Description
Book SynopsisBased on recent work and scholarly arguments about continuities and discontinuities in modern German history from Bismarck to Hitler, well-known experts broadly explore four themes. The perspectives presented in this volume have already stimulated further argument and will be of interest to anyone looking for orientation in this field of research.
Trade Review “…an excellent set of 21 essays from well-established and emerging scholars from Europe and North America…The collection continues the robust international debate on the significance of imperial Germany for German, European, and world history…Overall, a superb collection. Highly recommended.” • Choice
“…what the reader gets from this volume is a series of fresh and thought-provoking perspectives incorporating some of the latest research, including research on globalization, and offering new insights into older questions. There are indeed some very fine pieces of scholarship among the 21 separate chapters… this is a stimulating volume with much to recommend it.” • European History Quarterly
“In the genre of collected essays, Imperial Germany Revisited is exemplary. Its editors chose the topics well; its authors contributed comprehensive, coherent, and useful essays; its overall tone is authoritative and thoughtful…As in a good relay team, all of the contributions are strong, worthy of more attention than they can receive in this brief review…[Many] essays provide glimpses of what comparative, multiperspectival, and transnational writing about German history can achieve.” • German Studies Review
“This volume offers valuable reflections on the state of the field by leading international historians of Imperial Germany… With its combination of case studies and historiographical reflection, this volume provides a useful snapshot of recent historical research on the Kaiserreich. Berghahn Books deserves credit for again making available to the English-speaking public the translation of an important work of Germany history.” • German History
“Overall, the collection is a testimony to the vitality of professional scholarship on the Second Reich. Most of the contributions are mercifully jargon free, but with the detailed discussions of the historiography, buttressed by copious notes to German sources (mostly secondary), this has all the marks of a work for specialists or for graduate students looking for a quick orientation in the literature.” • The Historian
Table of Contents Introduction
Cornelius Torp and Sven Oliver Müller
PART I: THE PLACE OF IMPERIAL GERMANY IN GERMAN HISTORY
Chapter 1. When the Sonderweg Debate Left Us
Helmut Walser Smith
Chapter 2. The Impossible Vanishing Point. Societal Differentiation in Imperial Germany
Benjamin Ziemann
Chapter 3. Was the German Empire a Sovereign State?
Dieter Grimm
Chapter 4. Theories of Nationalism and the Critical Approach to German History
John Breuilly
PART II: POLITICS, CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Chapter 5. The Authoritarian State and the Political Mass Market
James Retallack
Chapter 6. Using Violence to Govern: The German Empire and the French Third Republic
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
Chapter 7. Woman Suffrage and Antifeminism as Litmus Test of Modernising Societies. A Western European Comparison
Ute Planert
Chapter 8. Germany in the Age of Culture Wars
Olaf Blaschke
Chapter 9. Their Favourite Enemy. German Social Historians and the Prussian Nobility
Stephan Malinowski
Chapter 10. A Difficult Relationship. Social History and the Bourgeoisie
Manfred Hettling
Chapter 11. Cultural Nationalism and Beyond. Musical Performances in Imperial Germany
Sven Oliver Müller
PART III: WAR AND VIOLENCE
Chapter 12. 1914-1945: A Second Thirty Years War? Advantages and Disadvantages of an Interpretive Category
Jörg Echternkamp
Chapter 13. The Enduring Charm of the Great War. Some Reflections on Methodological Issues
Roger Chickering
Chapter 14. The First World War and Military Culture: Continuity and Change in Germany and Italy
MacGregor Knox
Chapter 15. A German Way of War? Narratives of German Militarism and Maritime Warfare in World War I
Dirk Bönker
Chapter 16. German War Crimes 1914/1941: The Question of Continuity
Alan Kramer
PART IV: THE GERMAN EMPIRE IN THE WORLD
Chapter 17. From the Periphery to the Centre. On the Significance of Colonialism for the German Empire
Birthe Kundrus
Chapter 18. The Kaiserreich as a Society of Migration
Thomas Mergel
Chapter 19. Wilhelmine Nationalism in Global Contexts. Mobility, Race, and Global Consciousness
Sebastian Conrad
Chapter 20. Imperial Germany under Globalization
Cornelius Torp
Chapter 21. German Industry and American Big Business, 1900-1914
Volker Berghahn
Selected Bibliography
