  Count Hans Ludwig Paul Yorck von Wartenburg (1835–1897) was a German philosopher. He is primarily known for his long collaboration with his friend Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and for his impact on Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002). Together with Dilthey, Yorck was the first philosopher to elaborate the specific concept of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] as a defining characteristic in the ontology of human beings. In particular, Yorck emphasized the generic difference between the ontic and the historical, i.e., the difference between what is seen or conceptualized (and aesthetically contemplated) as permanent nature, or essence, or idea, and the felt historical rhythm of life, i.e., life's immersion in and belonging to the overarching and always changing waves of history. In contradistinction to Dilthey's epistemological endeavors to clarify the foundations of the historical sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences, Yorck aimed exclusively at the ontology of historical life, particularly the historical band (syndesmos) and effective connection (virtuality) that unites generational life. Based on the primacy of historical life, Yorck adopted a decidedly anti-metaphysical stance, rejecting all claims of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. He combined this with a Christian, particularly Lutheran, conception of a historical and personal but entirely transcendent God, relative to whom each individual person, in inescapable singularity, defines his or her own life story.  Yorck's ideas were first made public in the form of a posthumous volume of his Correspondence with Dilthey in 1923 (Yorck 1923). Through this publication he influenced not only Heidegger (see Farin 2016 and Ruin 1994) and Gadamer (1990), but also Misch, Rothacker, Scholem, Bultmann, Marcuse, and others. Between 1956 and 1970 various unfinished fragments of Yorck's writings were published (see Bibliography). They contain the outline of Yorck's systematic psychology of history and history of philosophy, as well as extensive reflections on the partial negation or suppression of temporality in thought and metaphysics (due to the inherently spatial character of representation and thought as such). These later works have not received as much attention as his earlier views in his Correspondence with Dilthey.