This investigation deals with the history of linguistic ideas of negation. It focuses on texts from the German-speaking world and covers the period between the beginning of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century. In a first part, the different linguistic means which are associated in the corpus with the realization of a negating sense are presented. In a second part, the treatment of the essential sentence negators nicht and nein is examined. And finally, the analysis deals with the approaches of double and multiple negators. It is shown how the treatment of negation is changing due to the change in language awareness during this period and how the theories are increasingly taking into account - in modern terms - pragmatic aspects.