Marx uses the term “Haupt- und Staatsaktionen” (“principal and spectacular actions”), which has several meanings. In the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, it denoted plays performed by, German touring companies. The plays, which were rather formless, presented tragic historical events in a bombastic and at the same time coarse and farcical way.

Secondly, this term can denote major political events. It was used in this sense by a trend in German historical science known as “objective historiography” Leopold Ranke was one of its chief representatives. He regarded Haupt- und Staatsaktionen as the main subject-matter of history.