Rewriting the German Past

Rewriting the German Past PDF Author: Reinhard Alter
Publisher: Humanities Press International
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The essays collected here offer a sober, informed, and stimulating reassessment of Germany and its past by internationally recognized scholars working from within and outside the new Germany. They all proceed from the recognition that the perspective from which the German past is viewed has changed irrevocably. Unification meant that the German Democratic Republic became history and its history, historiography and its collapse are re-evaluated. The essays examine the possibility of history being used, and possibly abused, in the service of the creation of a new national identity and question the legitimacy of the notion of Germany having followed a "special path" of development - one that could hardly be viewed positively in the wake of the Third Reich - but which suggested that Germany had claims to being a "normal nation." They then go on to consider some of the radical changes to the institutional circumstances within which history is practiced in the united Germany.

Rewriting the German Past

Rewriting the German Past PDF Author: Reinhard Alter
Publisher: Humanities Press International
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
The essays collected here offer a sober, informed, and stimulating reassessment of Germany and its past by internationally recognized scholars working from within and outside the new Germany. They all proceed from the recognition that the perspective from which the German past is viewed has changed irrevocably. Unification meant that the German Democratic Republic became history and its history, historiography and its collapse are re-evaluated. The essays examine the possibility of history being used, and possibly abused, in the service of the creation of a new national identity and question the legitimacy of the notion of Germany having followed a "special path" of development - one that could hardly be viewed positively in the wake of the Third Reich - but which suggested that Germany had claims to being a "normal nation." They then go on to consider some of the radical changes to the institutional circumstances within which history is practiced in the united Germany.

Rewriting German History

Rewriting German History PDF Author: Jan Rüger
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137347791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
Rewriting German History offers striking new insights into key debates about the recent German past. Bringing together cutting-edge research and current discussions, this volume examines developments in the writing of the German past since the Second World War and suggests new directions for scholarship in the twenty-first century.

The Divided Past

The Divided Past PDF Author: Christoph Klessmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This book tackles head on the central problems of writing German post-war history in the aftermath of unification. Since 1990, historians have been debating whether the development of the Federal Republic and the East German State constituted separate histories or whether they share what should be considered a joint past. This book addresses the specific forms of segregation and interconnectedness between the 'twoGermanies' and acknowledges the asymmetry of the relationship, as well as the effect that this had on the internal and external policies of both sides. This is a book that confronts the need for historiography to break away from the traditional master narrative. It offers an alternative in the form of the differing points of view necessary to gain a new perspective on the central problem of a separate, yet joint, German post-war history. Drawing on both methodological and historiographicalapproaches, authors tackle this vexed problem in the context of generational and woman's history, secularization, the labour movement, and the legitimization of the "workers' state", and culminate by addressing the perennial question: how does a nation live with catastrophe? 'Includes both programmatic statements and examples of work from a German national perspective ... For Klessmann, although the two states were separate entities, their histories were nonetheless inextricably interconnected. He believes that by exploring the influence of each German state on the other, much can be learned about the postwar Germanies ... According to Klessmann,the West was present in the East in a variety of ways, but perhaps most importantly as ''an image transmitted via the media and relatives that served as a constant point of reference for East Germans judging their standard of living''.'Journal of Modern History, Volume 75, Number 3, September 2003

From Unification to Nazism

From Unification to Nazism PDF Author: Eley Geoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000007448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Originally published in 1986, and bringing together essays written over a 10 year period, this volume offers a coherent and challenging interpretation of the German past. The book argues that the German Empire between 1971 and 1914 may have enjoyed greater stability and cohesion than is often assumed. It suggests that Imperial Germany’s political institutions showed considerable flexibility and capacity for growth and puts forward the idea that without WWI, or in the event of a German victory, the Empire might well have demonstrated its viability as a modern state. In that case, the origins of fascism should be sought mainly in the subsequent experiences of war, revolution and economic crisis and not so much in the Empire’s so-called structural backwardness.

Rewriting Germany from the Margins

Rewriting Germany from the Margins PDF Author: Petra Fachinger
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773522506
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
The "margins" in Petra Fachinger's work are occupied largely by second-generation migrant writers from Spain, Italy, and Turkey, German Jewish writers of diverse ethnic origins, and writers born in the GDR. She demonstrates that during the 1980s and 1990s writers from various cultural backgrounds engaged in oppositional discourse to construct their own version of Germany and write back to the German canon. While most studies of texts by minority writers in Germany favour content over form, Fachinger focuses on identifying counter-discursive strategies, and applies postcolonial theory concerned with textual resistance to the German situation. In doing so, this study effectively relates marginal writing in Germany to similar forms of writing in other national and cultural contexts. The oppositional impulse, whether manifested in counter-canonical discourse, postcolonial picaresque, hybridity, rewriting of genre, or grotesque realism, is prompted by the exclusionary politics of the dominant culture. The discursive strategies used by the authors discussed to rewrite Germany expose the assumptions that underlie German public discourse and destabilise notions of Germanness, Jewishness, and Turkishness. Fachinger's reading of texts by marginal writers in Germany, all of whom endeavour to resist marginalisation while simultaneously experiencing or even celebrating the margin as a site of empowerment, was motivated by the absence of comparative studies of such writing. Rewriting Germany from the Margins demonstrates the necessity and usefulness of comparative approaches to minority discourses across national and cultural borders.

Visions of "unity in Diversity"

Visions of Author: Kimberly A. Coulter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description


Shattered Past

Shattered Past PDF Author: Konrad H. Jarausch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140082527X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Broken glass, twisted beams, piles of debris--these are the early memories of the children who grew up amidst the ruins of the Third Reich. More than five decades later, German youth inhabit manicured suburbs and stroll along prosperous pedestrian malls. Shattered Past is a bold reconsideration of the perplexing pattern of Germany's twentieth-century history. Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer explore the staggering gap between the country's role in the terrors of war and its subsequent success as a democracy. They argue that the collapse of Communism, national reunification, and the postmodern shift call for a new reading of the country's turbulent development, one that no longer suggests continuity but rupture and conflict. Comprising original essays, the book begins by reexamining the nationalist, socialist, and liberal master narratives that have dominated the presentation of German history but are now losing their hold. Treated next are major issues of recent debate that suggest how new kinds of German history might be written: annihilationist warfare, complicity with dictatorship, the taming of power, the impact of migration, the struggle over national identity, redefinitions of womanhood, and the development of consumption as well as popular culture. The concluding chapters reflect on the country's gradual transition from chaos to civility. This penetrating study will spark a fresh debate about the meaning of the German past during the last century. There is no single master narrative, no Weltgeist, to be discovered. But there is a fascinating story to be told in many different ways.

Gendering Modern German History

Gendering Modern German History PDF Author: Karen Hagemann
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845454421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together experts from both sides of the Atlantic. Through case studies, it demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

Highland Folk Ways

Highland Folk Ways PDF Author: I. F. Grant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415002264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description


Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1971–1989

Conflict and Compromise in East Germany, 1971–1989 PDF Author: J. Madarász
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403938369
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This extensively researched empirical analysis of the GDR in the years 1971-1989 challenges current historical interpretations of GDR history. It focuses on four social groups - youth, women, writers and Christians - to highlight the stability of this socialist society until 1987. The strength of the regime is shown to have been based on a continuously negotiated process of give-and-take involving major parts of the population.