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First published in Germany to popular and critical acclaim, this is a unique portrait of the life and work of Theodor Fontane, the greatest German novelist of his age, as well as a major poet and theater critic and much loved travel writer. Gordon A. Craig, one of the foremost scholars of German history, interpolates a cohesive historical biography of Fontane with his own reflections on the art, culture, and politics of Fontane's world. The ideas and impressions of Fontane and Craig echo one another throughout the book in compelling and fascinating ways. Fontane's travel accounts of Scotland and Prussia are enriched by Craig's discussion of Germany's increasingly national vision of itself and the world at the time of unification. Similarly, Craig's mastery of German military history dovetails remarkably well with Fontane's reportage on Germany's wars with Denmark, Austria, and France. Interesting are Fontane's ruminations over his great contemporary Otto von Bismarck, whom he revered as founder of the Reich but whose policies he feared would in the end be self-defeating. Although Fontane's Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg and his novels are more widely read in Germany today than they were in his own time, and although his masterpiece Effi Briest was the basis for a famous Fassbinder film, Fontane remains little known in the English-speaking world. Theodor Fontane is the ideal introduction to this major European writer, a master of social analysis and one of the great letter writers of his age.

This book investigates the role of bourgeoisie society and the political developments of the nineteenth century in the peculiarities of German history. Most historians attribute German exceptionalism to the failure or absence of bourgeois revolution in German history and the failure of the bourgeoisie to conquer the pre-industrial traditions of authoritarianism. However, this study finds that there was a bourgeois revolution in Germany, though not the traditional type. This so-called silent bourgeois revolution brought about the emergence and consolidation of the capitalist system based on the sanctity and disposability of private property and on production to meet individual needs through a system of exchange dominated by the market. In this connection, this book proposes a redefinition of the concept of bourgeois revolution to denote a broader pattern of material, institutional, legal, and intellectual changes whose cumulative effect was all the more powerful for coming to be seen as natural.

One of the livelier debates amongst historians concerns the dates of the beginning and, particularly, the end of Prussian history. Eminent historian Gordon A. Craig explores the slow death of Prussia by examining several key individuals and their actions at four distinct periods of Prussian history. \"Simply said, the book is a beautiful piece. Insightful and lucid. . . . The End of Prussia has the rare quality of being suitable for both the specialist and the more casual student of German history.\"— Wisconsin Academy Review

Before unification, Germany was a loose collection of variously sovereign principalities, nurtured on deep thought, fine music and hard rye bread. It was known across Europe for the plentiful supply of consorts to be found among its abundant royalty, but the language and culture was largely incomprehensible to those outside its lands. In the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries- between the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 and unification under Bismarck in 1871 - Germany became the land of philosophers, poets, writers and composers. This particularly German cultural movement was able to survive the avalanche of Napoleonic conquest and exploitation and its impact was gradually felt far beyond Germany’s borders. In this book, Roderick Cavaliero provides a fascinating overview of Germany’s cultural zenith in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He considers the work of Germany’s own artistic exports - the literature of Goethe and Grimm, the music of Wagner, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Bach and the philosophy of Schiller and Kant - as well as the impact of Germany on foreign visitors from Coleridge to Thackeray and from Byron to Disraeli. Providing a comprehensive and highly-readable account of Germany’s cultural life from Frederick the Great to Bismarck, ‘Genius, Power and Magic’ is fascinating reading for anyone interested in European history and cultural history.

The French Revolution had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. It removed the legal and economic barriers protecting oligarchies, established the principle of equality before the law, and prepared economies for the new industrial opportunities of the second half of the 19th century. We present within-Germany evidence on the long-run implications of these institutional reforms. Occupied areas appear to have experienced more rapid urbanization growth, especially after 1850. A two-stage least squares strategy provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the reforms instigated by the French had a positive impact on growth. JEL: N13, N43, O47

In the mid nineteenth century a process began that appears, from a present-day perspective, to have been the first wave of economic globalization. Within a few decades global economic integration reached a level that equaled, and in some respects surpassed, that of the present day. This book describes the interpenetration of the German economy with an emerging global economy before the First World War, while also demonstrating the huge challenge posed by globalization to the society and politics of the German Empire. The stakes for both the winners and losers of the intensifying world market played a major role in dividing German society into camps with conflicting socio-economic priorities. As foreign trade policy moved into the center stage of political debates, the German government found it increasingly difficult to pursue a successful policy that avoided harming German exports and consumer interests while also seeking to placate a growing protectionist movement.

