Suchergebnisse

"The comparative reluctance of German historians to engage the postmodern challenge suggested the need for a reflection on what post-structuralist impulses might have to offer for analyzing the Central European past. In the United States the criticism voiced by Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn had already undercut the hegemony of the 'Sonderweg' paradigm, promoted by the 'societal historians' of the Bielefeld school which was slow to respond to feminist and everyday history approaches. The authors therefore set out to initiate a discussion about the deconstruction of 'grand narratives' about the German past, in order to create more interpretative space for stories that did not fit into the model of 'historical social science'. In the American intellectual climate this objectivist and modernist outlook seemed no longer persuasive enough, since various minorities promoted views that emphasized the constructivist character of historical understanding. Our joint programmatic essay therefore tried to open space for recovering a greater plurality of experiences." (author's abstract)

Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich