Germany and 'The West'

Germany and 'The West' PDF Author: Riccardo Bavaj
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785335049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
“The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.

Germany and 'The West'

Germany and 'The West' PDF Author: Riccardo Bavaj
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785335049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book

Book Description
“The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.

GIs and Fräuleins

GIs and Fräuleins PDF Author: Maria Höhn
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860328
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
With the outbreak of the Korean War, the poor, rural West German state of Rhineland-Palatinate became home to some of the largest American military installations outside the United States. In GIs and Frauleins, Maria Hohn offers a rich social history of this German-American encounter and provides new insights into how West Germans negotiated their transition from National Socialism to a consumer democracy during the 1950s. Focusing on the conservative reaction to the American military presence, Hohn shows that Germany's Christian Democrats, though eager to be allied politically and militarily with the United States, were appalled by the apparent Americanization of daily life and the decline in morality that accompanied the troops to the provinces. Conservatives condemned the jazz clubs and striptease parlors that Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe opened to cater to the troops, and they expressed scorn toward the German women who eagerly pursued white and black American GIs. While most Germans rejected the conservative effort to punish as prostitutes all women who associated with American GIs, they vilified the sexual relationships between African American men and German women. Hohn demonstrates that German anxieties over widespread Americanization were always debates about proper gender norms and racial boundaries, and that while the American military brought democracy with them to Germany, it also brought Jim Crow.

West Germany and the Iron Curtain

West Germany and the Iron Curtain PDF Author: Astrid M. Eckert
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190690054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of the Federal Republic and the German re-unification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. The book is the first environmental history of the Iron Curtain.

A History Shared and Divided

A History Shared and Divided PDF Author: Frank Bösch
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785339265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620

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Book Description
By and large, the histories of East and West Germany have been studied in relative isolation. And yet, for all their differences, the historical trajectories of both nations were interrelated in complex ways, shaped by economic crises, social and cultural changes, protest movements, and other phenomena so diffuse that they could hardly be contained by the Iron Curtain. Accordingly, A History Shared and Divided offers a collective portrait of the two Germanies that is both broad and deep. It brings together comprehensive thematic surveys by specialists in social history, media, education, the environment, and similar topics to assemble a monumental account of both nations from the crises of the 1970s to—and beyond—the reunification era.

The Miracle Years

The Miracle Years PDF Author: Hanna Schissler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122255X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.

Germany Unified and Europe Transformed

Germany Unified and Europe Transformed PDF Author: Philip Zelikow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674353251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
This work provides an analysis of the moves and manoeuvres that brought an end to the Cold War division of Europe. Coverage includes discussion of the opening of the Berlin Wall and a study of the relationship between West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and reform Communist leader, Hans Modrow.

West Germany Under Construction

West Germany Under Construction PDF Author: Robert G. Moeller
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472066483
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Collects important recent essays in a critical reexamination of the Federal Republic's early history

Three Germanies

Three Germanies PDF Author: Michael Gehler
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861899890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Since the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, Germany has been in a continual state of turmoil and reinvention. In Three Germanies, Michael Gehler explores the political rollercoaster Germany has been riding since the Yalta Conference, which split postwar Germany into separate zones controlled by the Soviets, Americans, French, and British. Peace, however, was short lived; from 1948 to 1949 Stalin blockaded Berlin in an attempt to gain control over the largest city in Germany. Though the blockade was finally broken in May of 1949, soon after, Germany was officially split into the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. From then on, Germany became two very different countries with opposite political ideals, splitting families down the middle ideologically—and soon physically, with the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Though the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Germany was reunified, its problems were far from over: to this day Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Grand Coalition struggle to implement reform. Gehler’s timely and relevant study will appeal to readers interested in postwar diplomacy and the future of Germany, as it examines Germany’s attempts to find a government and a leader that will create a stable and secure country in the twenty-first century.

Germany's Drive to the West (Drang Nach Westen)

Germany's Drive to the West (Drang Nach Westen) PDF Author: Hans W. Gatzke
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9781421431932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Each of these forces had its own particular reasons for wanting to hold out for far-reaching territorial gains, yet one aim that most of them had in common was ensuring, through a successful peace settlement, the continuation of the existing order, to their own advantage and to the political and economic detriment of the majority of the German people.

Industry and Politics in West Germany

Industry and Politics in West Germany PDF Author: Peter J. Katzenstein
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501731475
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Dynamic technological developments in industrial production, the rise of new social movements in national politics, and great changes in the international political economy have left a deep imprint on the Federal Republic. A compelling explanation of West Germany's success in maintaining economic prosperity and political stability under such challenging conditions has continued to elude observers. Under the editorship of Peter J. Katzenstein, thirteen distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic here provide an original interpretation of the political economy of the Bonn Republic during the forty years since its founding, and explore in particular its extraordinary capacity for accommodating change. Whereas studies in political economy have typically focused on one level of political action—either the shop floor, or national politics, or the international system—this innovative account analyzes the interaction of change at all three levels, bringing together case studies drawn from six manufacturing and service sectors.