Other than in criminology and the penal system, victimology still awaits due attention within the social sciences and political theory. This is all the more astonishing since its political relevance is evident and mirrored by complex semantics. Within the political realm sacrifices for certain values are demanded – from the relinquishment of claims in favour of a balanced national budget to sacrificing one's life in wartime – whereas elsewhere there is talk of victims of welfare state redistribution, social discrimination and crime as well as of armed conflict.

Therefore, these political semantics are an obvious place for examining in more detail the strategic functions they serve.

The observations below partly follow those in Herfried Münkler / Karsten Fischer: “Nothing to kill or die for…” - Überlegungen zu einer politischen Theorie des Opfers, in: Leviathan. Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. 28 (2000), 343-362. I thank Christina Gingelmaier for valuable comments and suggestions.

Also, I will show that the politico-rhetorical positioning between sacrification and victimization is of crucial importance for the semantic settlement of political disputes, while self-description clearly differs from outside perceptions. From here, the political implications of sacrification and victimization discourses in post-heroic

Herfried Münkler: The New Wars, Cambridge/Malden 2005; Edward N. Luttwak: A Post-Heroic Military Policy, in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, 2004, No. 4, 33–44.