Abstract
<b>Interpretation before Interpretation. Aspects of Hermeneutics and Gender in Historiographical Periodization</b>. This article focuses on different methods of periodization in modern German historiography. The time models used - as exemplified in studies on the history of biography - fundamentally preshape the represented past in heuristical and gender terms. That manifests itself principally in the fact that several authors, as well as various works by women writers and those excluded from academic circles, are conspicuously absent in certain models. What are ultimately not inconsiderable assumptions often go unacknowledged by the studies' authors, such that the epoch concepts they present are in themselves interpretations before the interpretations they explicitly aim to provide.