The notion that societal developments are primarily shaped by periods of crisis, and that recurrent crises are a constitutive element of history, is characteristic of the self-perception of modern societies. This contributions to this volume delineate this highly contingent development. They examine the “invention of the crisis” as a form of societal self-perception within different historical contexts and outline the use and proliferation of the crisis model in different social and cultural contexts within western-, mid, southern and eastern Europe. In this way, the volume contributes to a coherent historicization of the crisis phenomenon.