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     History becomes intelligible when we stop considering
the past as a fixed entity to be discovered, and construe it
instead as an invented hypothesis to be tested, elaborated,
criticized, expanded, p.r.n.  The textbook description is and
remains a template, a structure which gives meaning the 
particular historical phenomenon under consideration.  The
"reality" such as it may be, remains, however, always an
ideal, a representation, eine Vorstellung.  No facts and no
rationalization can make it anything more.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
