ebook img

Germany: A New History PDF

368 Pages·1998·27.958 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Germany: A New History

Germany: A New History Germany: A New History Hagen Schulze Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider Harvard Cambridge, Massachusetts University London, England Press 1998 Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard*College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Originally published as Hagen Schulze, Kleine Deutsche Geschichte, © C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, München 1996. Illustrations from the German Museum of History. Publication of this work has been subsidized by Inter Nationes, Bonn. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schulze, Hagen. [Kleine deutsche Geschichte. English] Germany : a new history / Hagen Schulfze ; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-80688-3 I. Germany—History. I. Schneider, Deborah Lucas. II. Title. DD89.S39613 1998 943—dc21 98-23629 Contents Preface vii 1 The Roman Empire and German Lands (to 1400) 1 2 Transitions (1400—1648) 31 3 Twilight of the Empire (1648—1806) 69 4 The Birth of the German Nation (1806—1848) 101 5 Blood and Iron (1848—1871) 123 6 German Possibilities: A Digression 147 7 A Nation State in the Center of Europe (1871—1890) 155 8 Unification and the Dream of World Power (1890—1914) 169 9 The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914—1923) 191 10 Weimar: Brief Glory and Decline (1924—1933) 215 11 German Megalomania (1933—1942) 245 12 The End of the Third Reich and a New Beginning (1942—1949) 277 13 A Divided Nation (1949-1990) 299 14 Epilogue: What Is the German’s Fatherland? 333 Suggested Readings 341 Illustration Credits 346 Index 348 Preface Earlier generations of Germans were in no doubt about what their history was. It began with Hermann of the Cherusci, who defeated the legions of Quinctilius Varus in battle in the Teu- toburg Forest in the year a .d. 9 and was unquestionably a hero. The sword at the monument to him near Detmold still bears an inscription in gold letters: “Germany’s unity—my strength, my strength—Germany’s might.” From Hermann and his battle German history swept in a great, clearly defined arc down to their day. There was Theoderic, king of the Goths, celebrated in German sagas and legends as “Dietrich of Bern”; then came Charlemagne— Karl der Große—who became Roman emperor and transformed the Ro­ mans’ empire into a German one. There followed the Staufen em­ peror Frederick Barbarossa and his grandson Frederick II, who, in a mysterious amalgamation, slumber in the Kyffhäuser, the magic mountain, awaiting the day when they will return to rescue Germany in its hour of greatest need. Next came Martin Luther, the “German nightingale,” and Emperor Charles V, on whose dominions the sun never set; Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa, who battled one another when disunity among the German tribes reached its tragic climax; Baron vom Stein and Blücher, nicknamed “Marshal Forward,” and finally Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor,” who forged the new German Reich, a direct descen- dant of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. It made for an imposing gallery of ancestral portraits, in which Germans took pride. But then came what the historian Friedrich Meinecke called the “German catastrophe,” Hitler’s Reich and the Second World War, which left the German nation state shamed, occupied, and divided. The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt had earlier referred tartly to German historians’ tendency to “paint their country’s history in the colors of victory”; these colors had now cracked and peeled, simulta­ neously rupturing the context in which German history had been in­ terpreted. The shining legend of the unbroken ascent of Germany from empire to empire was replaced by the black legend of evil and its ruinous divergent path (Sonderweg), in which the only true Ger­ many consisted of the Third Reich and its crimes, except when some declared it was pointless to write national history at all or mourned the “loss of history” with Alfred Heuss. For a time the inhabitants of West Germany were quite content to repress all thoughts of their history and simply enjoy the present, with its high rates of industrial growth and increasing mass prosperity; they observed with mild astonishment the rest of the world, where the principle of national identity still held unbroken sway and offered \ daily proof of its political effectiveness. Although West Germans oc­ cupied an extremely exposed position in world affairs, they seemed to express only one wish in all their political decisions—a desire to be left alone and not required to make any decisions. In the German Democratic Republic, on the other hand, people were served up their history by the politburo of the Communist party; it was dictated by party ideologists, adapted to fit changing political circumstances, and not open to discussion. However, the state of comfortable domestic prosperity and blessed lack of responsibility for foreign affairs vanished overnight when the Wall came down and a new German nation state came into being, one whose mere existence has changed Europe. This has created a need VIII Preface for Germany to explain, to both its own citizens and the rest of the world, what kind of country it sees itself as being. If Germany is to have a future in the center of Europe, we must know the past on which the German present rests. One can never begin anew but only pick up the threads of the past and continue. People who believe they have undertaken something completely new in fact do not really know what they are doing. In order to answer the “German question” for Germans them­ selves, for their neighbors in Europe, and for the rest of the world, we must explain what Germany is, and what it can and should be. This in turn requires a retelling of German history. And since not everyone has the time or patience to plough through volumes of scholarly trea­ tises, it is my aim here to present this history in brief summary, with an eye to its most essential aspects. Even a short survey of German history cannot be accomplished with­ out assistance from many quarters. Ina Ulrike Paul, Uwe Puschner, and my wife, Ingrid, read the manuscript with care and made correc­ tions. The first chapter benefitted from a critical reading by Joachim Ehlers, and Detlef Felken edited the book with great commitment and a wealth of knowledge. To Christoph Stölzl, director of the Ger­ man Museum of History in Berlin, I owe not only the illustrations but the idea and encouragement to write this book. My thanks go to all of them.

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.