Seminar Questions

• In what ways did the development of modern Germany differ from that of other Western nations (if at all)?
• Why has modern German history been so contested?
• What role does memory and memorialisation play in modern German history?

Reading List:

Required Reading:

• Helmut Walser Smith, 'Introduction' in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (OUP, 2013).

Further Reading:

• Helmut Walser Smith, Germany: A Nation in its Time Before, During and after Nationalism, 1500-2000 (2020)
• Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Univ. of California Press, 1991)
• Mary Fulbrook, A Concise History of Germany (Cambridge, 2004), Chapter 1
• Mary Fulbrook, 'Legacies of a Significant Past: Regimes, Experiences and Identities' in Sarah Colvin (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of German Politics & Culture (Routledge, 2015)

Historiographical Debates and Trends:

• David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German history: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-century Germany (OUP, 1984)
• Richard J. Evans, 'The New Nationalism and the Old History: Perspectives on the West German Historikerstreit', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 59, No. 4 (1987), pp. 761-797
• Richard J. Evans, Rereading German History: From Unification to Reunification 1800-1996 (Routledge, 2015), Chapter 2
• Lars Fischer, 'Continuity and Discontinuity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century German History', Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 45 Issue 3 (2010), pp. 565-588
• Mary Fulbrook, Approaches to German Contemporary History since 1945. Politics and Paradigms, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 1 (2004)
• Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: five roads to modernity (Harvard, 1991), Chapter 4
• Konrad H. Jarausch and Michael Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton, 2003)
• Jurgen Kocka, 'German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg', Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 3-16
• Rudy Koshar, From monuments to traces: artifacts of German memory, 1870-1990 (Uni. of California Press, 2000)
• Neil MacGregor, Germany: Memories of a Nation (Penguin, 2016), particularly the Introduction
• Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Harvard, 1997)
• Robert G. Moeller, 'The Kaiserreich Recast? Continuity and Change in Modern Germ an Historiography', Journal of Social History, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer, 1984), pp. 655-683
• Chloe E.M. Paver, Memorialization in Germany since 1945 (Palgrave, 2009)
• Jan Ruger and Nikolaus Wachsmann (ed.), Rewriting German History: New Perspectives on Modern Germany (Palgrave, 2015)
• Angelika Schaser, 'The Challenge of Gender: National Historiography, Nationalism, and National Identities' in Karen Hagemann and Jean H. Quataert (eds.), Gendering modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (Berghahn Books, 2007)
• Rainer Schulze, 'Memory in German History: Fragmented Noises or Meaningful Voices of the Past?', Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Collective Memory (Oct., 2004), pp. 637-648