Gelebtes

Gelebtes, often written as das Gelebte, refers to the lived experience—the things a person has directly experienced through life. As a concept, it emphasizes practical, experiential knowledge and personal reality over abstract theory or second-hand information. The term derives from leben (to live) with the past participle gelebt and is commonly used in nouns such as das Gelebte or in phrases like das Gelebte Leben to denote the life as it has actually been lived.

In scholarly and cultural discourse, Gelebtes is associated with phenomenology and existential thought, where attention is paid to how life is actually lived and how experiences shape perception, identity, and behavior. It serves to contrast subjective experience with official narratives, statistics, or hypothetical models, grounding analysis in first-hand reality. In everyday language, it can appear in discussions of biography, memory, or social practice, and it is often invoked to stress that policies, therapies, or designs should reflect the Gelebte of individuals and communities.

Notes on usage: the term exists in different registers. In formal German, the noun form is written as Gelebte (das Gelebte); the attributive adjective in phrases like ein gelebtes Leben is lowercased as gelebtes. Its English translation is typically the lived experience or lived reality, used to convey how life is actually experienced by people. The concept is common in German-speaking contexts and appears across sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies.