UCSB Hist 200E, Spring 1994
note: modifications will be made before next offering
student input on selecting the weekly topics is welcome
Historical Literature
Girvetz 1106, Mondays, 1-4

Prof. Marcuse

READINGS IN 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY GERMAN HISTORY

This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the central issues of modern German history. We will begin in the mid-19th century to the post-1989 period.

The methodological focus will be on a close reading and discussion of carefully selected monographs and essays, not on bibliographical or historiographical work, although they will not be neglected.

All students will be responsible for reading the core text and 2-3 supplementary works each week, and writing a 2-3 page review of the core text (summary of questions and findings; discussion of sources; situation in historiography; critical evaluation).
Additionally, between class meetings we will circulate via e-mail thoughts on and questions derived from the readings. Each week one student will be responsible for compiling a list of questions and a thesis paper which will serve as the basis for class discussion.

The weekly topics and core texts are as follows:

  1. Introductory meeting
  2. The 1848 Revolution
    Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848-1849 (Princeton: PUP, 1991)
  3. The Kaiserreich
    Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Providence: Berg, 1985/1993 [German 1973])
  4. Continuities in German History
    David Blackbourn, Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: OUP, 1984 [German 1980])
  5. World War I and 1918 Revolution
    Fritz Fischer; Francis Carsten
  6. Weimar Republic
    Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992 [German 1987])
  7. The National Socialist State
    Norbert Frei, National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Führer State 1933-1945 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993 [German 1987])
  8. The Holocaust
    Hermann Graml, Antisemitism in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992 [German 1988])
  9. Two Germanies
    Mary Fulbrook, The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918-1990 (New York/Oxford: OUP, 1992).
  10. The 1989 Revolution
    Peter Marcuse, Missing Marx: A Personal and Political Journal of a Year in East Germany, 1989-1990 (New York: Monthly Review, 1991 [German 1990])