Abstract
The paper examines the approach of a German religious scholar Joachim Wach to the history of religions. Following Wilhelm Dilthey, Wach developed a concept of the History of Religions (Religionswissenschaft) as an autonomous discipline of human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), conditioning its existence by reflection of possibilities and limits of understanding.
Focusing on Wach´s hermeneutics, the author critically evaluates the concept of the history of religions centered on understanding and illustrates tensions between theory and research practice – as Wach was unfaithful to the principles he himself had laid down, which is, according to the author, an inevitable consequence of grounding the hermeneutics on the concept of “understanding”.