The Shaping of German Identity

The Shaping of German Identity PDF

Author: Len Scales

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-26

Total Pages: 637

ISBN-13: 0521573335

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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

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9781842122044

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'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.

Making Bodies, Making History

Making Bodies, Making History PDF

Author: Leslie A. Adelson

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 9780803210363

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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.

Rewriting the German Past

Rewriting the German Past PDF

Author: Reinhard Alter

Publisher: Humanities Press International

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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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.

Migration and the Construction of German Identities, 1949–2004

Migration and the Construction of German Identities, 1949–2004 PDF

Author: Bethany Erin Hicks

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-10-23

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 3110716224

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Migration, in its many forms, has often been found at the center of public and private discourse surrounding German nationalism and identity, significantly influencing how both states construct conceptions of what it means to be "German" at any given place and time. The attempt at constructing an ethnically homogeneous Third Reich was shattered by the movement of refugees, expellees, and soldiers in the aftermath of the Second World War, and the contracting of foreign nationals as Gastarbeiter in the Federal Republic and Vertragsarbeiter in the German Democratic Republic in the 1960s and 70s diversified the ethnic landscape of both Cold War German states during the latter half of the Cold War. Bethany Hicks shows how the regional migration of East Germans into the western federal states both during and after German unification challenged essential Cold War assumptions concerning the ability to integrate two very different German populations.

German History and German Identity

German History and German Identity PDF

Author: D. G. Bond

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9789051834598

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Uwe Johnson's major novel, Jahrestage, is recognized as one of the most important and ambitious works of post-war German literature. The core to this novel is remembrance, and Jahrestage is a stunning requiem for the victims of twentieth-century German history. D.G. Bond concentrates on the text, analysing the novel and the calendar form of this work, and paying particular attention to the ways in which even the minutest details of Johnson's narrative reveal its historical themes. The author discusses Johnson's poetics, offers readings of his other major works, and considers the most recent trends in Johnson reception. He shows how an uncompromising view of German identity after the crimes of the Third Reich constitutes the very heart of Johnson's work.

Representing the German Nation

Representing the German Nation PDF

Author: Mary Fulbrook

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2000-12-15

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9780719059391

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Modern Germany, with its ruptures from late unification in 1871 through to the formation of two opposing German states, provides a case study for an analysis of the issue of representations of identity in Germany since the war.

German History and German Identity

German History and German Identity PDF

Author: Bond

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-12-18

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9004654348

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Uwe Johnson's major novel, Jahrestage, is recognized as one of the most important and ambitious works of post-war German literature. The core to this novel is remembrance, and Jahrestage is a stunning requiem for the victims of twentieth-century German history. D.G. Bond concentrates on the text, analysing the novel and the calendar form of this work, and paying particular attention to the ways in which even the minutest details of Johnson's narrative reveal its historical themes. The author discusses Johnson's poetics, offers readings of his other major works, and considers the most recent trends in Johnson reception. He shows how an uncompromising view of German identity after the crimes of the Third Reich constitutes the very heart of Johnson's work.

German National Identity after the Holocaust

German National Identity after the Holocaust PDF

Author: Mary Fulbrook

Publisher: Polity

Published: 1999-08-25

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780745610450

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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.

Defining Germany

Defining Germany PDF

Author: Brian E. Vick

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780674009110

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He examines debates over fundamental issues that included citizenship qualifications, minority liguistic rights, Jewish emancipation, and territorial disputes, and offers valuable insights into nineteenth-century liberal opinion on the Jewish Question, language policy, and ideas of race."--BOOK JACKET.