked with the previous evolution of the concept within German language.