Germany

New Avenues of Germany’s Past

As Holocaust survivors die, new approaches are required to tell their history, as shown in this unsentimental, emphatic account of the inhabitants of a Berlin street.

The Limits of Nationhood

In the interwar period, France and Germany worked towards an integrated Europe.

Woodcut of Henry IV from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. Copyright aka-images

Henry IV of Germany: a ‘Bad King’?

Looking beyond the usual rogues’ gallery of historical figures can help us to better understand the past.

The servant finds the dying Wether in a scene from Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Jan Evert Grave, 1787. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain.

The Media’s First Moral Panic

Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was blamed for a spate of suicides during the ‘reading fever’ of the 1700s. It set a trend for manufactured outrage that is with us still.

Weimar's statue of the poets and dramatists Goethe (left) and Schiller.

German Intellectual History

Peter Schröder highlights key publications on Germany’s contribution to the history of ideas from the Enlightenment to the present day.

‘You are German, I am sure of it: I am from Berlin’, by Hermann-Paul, c. 1920s. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public Domain.

Was the Weimar Republic a Failed State?

The archetypal image of the Weimar Republic is one of political instability, economic crisis and debauched hedonism. The cliché is being challenged.

Gesamtkunstwerk: playbill for Tristan und Isolde at the National Theatre, Munich.

The premiere of Tristan und Isolde

Wagner's opera was first performed in Munich on June 10th, 1865.

Franz Anton Mesmer in a contemporary engraving.

Franz Anton Mesmer dies in Germany

The physician died on March 5th, 1815.

The Hitler Myth

Historic attachments to heroic leadership combined with a mastery of propaganda techniques to mesmerise Germany into acceptance of the charismatic authority offered by the Führer.