Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft : Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter, 1939

Otto Brunner named Europe from the 12th to 18th centuries the Alteuropa, which, according to Brunner, had das ganze Haus as the basic unit of society, self-help by Fehde as the central dispute resolution mechanism, and an isogamous state system based on a caste system parliament. The Alteuropa was the basic unit of society. In other words, the Alteuropa world was a space-time alien in principle to modern Europe.

Therefore, Otto Brunner's scholarly achievement was to sharply criticize the old anachronism of explaining medieval Europe by modern concepts and to try to understand it intrinsically by means of contemporaneous concepts. This approach is called Begriffsgeschichte.

A monumental work edited and published under the influence of Otto Brunner is Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1972-1997. It is a powerful intellectual resource for historians interested in the Verfassungsgeschichte and for historians of ideas who recognize the validity of the Begriffsgeschichte.

Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria (The Middle Ages Series), University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.04.

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Band 1-8/2 : Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner, Koselleck, Reinhart, 2004/09