Stefan Berger & Christoph Cornelissen 
Marxist Historical Cultures and Social Movements during the Cold War 
Case Studies from Germany, Italy and Other Western European States

This book explores the relationship between diverse social movements and Marxist historical cultures during the second half of the twentieth century in Western Europe, with special emphasis on the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy. During the Cold War, Marxist ideas and understandings of history informed not only the traditional Communist Parties in Western Europe, but also influenced a range of new social movements that emerged in the 1970s in the wake of the 1968 student rebellions. The generation of 1968 was strongly influenced by neo-Marxist ideas that they subsequently carried into the new social movements. The volume asks how Marxist historical cultures influenced third world movements, anti-fascist movements, the peace movement and a whole host of other new social movements that signaled a new vibrancy of civil society in Western Europe from the 1970s onwards. 

Table of Content

Chapter 1: Marxism and social movements – a forgotten history?; Stefan Berger and Christoph Cornelissen.- Chapter 2: Marxist Historical Cultures, ‘Antifascism’ and the Legacy of the Past. Western Europe, 1945-1990; Arndt Bauerkämper.- Chapter 3: Marxist Historians, Communist Historical Cultures and Transnational Relations in Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s; Thomas Kroll.- Chapter 4: Left-wing historiography in Italy during the 1950s; Gilda Zazzara.- Chapter 5: Remembering the Revolution: neo-Marxist Interpretations of the German Revolution 1918/1919 as Challenge for Cold-War historiography; Ralf Hoffrogge.- Chapter 6: Politically Engaged Scholarship in Social Movement Studies; Dieter Rucht.- Chapter 7: ‘…two monstrous antagonistic structures’: E.P. Thompson’s Marxist Historical Philosophy and Peace Activism during the Cold War; Stefan Berger and Christian Wicke.- Chapter 8: The Historical Cultures of the 1960s West German Peace Movement: A Learning Process?; Alrun Berger.- Chapter 9: Fugacious Marxisms: Some thought on the aesthetics of Marxism in the West German student movement (1961-1972); Benedict Sepp.- Chapter 10: Dispersion and Synchronization. Surge and Crises of the New Left in West German Leftist Periodicals in 1959 and 1976; David Bebnowski.- Chapter 11: The Hour of the Gun. Anti-Imperialist Struggles as the New Left’s Hope of Salvation in Germany and Italy; Petra Terhoeven.- Chapter 12: Third Worldism in Italy; Guido Panvini.- Index.

About the author

Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He is also Executive Chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University in the UK.


Christoph Cornelissen is Professor of Contemporary History at Goethe University, Frankurt a. M., Germany. He is also the Director of the Italian-German Historical Institute of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy.