The Historikerstreit of the 1980s has ended inconclusively amidst heated debates on the nature and course of German national history. The author follows the debates beyond the unexpected reunification of the country in 1990 and analyzes the most recent trends in German historiography. Reunification, he observes, has brought in its wake an urgent search for the ‘normality’ of the nation state. For anyone interested in the development of the national master narrative in more recent German historiography, this book will provide an essential guide through the multitude of historical debates surrounding the nation state.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Foreword: ‘The Search For Normality’ Six Years Later: History Writing and National Identity in Germany at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Chapter 1. Historiography and Nation-Building: Some Preliminary Remarks
PART I: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN GERMANY 1800-1989
Chapter 2. The National Tradition in German Historiography, 1800-1960
Chapter 3. The Impact of Fritz Fischer
Chapter 4. Decades of Postnationalism? German Historiography from the 1960s to the 1980s
PART II: THE SEARCH FOR NORMALITY AFTER 1990
Chapter 5. Imperial Germany and the Sonderweg Revisited
Chapter 6. Germany’s Darkest Years Revisited
Chapter 7. ‘The Second German Dictatorship’
Chapter 8. The Old Federal Republic as the New Sonderweg
Chapter 9. The National Revival in German Historiography
Chapter 10. Reactions of British and American Historians to Changes in German Historiography after Reunification
Chapter 11. Conclusion
Biographical Appendix
Select Bibliography
Index
About the author
Stefan Berger is Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester, where he is also Director of the Jean-Monnet-Centre of Excellence. Between 2003 and 2008 he directed the European Science Foundation Programme on ‘Representations of the Past. The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe (NHIST) He has published widely in the areas of historiography, national identity and labour history.
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