Concerning the construct “Bildung through the subject” one can assume on which kind of experience it is founded or on which it relies and also to some extent how it might develop, but not when it will take place. At least from the outside, one can only determine ex post if or that Bildung has developed on a certain level that has been theoretically postulated and which potential has been built up. Hypothetically, one can claim that the learning in a subject, e.g. in-depth processing of a task or a topic and the knowledge and competencies that have been acquired through these activities, constitutes the substrate from which the process of Bildung arises, and going beyond that. The ways of acquiring and processing an insight and relating it to already known pieces of knowledge plus its epistemological implications lead beyond the immediate content or subject, but they are still linked to it through their becoming. In the course of those significant experiences that are initiated in the subject and through the deep treatment of these experiences, an individual can unfold its potential of Bildung and form him- or herself as a person from the point of view of mental, emotional/attitudinal and socio-cultural identity and of action-oriented individuality. Thus there is a necessary and close link between Bildung and subject content and knowledge. Bildung is largely mediated through a confrontation with the fundamentals of subject knowledge and the established or newly invented/discovered ways of dealing with them. In other words, both the relevant problems, linked to the discipline, and the methodological procedures, largely linked to patterns of scientific rationality, penetrate the individual to the extent that he/she, on his/her side, transforms those problems or even creates them or constructs new ones. It is difficult to determine the role of robust learning in the subject during this process of confrontation and appropriation. But there are good reasons to think that the construction of competencies in the subject and their generalization through application to new problems as much as their transfer on manifold questions inside and outside school generate generalized surplus of knowledge and know-how, that are elements and functions of Bildung. From this point of view, school subjects contribute fundamentally to the Bildung of human beings. They make it possible to face concrete experiences that are already structured and transformed in the subject and the diverse forms of knowledge.

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