Abstract
Based on the current debate about the so-called "spatial turn" in German historiography, this article focusses on the importance of "space" in 20th century German historiographical tradition. Due to the abuse of some of these concepts in the first half of the century, especially in the Nazi period, Ge-rman post-war historiography (but also geography, sociology etc.) has long tried to shut out this ba-sic condition of human life from research to the extent, that the German discussion about "space" is now trying to catch up with devlopments in British, American or French historiography of the past decades.
Whereas medieval or early modern research have generally more readily accepted new concepts and perspectives, German research on modern history has been particularly resistent to so-called postmodern approaches. However, this is not true for the entire community of German historians.