German colonialism is a thriving field of study. From North America to Japan, within Germany, Austria and Switzerland, scholars are increasingly applying post-colonial questions and methods to the study of Germany and its culture. However, no introduction on this emerging field of study has combined political and cultural approaches, the study of literature and art, and the examination of both metropolitan and local discourses and memories. This book will fill that gap and offer a broad prelude, of interest to any scholar and student of German history and culture as well as of colonialism in general. It will be an indispensable tool for both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. . INTRODUCTION Between Amnesia and Denial. Colonialism and German National Identity Juergen Zimmerer and Michael PERRAUDIN (Sheffield) SECTION 1: Colonialism before the Empire Imperialism, Race and Genocide at the Paulskirche: Origins, Meanings, Trajectories Brian VICK (Sheffield); Time, Identity and Colonialism in German Travel Writing, 1848-1914: Gustav Nachtigal’s ‘Sahara und Sudan’ and Leo Frobenius’s ‘Und Afrika Sprach’ Tracey DAWE (Durham); Performing the Metropolitan ‘habitus’ in Africa. Some Notes on the Praxis of European Travellers in 19th-Century Eastern and Central Africa Michael PESEK (Berlin) SECTION 2: Local Histories, Local Memories Communal Memory Events and the Heritage of the Victims Reinhart KÖßLER (Bochum); Commemorating the Past--Building the Future: The Churches and the Centenary of the Genocide in Namibia Hanns LESSING (Dortmund); Narratives of a ‘Model Colony’: German Togoland in Written and Oral Histories Dennis LAUMANN (Memphis) SECTION 3: Heroic Discourses in the Imperial Centre Germany’s War in China: Media Coverage & Political Myth Yixu LU (Sydney); Genocide in German South-West Africa: an Overview of the Discussion it Generated Robin Krause (Clark University); Abuses of German Colonial History: the Character of Carl Peters as Weapon for Völkisch and National Socialist Discourses: Anglophobia, Anti-Semitism, Aryanism Constant KPAO SARE (Saarland) SECTION 4: Colonialism and German Literature Fraternity, Frenzy and Genocide. War Literature and the Colonial ‘Other’ Jörg LEHMANN (Berlin); Representing German Colonial Interventions in Poland Kristin KOPP (Missouri); A Spotlight on a Dark Chapter in German History: Criticism of German Colonialism in Uwe Timm’s novel ‘Morenga’ and its Reception by the West German Public Esther ALMSTADT (Bremen) SECTION 5: Colonialism and Popular Culture Exotic Education: Writing Empire for German Boys and Girls, 1884-1914 Jeffrey BOWERSOX (Toronto); Picturing Genocide in German Consumer Culture, 1904-1910 David CIARLO (MIT, Boston); ‘Greetings from Africa’--The Visual Representation of Blackness under German Imperialism Volker LANGBEHN (San Francisco) SECTION 6: Colonialism after the End of Empire ‘Loyal Askari’ and ‘Black Rapist’--Two Images in the German Discourse on National Identity and their Impact on the Lives of Black People in Germany, 1918-1945 Susanne LEWERENZ (Hamburg); ‘Denkmalsturz.’ The German Student Movement and German Colonialism Ingo CORNILS (Leeds); Reflections on the Idea of ‘Colonial Amnesia’ in post-1945 West Germany Monika ALBRECHT (Münster); The Persistence of (Colonial) Fantasies Wolfgang STRUCK (Erfurt) SECTION 7: The Transnational Dimension The Herero Genocide and Politics of Memory Dominik SCHALLER (Heidelberg); Vergangenheitsbewältigung à la française. (Post-)Colonial memories of the Herero Genocide and 17 October, 1961 Kathryn JONES (Swansea); Beyond Empire: German Women in Africa 1919-1933 Britta SCHILLING (Oxford) SECTION 8: Mainstreaming Colonialism Colonialism and the Simplification of Language: Germany’s ‘kolonial-deutsch’ Experiment Kenneth OROSZ (Maine); Aspects of German Identity in the African Colonies: the Role of the Local Press Elisabeth SCHMIDT (Paris); Torn between Two Lovers: the Intercultural Discipline ‘Germanistik’ in Postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa? Arndt WITTE (Maynooth) Notes Bibliography Index Juergen Zimmerer is Professor of History at the University of Hamburg in Germany. His areas of research and publication include German Colonialism, Genocide Studies, the Holocaust and African and Global History. Michael Perraudin is Professor of German at the University of Sheffield, and has previously taught at Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Birmingham. His research focus is on 19th-century German literature, especially that of the Biedermeier/Vormärz, and its social and political contexts. His books include Literature, the ‘Volk’ and the Revolution in Mid-19th-Century Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000) and Formen der Wirklichkeitserfassung nach 1848. Deutsche Literatur und Kultur vom Nachmärz bis zur Gründerzeit in europäischer Perspektive (co-edited with Helmut Koopmann, Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2003). He has also published numerous articles on 19th- and 20th-century literary authors. \"This volume offers a snapshot of the variety of activities, research areas, research interests, and approaches emerging in the field of postcolonial studies with regard to Germany and the German colonial legacy. The twenty-two articles are all remarkably short, concrete, and informative; several afford insights into larger research projects.\" – Florian Krobb, National University of Ireland, Maynooth \"This broadly based, clearly structured, and highly integrated essay collection constitutes an excellent overview of the central points of the growing scholarly discourse on Germany's colonial past. The volume provides a well-focused snapshot of contemporary German colonialism studies and could ideally serve both as a reader for college or university courses on these matters or an orientation guide for scholars new to the field.\" - Hans J. Rindisbacher, The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms