Comparisons across historical times can appear in various shapes. Apart from simple then/now contrasts, three basic modalities may be distinguished: (1) Comparisons that stress similarity and repeatability (“once again”), (2) comparisons that claim absolute novelty, if not incommensurability between present and past (“never before”), and (3) comparisons that suggest a time lag between two entities which, although synchronous in calendar time, appear nonsynchronous in other respects (“too late”/“not yet”/“far ahead”). Relying on a broad range of comparison-performing utterances by leading politicians and observers, this article will assess the conjunctures of those three modalities of temporal comparison in 19th- and 20th-century German politics. Prima facie, one might expect an increase in the use of novelty claims (“never before”) and comparisons of the “too late”-type in that period of frequent upheavals. By contrast, the “once again”-variant should be declining because it builds on the historia magistra vitae topos which, according to Reinhart Koselleck, was dissolved in the post-1789 age of revolution. However, there is abundant evidence to show that historical examples and analogies continued to play a significant role all through the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas allegations of absolute novelty or of being too late remained limited to situations of imminent crisis. Even though the examples presented in this article refer to Germany’s special case, it will be argued that the pattern is typical for Western modernity at large: Modern political rhetoric and action are characterized not by one dominant regime, but a copresence of all three—competing—modalities of temporal comparison.

跨历史时期的比较可以以各种形式出现。除了简单的当时/现在的对比之外，还可以区分三种基本模式：(1) 强调相似性和可重复性的比较（“再次”），（2）如果不是现在和过去之间的不可通约性，则要求绝对新颖的比较（“从不之前”)，以及 (3) 表明两个实体之间存在时间滞后的比较，尽管在日历时间上是同步的，但在其他方面似乎是不同步的（“太晚了”/“还没有”/“遥遥领先”）。依靠主要政治家和观察家的广泛比较表现，本文将评估这三种时间比较模式在 19 世纪和 20 世纪德国政治中的结合。表面上看，人们可能会期望在那个频繁动荡的时期使用新颖性声明（“从未有过”）和“为时已晚”类型的比较。相比之下，“再次”变体应该下降，因为它建立在Historia magistra vitae topos 根据莱因哈特·科塞莱克的说法，它在 1789 年后的革命时代被解散了。然而，有大量证据表明，历史例子和类比在整个 19 世纪和 20 世纪继续发挥着重要作用，而关于绝对新颖或为时已晚的指控仍然仅限于迫在眉睫的危机情况。尽管本文中的例子指的是德国的特例，但人们会认为这种模式是整个西方现代性的典型模式：现代政治言论和行动的特点不是一个主导政权，而是所有三个的共同存在——竞争——时间比较的方式。