Historical Consciousness and History Didactics in Jörn Rüsen’s Theory of History

Abstract

Historical consciousness is the most successful concept in history education of the last 20 years. Although its definition is debated, the literature in the field of history education recognizes the German historian and history theorist Jörn Rüsen as the main reference. Rüsen’s work is not well known in Italy. As a contribution to the knowledge of the historical consciousness concept, this article proposes a synthesis of the theory of history he developed in the 1980s, and updated in 2013, within which historical consciousness is placed at the basis of historical knowledge and education.