The paper focuses on the concept of matter and the material in Edgar Zilsel’s considerations about historiographical methods in the context of the Marxist debates on the materialist conception of history in the 1920s and 1930s (György Lukács, Max Adler). It sheds light on Zilsel’s understanding of matter as fluctuating, interfering processes in the lapse of time and the related concept of irreversible laws and relates it to Ernst Mach’s philosophy and to Richard Semon’s theory of mneme . Finally, it (...) shows the practical consequences of the concept of materialism in Edgar Zilsel’s epistemology. (shrink)

In the summer of 1943 Edgar Zilsel resigned from his membership in the exile organization of Austrian Social Democrats, a political movement he had joined as a young man back in Vienna. Zilsel is known as an innovative scholar bridging philosophy, history and sociology of science, and belonging to the so-called left wing of the Vienna Circle of Logical Emipricism. Details of his political convictions are less recognized. A recently detected manuscript illuminates his worldview: His resignation letter had been accompanied (...) by a short exposition of his interpretation of socialism near the end of World War II. The article introduces Zilsel, his life and work and publishes for the first time Zilsel’s statement from 1943. (shrink)