Table of contents

This book provides a history of Prussian state patriotism from the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) until the Battle of Jena (1806). It argues that Prussian patriotism was not merely a prelude to German nationalism or a personality cult of Frederick the Great; rather, it was an inclusive and non-ethnic movement promoting ideals of citizenship, merit, and empowerment. Appealing to patriotism became a central method of promoting reform in a state governed by an absolute monarchy. Covering a turning point in early modern European intellectual history, this book provides a historical perspective for modern discussions on the relationship between patriotism and nationalism.

Challenges the accepted view that an oppressive Prussian state cast a shadow on the development of civil society and sheds light on a little-known historical reality in which weak Hohenzollern monarchs - and a still weaker Prussian bureaucracy - were confronted with prosperous, fearless, and argumentative Prussian burghers.

An investigation into why the creation of nation-states coincided with bouts of civil war in the nineteenth-century Western world.

Karin Friedrich locates the composite state of Brandenburg-Prussia in its historical, political, religious and economic context, from the demise of the Teutonic Knights in the fifteenth century to the Napoleonic crisis. Synthesising debates in German, English and Polish historical writing, the study focuses on key themes and concepts such as: - Confessionalisation, state-building, absolutism, and the rural economy - The primacy of foreign politics - The impact of an enlightened public sphere on changing notions of citizenship Friedrich assesses the ability of the Prussian state to integrate its constituent parts, not least by creating a patriotic identity and notion of unity under the name of 'Prussia'. Challenging myths and older views, this fresh interpretation is ideal for anyone studying this complex political entity within early modern Europe.

The second volume shines a light on the cultural and social changes that took place during the epoch of European Restorations, when the death of the Napoleonic empire existed as a crucial moment for contemporaries. Expanding the transnational approach of Volume I, the chapters focus on the transmutation of ordinary experiences of war into folklore and popular culture, the emergence of grassroots radical politics and conspiracies on the Left and Right, and the relationship between literacy and religion, with new cases included from Spain, Norway and Russia. A wide-ranging and impressive work, this book completes a collection on the history of the European Restorations.

No example demonstrates the fluidity of the past within the German Democratic Republic more powerfully than the history of the Prussian state. Initially attacked in East German official histories as the historical engine of German militarism and reaction, Prussia underwent a remarkabletransformation in official and public memory from around the end of the 1970s. This was the so-called 'Prussia-Renaissance', in which, for the first time, the East German state began to recognise and even celebrate figures from Prussian history who had not served a 'progressive' agenda. But the'Prussia-Renaissance' was also a political and cultural phenomenon with a wide public resonance. The 'Prussia-Renaissance' may have been a relatively short-lived phenomenon, but it evidently opened a deep vein in the historical memory of the German Democratic Republic that defied reduction to 'highpolitics' alone. This book asks why.Using the case study of Prussia, Marcus Colla presents a multi-perspective approach to the way that a distinctive 'historical culture' was constructed in the German Democratic Republic. It not only evaluates the roles played by political figures, historians, and cultural elites, but also heritagepreservationists, exhibition curators, heimat museums, television producers, novelists and playwrights, and singers - the purveyors of what we might more generally term 'popular culture'. In essence, Colla poses four fundamental questions for our understanding of life, politics and culture incommunist East Germany: how was history there made? How was it understood? How was it contested? And how was it used?