Virtual History

Overview & Synopsis

We call “virtual history” a history that goes beyond past events to include possible yet unrealized courses of events. Some are eventually perceived as illusions, while others are revived when the conditions of their former emergence are recognized in the present again. Unlike counterfactual historiography, virtual historiography does not take its starting point from the present but from the expectations of contemporaries who designed a future for themselves. A chronological virtual history would consist of several parallel histories that are sometimes recognized as realistic representations of the past and sometimes rejected as unrealistic. However, other possible representations are also conceivable. To expand its representation of past realities, virtual historiography draws on new sources and disciplines. It interprets historical dates and time intervals as bridges between events and documents the time figures in which events align to form historical processes.