The present volume dedicated to Arnold Esch on the occasion of his 65th birthday and retirement from the post of Director of the German Historical Institute in Rome by friends, colleagues and former students from many different countries centres around topics of significance both to the dedicatee himself and the research fields that have benefited from his work: the historian and the present, Rome and the Popes, art and artists, traditions and texts casting light on life and individual destinies on both sides of the Alps. The purview of Arnold Esch's research concerns has always been broad and this is reflected in the range of subjects addressed here: from the Middle Ages to the present, lives and posterities, art and history, economics and archeology. Common to all is the concern with Italy's place within Europe, with emphasis on the concrete and the graphic and the broad perspective, in the way that Esch himself has always preferred. The works in which he has demonstrated this predilection are listed in the catalogue of his writings.

Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006) was one of the most important historians in Germany in the 20th century. Within the German historical scholarship since 1945 he was undoubtedly one of those who has worked most intensively in an interdisciplinary manner and is read across the entire spectrum of the humanities. He had a decisive influence on the history of the term, established the analysis of the political cult of the dead as a research area and has been involved in debates on the politics of memory since the 1990s. Above all, however, he has made innovative and pioneering contributions to the theory of history and the question of 'historical times'. The volume offers a comprehensive overview of Koselleck's entire work, the different subject areas, his way of thinking and asking. The contributions analyse Koselleck's "essayistic history" and show the peculiarity as well as the continuing potential of his historiography.