Rewriting German History offers striking new insights into key debates about the recent German past. Bringing together cutting-edge research and current discussions, this volume examines developments in the writing of the German past since the Second World War and suggests new directions for scholarship in the twenty-first century.

The essays collected here offer a sober, informed, and stimulating reassessment of Germany and its past by internationally recognized scholars working from within and outside the new Germany. They all proceed from the recognition that the perspective from which the German past is viewed has changed irrevocably. Unification meant that the German Democratic Republic became history and its history, historiography and its collapse are re-evaluated. The essays examine the possibility of history being used, and possibly abused, in the service of the creation of a new national identity and question the legitimacy of the notion of Germany having followed a "special path" of development - one that could hardly be viewed positively in the wake of the Third Reich - but which suggested that Germany had claims to being a "normal nation." They then go on to consider some of the radical changes to the institutional circumstances within which history is practiced in the united Germany.

To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together experts from both sides of the Atlantic. Through case studies, it demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

This book tackles head on the central problems of writing German post-war history in the aftermath of unification. Since 1990, historians have been debating whether the development of the Federal Republic and the East German State constituted separate histories or whether they share what should be considered a joint past. This book addresses the specific forms of segregation and interconnectedness between the 'twoGermanies' and acknowledges the asymmetry of the relationship, as well as the effect that this had on the internal and external policies of both sides. This is a book that confronts the need for historiography to break away from the traditional master narrative. It offers an alternative in the form of the differing points of view necessary to gain a new perspective on the central problem of a separate, yet joint, German post-war history. Drawing on both methodological and historiographicalapproaches, authors tackle this vexed problem in the context of generational and woman's history, secularization, the labour movement, and the legitimization of the "workers' state", and culminate by addressing the perennial question: how does a nation live with catastrophe? 'Includes both programmatic statements and examples of work from a German national perspective ... For Klessmann, although the two states were separate entities, their histories were nonetheless inextricably interconnected. He believes that by exploring the influence of each German state on the other, much can be learned about the postwar Germanies ... According to Klessmann,the West was present in the East in a variety of ways, but perhaps most importantly as ''an image transmitted via the media and relatives that served as a constant point of reference for East Germans judging their standard of living''.'Journal of Modern History, Volume 75, Number 3, September 2003

Rewriting German History offers striking new insights into key debates about the recent German past. Bringing together cutting-edge research and current discussions, this volume examines developments in the writing of the German past since the Second World War and suggests new directions for scholarship in the twenty-first century.

In Rereading German History, first published in 1997, Richard J. Evans draws together his seminal review essays on the political, economic, cultural and social history of Germany through war and reunification. This book provides a study of how and why historians – mainly German, American, British and French – have provided a series of differing and often conflicting readings of the German past. It also presents a reconsideration of German history in the light of the recent decline of the German Democratic Republic, collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. Rereading German History re-examines major controversies in modern German history, such as the debate over Germany’s ‘special path’ to modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the discussions in the 1980s on the uniqueness or otherwise of Auschwitz. Evans also analyses the arguments over the nature of German national identity. The book offers trenchant and important analytical insights into the history of Germany in the last two centuries, and is ideal reading material for students of modern history and German studies.

To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together experts from both sides of the Atlantic. Through case studies, it demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.