what way does this occurrence of history belong to Dasein? Is Dasein factically already "objectively present" beforehand, and then at times gets into "a history''? Does Dasein first become historical through a concatenation of circumstances and events? Or is the being of Dasein first constituted by occurrence, so that only because Dasein is historical in its being are anything like circumstances, events, and destinies ontologically possible? Why does the function of the past get emphasized in the "temporal" characterization of Dasein occurring "in time"?
If history belongs to the being of Dasein, and if this being [Sein] is grounded in temporality, it seems logical to begin the existential analysis of historicity with those characteristics of what is historical that evidently have a temporal meaning. Thus a more precise characterization of the remarkable priority of the "past" in the concept of history should prepare the exposition of the fundamental constitution of historicity.
[380] The "antiquities" preserved in museums (for example, household things) belong to a "time past," and are yet still objectively present in the "present." How are these useful things historical when they are, after all, not yet past? Only because they became an object of historiographical interest, of the cultivation of antiquity and national lore? But such useful things can only, after all, be historiographical objects because they are somehow in themselves historical. We repeat the question: with what justification do we call these beings historical when they are not yet past? Or do these "things" "in themselves" yet have "something past" about them although they are still objectively present today? Are these objectively present things then still what they were? Evidently these "things" have changed. The tools have become fragile and worm-eaten "in the course of time." But the specific character of the past that makes them something historical does not lie in this transience that continues even during their objective presence in the museum. But then what is past about the useful thing? What were the "things" that they no longer are today? They are still definite useful things, but out of use. However, if they were still in use, like many heirlooms in the household, would they then not be historical? Whether muse or out of use, they are no longer what they were. What is "past"? Nothing other than the world within which they were encountered as things at hand belonging to a context of useful things and used by heedful Dasein existing-in-the-world. That world is no longer. But what was previously innerworldly in that world is still objectively present. As useful things belonging to that world, what is now still objectively present can nevertheless belong to the "past." But what does it mean that the world no-longer-is? World is only in the mode of existing Dasein, which, as being-in-the-world, is factical.
The historical character of antiquities that have been preserved is thus grounded in the "past" of that Dasein to whose world that past