The University of North Carolina Press

336 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 10 color and 46 b&w illus., notes, index

Cloth

ISBN  978-0-8078-3042-0

Published: September 2006

Paper

ISBN  978-0-8078-5722-9

Published: September 2006

Germany as a Culture of Remembrance

Promises and Limits of Writing History

By Alon Confino

---

An acknowledged authority on German history and memory, Alon Confino presents in this volume an original critique of the relations between nationhood, memory, and history, applied to the specific case of Germany. In ten essays (three never before published and one published only in German), Confino offers a distinct view of German nationhood in particular and of nationhood in general as a product of collective negotiation and exchange between the many memories that exist in the nation.

The first group of essays centers on the period from 1871 to 1990 and explores how Germans used conceptions of the local, or Heimat, to identify what it meant to be German in a century of ideological upheavals. The second group of essays comprehensively critiques and analyzes the ways laypersons and scholars use the notion of memory as a tool to understand the past. Arguing that the case of Germany contains particular characteristics with broader implications for the way historians practice their trade, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance examines the limits and possibilities of writing history.

About the Author

Alon Confino is professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is author of the award-winning The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory (University of North Carolina Press) and coeditor of The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture.

Reviews

"An avant-garde of memory-oriented historiography."
--Journal of Modern History

"[A] stimulating collection of essays. . . . [A] thought-provoking book."
--Journal of Social History

"[Confino's] masterful collection of 10 essays invites the reader to an unconventional, but theoretically and methodologically highly reflected journey into the construction of German nationhood via negotiations of locality and memory."
--German Studies Review

"Offers excellent intellectual fodder not only for Germanists, but also for a much broader audience. . . . [Will] launch scholars and students alike into explorations of the past that embrace both individual and collective identities as complicated and ever-changing."
--The Historian

"A well-written . . . provocative account that advances our understanding of national identity construction while also providing stimulating insights into the practice of writing history. . . . Outstanding."
--CLIO

"Alon Confino reminds us what a pleasure it is to be a historian because history links so uniquely wonderment and the craft of precise inquiry. His incisive journey through the web of remembrances that make up the German nation richly exhibits the wisdom that derives from this sensibility."
--Michael Geyer, University of Chicago