The Shaping of German Identity

The Shaping of German Identity PDF Author: Len Scales
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521573335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
German identity, a key force in history, took shape during the late Middle Ages. This book explains how and why.

The Shaping of German Identity

The Shaping of German Identity PDF Author: Len Scales
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521573335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
German identity, a key force in history, took shape during the late Middle Ages. This book explains how and why.

A German Identity

A German Identity PDF Author: Harold James
Publisher: Phoenix
ISBN: 9781842122044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
'It is difficult to convey the sheer verve, wit and brilliance which James brings to the exposition of this argument... the most sheerly enjoyable book on German history since Gordon Craig's The Germans' Times Literary Supplement Following the collapse of communism in the East, Europe again faces the threat of a unified, powerful, nationalistic Germany. In his brilliant and provocative study of the German search for self-understanding, Harold James looks at Germany within the international order, offering an entirely new explanation for the instability and volatility of the Germans' perceptions of them selves, and the role of their nation.

Music and German National Identity

Music and German National Identity PDF Author: Celia Applegate
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226021300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Concert halls all over the world feature mostly the works of German and Austrian composers as their standard repertoire: composers like the three "Bs" of classical music, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, all of whom are German. Over the past three centuries, many supporters of German music have even nurtured the notion that the German-speaking world possesses a peculiar strength in the cultivation of music. This book brings together seventeen contributors from the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, history, and German literature to explore these questions: how music came to be associated with German identity, when and how Germans came to be regarded as the "people of music," and how music came to be designated "the most German of arts." Unlike previous volumes on this topic, many of which focused primarily on Wagner and Nazism, the essays here are wide-ranging and comprehensive, examining philosophy, literature, politics, and social currents as well as the creation and performance of folk music, art music, church music, jazz, rock, and pop. The result is a striking volume, adeptly addressing the complexity and variety of ways in which music insinuated itself into the German national imagination and how it has continued to play a central role in the shaping of a German identity. Contributors to this volume: Celia Applegate Doris L. Bergen Philip Bohlman Joy Haslam Calico Bruce Campbell John Daverio Thomas S. Grey Jost Hermand Michael H. Kater Gesa Kordes Edward Larkey Bruno Nettl Uta G. Poiger Pamela Potter Albrecht Riethmüller Bernd Sponheuer Hans Rudolf Vaget

Making Bodies, Making History

Making Bodies, Making History PDF Author: Leslie A. Adelson
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803210363
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In West German literature in the 1970s and 1980s bodies functioned not as victims of history nor as allegories for the nation but as sites of contested identities. Focusing on conflicts about identity in present-day Germany and on literary texts in which the body is an aesthetic construct, Leslie A. Adelson reformulates questions of embodiment and historical agency—questions that continue to haunt culture studies in general and German studies and women's studies in particular. This interdisciplinary study of history, race, gender, and nationality offers rich readings of three contemporary prose texts that challenge the suppositions of prevalent literary theory—Anne Duden's Übergang, TORKAN's Tufan: Brief an einen islamischen Bruder, and Jeanette Lander's Ein Sommer in der Woche der Itke K. Adelson's discussion of heterogeneous identities in contemporary German culture boldly explores accountability and innovation in historical process.

German National Identity after the Holocaust

German National Identity after the Holocaust PDF Author: Mary Fulbrook
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745610450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
For over half a century, Germans have lived in the shadow of Auschwitz. Who was responsible for the mass murder of millions of people in the Holocaust: just a small gang of evil men, Hitler and his henchmen; or certain groups within a particular system; or even the whole nation? Could the roots of malignancy be traced far back in German history? Or did the Holocaust have more to do with European modernity? Should Germans live with a legacy of guilt forever? And how, if at all, could an acceptable German national identity be defined? These questions dogged public debates in both East and West Germany in the long period of division. Both states officially claimed to have "overcome the past" more effectively than the other; both sought to construct new, opposing identities as the "better Germany". But, in different ways, official claims ran at odds with the kaleidoscope of popular collective memories; dissonances, sensitivities and taboos were the order of the day on both sides of the Wall. And in the 1990s, with continued heated debates over past and present, it was clear that inner unity appeared to be no automatic consequence of formal unification. Drawing on a wide range of material - from landscapes of memory and rituals of commemoration, through private diaries, oral history interviews and public opinion poll surveys, to the speeches of politicians and the writings of professional historians - Fulbrook provides a clear analysis of key controversies, events and patterns of historical and national consciousness in East and West Germany in equal depth. Arguing against "essentialist" conceptions of the nation, Fulbrook presents a theory of the nation as a constructed community of shared legacy and common destiny, and shows how the conditions for the easy construction of any such identity have been notably lacking in Germany after the Holocaust. This book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in history, politics, and German and European Studies, as well as established scholars and interested members of the public.

German Colonialism and National Identity

German Colonialism and National Identity PDF Author: Michael Perraudin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138868083
Category : Germany
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This original study applies post-colonial questions and methods to the study of Germany and its culture, combining political and cultural approaches, the study of literature and art, and the examination of both metropolitan and local discourses and memories.

The Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century

The Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Kevin Cramer
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803206946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
The nineteenth century witnessed the birth of German nationalism and the unification of Germany as a powerful nation-state. In this era the reading public?s obsession with the most destructive and divisive war in its history?the Thirty Years? War?resurrected old animosities and sparked a violent, century-long debate over the origins and aftermath of the war. The core of this bitter argument was a clash between Protestant and Catholic historians over the cultural criteria determining authentic German identity and the territorial and political form of the future German nation. ø This groundbreaking study of modern Germany?s morbid fascination with the war explores the ideological uses of history writing, commemoration, and collective remembrance to show how the passionate argument over the ?meaning? of the Thirty Years? War shaped Germans' conception of their nation. The first book in the extensive literature on German history writing to examine how modern German historians reinterpreted a specific event to define national identity and legitimate political and ideological agendas, The Thirty Years? War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century is a bold intellectual history of the confluence of history writing, religion, culture, and politics in nineteenth-century Germany.

The First World War and German National Identity

The First World War and German National Identity PDF Author: Jan Vermeiren
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107031672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
An innovative study of the impact of the wartime alliance between Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary on German national identity.

The German Forest

The German Forest PDF Author: Jeffrey K. Wilson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442640995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
From the late eighteenth century, Germans increasingly identified the fate of their nation with that of their woodlands. A variety of groups soon mobilized the 'German forest' as a national symbol, though often in ways that suited their own social, economic, and political interests. The German Forest is the first book-length history of the development and contestation of the concept of 'German' woodlands. Jeffrey K. Wilson challenges the dominant interpretation that German connections to nature were based in agrarian romanticism rather than efforts at modernization. He explores a variety of conflicts over the symbol — from demands on landowners for public access to woodlands, to state attempts to integrate ethnic Slavs into German culture through forestry, and radical nationalist visions of woodlands as a model for the German 'race'. Through impressive primary and archival research, Wilson demonstrates that in addition to uniting Germans, the forest as a national symbol could also serve as a vehicle for protest and strife.

German History, 1770-1866

German History, 1770-1866 PDF Author: James J. Sheehan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198221203
Category : Germany
Languages : en
Pages : 998

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Book Description
This is a uniquely authoritative study of German history between the mid-eighteenth century and the formation of the Bismarckian Reich. This is an extensive account of social and cultural, as well as political developments and shows that the creation of a Prussian-led nation-state should not be seen as 'natural' or inevitable.