HIST 2159H: History of modern Germany: 1871 To the present

Abstract

“Germany? But where is it? I know not how to find the country” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, Xenien, 1797) This course is designed to introduce students to the history of Germany from the age of Bismarck to the present. One of the peculiar challenges of such a course is that its subject matter—“Germany”—is highly elusive. Unlike England and France, which have existed as unified political communities since the Middle Ages, Germany has been politically divided for much of its history. Its forms of government, its geographic borders, its position in relation to other European countries and the wider world, and even, indeed especially, the criteria for determining who is a German—all these fundamental aspects of national identity have been subject to repeated change and contestation. This course will take the ambiguity surrounding German identity as a connecting thread. We’ll explore the struggles that Germans have waged from one period to the next over the political and social organization of their country—or countries—their relations to Europe and the “West,” and what it means to be a “German.” The course will proceed chronologically, with units corresponding roughly to the major political divisions of modern German history: unification under Prussian leadership; Imperial Germany; World War I; the Weimar Republic; the Nazi dictatorship; the establishment of the Federal Republic and Communist East Germany; reunification following the fall of the Wall; and Germany today.