SUMMARY:

The meta-category “civil society” has become an ubiquitous common place both in politics and academics after the demise of the Soviet Union and their satellite states since 1989. However, the article argues that the civil society can be used as a heuristical device. Civil society is understood as a sphere of social interaction between economy and state, composed above all of the intimate sphere (especially the family), the sphere of (voluntary) associations and forms of public communication. Civil society is created through forms of self-constitution and self-mobilization. It is institutionalized and generalized through laws, and especially subjective rights. Moreover independent action and institutionalization are necessary for the reproduction of civil society. The civil society is less ideologized than categories like “Bürgertum” or “middle classes”. Therefore it is very well-suited not only as an analytical category of a comparative approach of European history in order to explain the different paths to modernity in the “long” 19th century. The article argues that civil society is even better suited for regional, local or especially urban studies. With the help of the frame of a “local society” on can show how different social layers became a coherent elitist group and formed a “functional equivalent” to the “Bürgertum”. Their amalgamation took place on the basis of their self-organizing abilities, public activities and sociability in clubs, associations, their participation and publicly voiced critique in the press and finally common shared values. It is obvious that the formation of networks, their linkages and different modes of operating are easier to be analyzed on a local level.