"Saxonian tectonics" in the 21st century

This paper deals with the German term "Saxonische Tektonik" (Saxonian tectonics) and problems related to it. These are specific to the German geoscience literature and community - that is why this paper is written in German. The term was coined in the early 20th century and came to describe essentially all deformation that had taken place in Central Europe and parts of Western Europe from Triassic time to the present. It is today understood that this deformation comprises a protracted history of extension and graben evolution from Triassic to Early Cretaceous time, followed by one or several pulses of contraction and inversion in the Late Cretaceous to Palaeogene. Both extensional and contractional structures are often strongly modified by salt movement. Renewed extension from Eocene time onward created the European rift system. Originally, the characteristic inversion-related style of many Mesozoic "Saxonian" structures was called "Bruchfaltentektonik" ("fracture-fold tectonics"). Both terms linger to the present day in the German literature, despite no longer being adequate to our knowledge of changing tectonic regimes, their sequence over time, and the control exerted on specific structural styles by stratigraphy, lithology and the thermal and tectonic history. I therefore propose to abandon the terms "Saxonische Tektonik" and "Bruchfaltentektonik" for good. Nevertheless, many of the articles in which the original concepts were developed are still highly interesting to read. In particular those from the 1930s dealing with inversion tectonics - if under a still different name - anticipated later developments by some 50 years.