Abstract
Cultural and social change goes hand in hand with linguistic change, especially in the form of semantic change, but also as phraseological change. The following questions are addressed in this article: What happens to phrasemes when a fixed component of them is undergoing semantic change? And what happens when the meaning of a phraseme as a whole changes? Which connections between cultural-social and phraseological change become visible? Using German phrasemes from the semantic field “home” as an example, seven possible cases of the connection between semantic and phraseological change are examined:

The components of a phraseme and the phraseme as a whole do not change in essential areas of their semantics and prototypicality

A component of a phraseme changes its meaning regarding one or more prototypical features, but the phraseme as a whole retains its meaning

A component of a phraseme changes its meaning prototypically and the phraseme gains a new overall meaning

The components of a phraseme do not change with respect to their prototypicality, but the phraseme as a whole does

A phraseme dies out, although the components survive

A component dies out, but the phraseme itself lives on

One component changes and the phraseme dies out.

Methodologically, the etymology of semantic fields and linguoculturology also play a role in the examination. The semantic field “home” offers itself for the analysis in a special way, as the home has been a central element of human life through the ages, which on the one hand shows a great stability as a concept, but on the other hand is exposed to innovations again and again. Accordingly, the examples cover the entire period of German language history from Old High German to evidences from the 21st century.