Description
Book Synopsis During the twentieth century, Germans experienced a long series of major and often violent disruptions in their everyday lives. Such chronic instability and precipitous change made it difficult for them to make sense of their lives as coherent stories—and for scholars to reconstruct them in retrospect. Ruptures in the Everyday brings together an international team of twenty-six researchers from across German studies to craft such a narrative. This collectively authored work of integrative scholarship investigates Alltag through the lens of fragmentary anecdotes from everyday life in modern Germany. Across ten intellectually adventurous chapters, this book explores the self, society, families, objects, institutions, policies, violence, and authority in modern Germany neither from a top-down nor bottom-up perspective, but focused squarely on everyday dynamics at work “on the ground.”
Trade Review “…will appeal to readers who have a background in German history and an interest in poststructural analyses and the grand themes of German studies.” • Journal of Modern History
“By eschewing grand narratives, Ruptures in the Everyday has made an important contribution to German Studies. The book will make a valuable teaching resource in that it will encourage students to link the everyday experiences of Germans over the past century with their own ethical responsibilities for the present.” • Werkstattgeschichte
“As a whole, this volume offers an innovative contribution to the continuity problem of German history in the 20th century…The editors and their authors have succeeded in taking their readership onto an unconventional and intellectually often fascinating journey into German everyday life, and not only historically, which allows fascinating and fresh insights.” • Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
“The studies collected in this fascinating ‘experiment in collaborative scholarship’ are richly empirical, brimming with compelling insights, and thought-provoking in their use of stories from everyday life to illuminate extremely important aspects of the German experience in the twentieth century and its decisive epochs. Overall, it constitutes a major contribution to the interdisciplinary scholarship of modern Germany and Europe.” • Dennis Sweeney, University of Alberta
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1. Wende
Chapter 2. Self
Chapter 3. Interpersonal Relationships
Chapter 4. Families
Chapter 5. Objects
Chapter 6. Institutions
Chapter 7. Anti-Semitism
Chapter 8. Violent Worlds
Chapter 9. Taking Place
Chapter 10. Telling Stories
References
Authors
Index
