Perceptions of reality and not reality itself determine the behaviour of people. Such perceptions are at the same time subjective and socially determined. While most historians would agree with these statements, in historical practice such truisms are often disregarded.When the perceptions of historical actors diverge from the reconstructed reality, this is seen as an expression of false consciousness. To avoid such specious conclusions I have chosen an approach based on what in German is termed Erfahrungsgeschichte, that is, the history of experience. In German both Erlebnis and Erfahrung translate as experience, but they have a different meaning. Erlebnis is the event and the emotions experienced during the event, while Erfahrung is the result of a successful interpretation of events: the events are given meaning.Following Reinhart Koselleck, Erfahrung (experience) is defined as a process in which perception, interpretation and actions are being permanently adjusted to one another.Expectations regarding the future as well as the previous conditioning of people affect this process of adjusting experiences. Both expectations and conditioning function as filters through which events are perceived, and provide models, with the help of which reality is then interpreted. The same events can result in completely different Erfahrungen, depending on the factors mentioned. In this text I will use the term experience in this sense, i.e. as Erfahrung rather than Erlebnis.
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