German History in Modern Times

William W. Hagen is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Max-Planck Society and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 and the prize-winning Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). His wide-ranging research articles have appeared in many publications, including The Journal of Modern History, Foreign Affairs, the American Historical Review, Past and Present, Historische Zeitschrift and Geschichte und Gesellschaft.

“Bill Hagen has written a remarkable book that reconceptualizes the course of German history in several critical dimensions. Not only does Hagen take on and challenge several of the most conventional historiographical interpretations of the longue durée of German history (the Sonderweg thesis, etc.), but he shows in a very compelling way that one cannot understand German history in the twentieth century without a deep and profound knowledge of the history of the several competing German nations before 1866 and even before 1806. The result is an elegantly written book of great ambition and fascinating detail, particularly strong in social and political history and filled with surprising interpretive suggestions. The many illustrations, deeply integrated into the multiple, cascading narratives of the book, are also quite noteworthy.” —John W. Boyer, University of Chicago

• 1. Master narratives and rival interpretations of modern German history; Part I. German Central Europe before Modern Nationalism: 2. The pyramid of power in pre-modern Germany; 3. Baroque and Enlightenment Germany, 1648–1789; 4. Power states (Machtstaaten): the rise of the Prussian and Austrian military-bureaucratic monarchies; 5. Aufklärung: the German Enlightenment and other spirits of the age; Part II. German Identities between Liberalism, Nationalism, and Socialism, 1789–1914: 6. Revolution on the march: French challenge, German response, 1789–1815; 7. 'Land of poets and thinkers': the transition from Enlightenment universalism to German national culture; 8. Freedom and voice, 'blood and iron': the struggle over liberalism and nationalism, 1815–1914; 9. Power to the people: German social democracy in the age of industrialization; 10. Women, family, feminism, 1789–1914; 11. Habsburg Austria: a multinational path in German history; 12. Jews, Germans, German Jews, 1789–1914; Part III. Nation in Crisis: Defeat, Turmoil, Aggression, 1914–15: 13. The Prussian-German monarchy's sudden death: World War I and postwar revolution, 1914–20; 14. Democracy's bitter fruits: society and politics, 1918–33; 15. The rise of Hitlerism: middle-class discontent and populist utopia; 16. The 'people's community' at Hitler's command: national and socialist Germany, 1933–45; 17. Lebensraum: the war for empire in Eastern Europe; 18. Banned from nation and earth: German Jews after 1914, Nazi 'Jewish policy', and the Holocaust; Part IV. The Cold War Germanies and their Post-1989 Fusion: A Nation Reforged from Its Remnants?: 19. Return from the abyss: defeated Germany and the West German Federal Republic, 1949–89; 20. 'Real existing socialism': Soviet-occupied Germany and the German Democratic Republic, 1949–90; 21. Present-day Germany: the post-unification scene in West and East.