Prof. Marcuse
Oct. 6, 1998
UCSB Hist 133C
GERMAN HISTORY SINCE 1945

Lecture 3: Did Germany follow a "special path"?

1. Administrative / Announcements / Preliminary
   • enrollment: add codes after class
   • roll call
   • problems (book availability)? / Your questions?
   • reading: Böll; for today Fulbrook 1-14. Other readings for Thursday & Tuesday.
2. (Special) Paths in German History
   • Cultural: better than average, then "driving accident" (Betriebsunfall) [Fritz Fischer]
   • Undemocratic/political: Luther-Fredrick the Great-Bismarck-Hitler [Vansittart, Shirer]
   • liberal and Marxist: exceptional modernization (variants 1848 and 1890s)
     • primacy of domestic politics
     • roles of elites, roles of lower and middle classes
3. 1945 US Army Signal Corps Film: "Here is Germany"
   • Fredrick to World War I
4. Notes on Böll
   • Author worried about late 1950s Germany: renazification, rearmament, anticomm., materialism
   • Novel: "interior monologs," obsessive memories
   • Heinrich Fähmel, b. 1878, built abbey 1907, married Johanna Kilb, daughter Johanna (1908-1910), son Heinrich (1910-1917), Robert (b. 1915)
   • Johanna Kilb-Fähmel (b. 1888), brothers died at Verdun 1916, insane asylum 1942/3
   • Robert Fähmel: marries Edith Schrella (b. 1919-1943), children Joseph (b. 1936), Ruth (b. 1939)
   • Who are the "lambs" and what happens to them? Who are the "beasts" (buffalo) and what fates?