Abstract

The paper introduces Reinhart Koselleck’s first three publications from the years 1951–53, which present the future historian as a literary critic. They report on a Kafka workshop organized by students at the University of Heidelberg and review a contemporary novel by Paul Schallück as well as a Hamlet interpretation promoted by Carl Schmitt. Koselleck’s articles are analyzed within the context of the student magazine they were published in and contrasted with his fellow student Hans Robert Jauss’ first publication in the same Forum academicum. While young Koselleck doesn’t express himself as an historian in these early publications, they shed light on his intellectual beginnings in the shadow of his emerging doctoral thesis Critique and Crisis, especially concerning his foundational struggle with »the transcendence of history.«