The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century
This book addresses the long term of German history, tracing ideas and politics across what have become sharp chronological breaks. Smith argues that current historiography has become ever more focused on the twentieth century, and on twentieth-century explanations for the German catastrophe. Against conventional wisdom, he considers continuities – in the concept of nation and the ideology of nationalism, in religion and religious exclusion, and in racism and violence – that are the center of the German historical experience and that have long histories. Smith explores these deep continuities in novel ways, emphasizing their importance, while arguing that Germany was not on a special path to destruction. The result is a series of innovative reflections on the crystallization of nationalist ideology, on patterns of anti-Semitism, and on how the nineteenth-century vocabulary of race structured the twentieth-century genocidal imagination.
1100940813
The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century
This book addresses the long term of German history, tracing ideas and politics across what have become sharp chronological breaks. Smith argues that current historiography has become ever more focused on the twentieth century, and on twentieth-century explanations for the German catastrophe. Against conventional wisdom, he considers continuities – in the concept of nation and the ideology of nationalism, in religion and religious exclusion, and in racism and violence – that are the center of the German historical experience and that have long histories. Smith explores these deep continuities in novel ways, emphasizing their importance, while arguing that Germany was not on a special path to destruction. The result is a series of innovative reflections on the crystallization of nationalist ideology, on patterns of anti-Semitism, and on how the nineteenth-century vocabulary of race structured the twentieth-century genocidal imagination.
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The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century

The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century

by Helmut Walser Smith
The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century

The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century

by Helmut Walser Smith

Hardcover

$101.00 
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Overview

This book addresses the long term of German history, tracing ideas and politics across what have become sharp chronological breaks. Smith argues that current historiography has become ever more focused on the twentieth century, and on twentieth-century explanations for the German catastrophe. Against conventional wisdom, he considers continuities – in the concept of nation and the ideology of nationalism, in religion and religious exclusion, and in racism and violence – that are the center of the German historical experience and that have long histories. Smith explores these deep continuities in novel ways, emphasizing their importance, while arguing that Germany was not on a special path to destruction. The result is a series of innovative reflections on the crystallization of nationalist ideology, on patterns of anti-Semitism, and on how the nineteenth-century vocabulary of race structured the twentieth-century genocidal imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521895880
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 04/07/2008
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Helmut Walser Smith earned his PhD at Yale. He has held the position of Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of History at Vanderbilt University since 1992. He is the author of German Nationalism and Religious Conflict (1995) and The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (2002), which won him the Fraenkel Prize for the best work in contemporary history and was named an LA Times Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Table of Contents

1. The vanishing point of German history; 2. The mirror turn lamp: senses of the nation before nationalism; 3. On catastrophic religious violence and the national belonging: the Thirty Years' War and the massacre of Jews in social memory; 4. From play to act: anti-Semitic violence in German and European history during the long nineteenth century; 5. Eliminationist racism; 6. Afterword: where the Sonderweg debate left us.
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