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History 342
Modern Germany
1871-1989
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CRN:
35438
When:
MWF 11:00-11:50
Where: 242 Gerlinger
David M. Luebke
315 McKenzie Hall
Phone: 346-2394
Email: dluebke@uoregon.edu
This course introduces students to themes in the
social,
cultural, and political history of Germany from the first
German
unification in 1871 to the second unification in 1989. In
twentieth-century Europe, no other
“new” nation has been the source of so
much instability and destruction. Was this inevitable? The long shadow
cast by
united Germany’s record of modern travails and disasters—from its role
in the
causes of World War I, through the failed revolution of 1918-1919 and
the
ill-fated Weimar Republic to Hitler, National Socialism, World War II
and the
Holocaust—forces our attention both topically and methodologically on
the historical
forces that made the unified German state so singularly disruptive. Was
this
because Germany
followed a “special path” into modernity, as many have argued? Or is Germany’s experience in the twentieth
century
symptomatic of more general social, economic, and political
transformations
that have affected every industrial society in modern Europe?
If Germany’s
path was “special,” how so and with what consequences?
If it was not, how are we to assess united Germany’s impact on modern Europe
In pursuing answers to these questions, students will explore the social bases
of unification; German nationhood during the imperial period (1871-1914) as
a cultural, social, and political problem; the causes and consequences of World
War and revolution (1914-1923); Weimar society, politics and culture; complicity
and terror in the Nazi dictatorship; origins and execution of genocide against
Jews and Gypsies; the birth of two Germanies from the wreckage of World War
II; the contents and discontents of a consumer society in the post-war era;
and process of unification in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Course Outline
Course Requirements
Study
Questions
Review Books