Troeltsch’s great last book, Der Historismus und seine Probleme (Historicism and Its Problems), was written in a complicated process from 1915 to 1922 and is considered the key text in the historical and philosophical discourse of the 1920s.Making use of well over a thousand works relating to that discussion, Berlin's celebrated cultural philosopher examined the traumatic experience of World War I. He sought to advance his concept of a “European cultural synthesis” as a foundation for the ethical potential of European integration and German reconciliation with western democracy. In addition to documenting the developmental stages of the text, this first critical edition also details the rich background of thought that Troeltsch drew on.