German history in modern times : four lives of the nation / William W. Hagen.

"This history of German-speaking central Europe offers a very wide perspective, emphasizing a succession of many-layered communal identities. It highlights the interplay of individual, society, culture, and political power, contrasting German with western patterns. Rather than treating "the Germans" as a collective whole whose national history amounts to a cumulative biography, the book presents the pre-modern era of the Holy Roman Empire; the nineteenth century; the 1914-1945 era of war, dictatorship, and genocide; and the Cold War and post-Cold War eras since 1945 as successive worlds of German life, thought, and mentality. The book sets forth the differences between them, even as it traces paths leading from one to the other. This book's "German" is polycentric and multicultural, including the multi-national Austrian Habsburg Empire and the German Jews. Its approach to National Socialism offers a comceptually new understanding of the Holocaust. The book's numerous illustrations reveal German self-presentations and styles of life, which often contrast with western ideas of Germany"--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: German Central Europe Before Modern Nationalism -- Herrschaft: Lordship and power in the Germanies -- Alltag: Contours of daily life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Power states (Machtstaaten): the Prussian and Austrian military-bureaucratic monarchies -- Aufklärung: the German enlightenment and other spirits of the age -- Part II: German Identities Between Liberalism, Nationalism, and Socialism, 1789-1914 -- Liberté?: facing the French Revolution, 1789-1815 -- "Land of poets and thinkers" (Dichter und Denker): from enlightenment universalism to German national culture -- Freedom and voice, "iron and blood" (Eisen und Blut): liberalism and nationalism, 1815-1914 -- Sozialdemokratie: workers and politics in the age of industrialization -- Frauen: women, family, feminism, 1789-1914 -- State of many peoples (Vielvölkerstaat): the Habsburg Austrian monarchy -- "German citizens of Jewish faith (deutsche Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens): Jews, Germans, German Jews, 1789-1914 -- Part III: Duels of Identity and the Death of Nations, 1914-1945 -- Krieg: The Prussian-German monarchy's sudden death in war and Revolution, 1914-1920 -- Weimarer Republik: Democracy's bitter fruits, 1918-1933 -- A people without a state? Volk ohne staat?: Middle-class discontent and populist utopia -- Lebensraum: War for empire in Eastern Europe -- Shoah Banned from nation and earth: German Jews after 1914, National Socialist "Jewish policy", and the Holocaust -- Part IV: The Cold War Germanies and Their Post-1989 Fusion: A Nation Reforged from Its Remnants? -- Beyond "zero hour" (Stunde null): defeated Germany and the West German Federal Republic, 1949-1989 -- "Real existing socialism" (real existierender Sozialismus): Soviet-occupied Germany and the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1990 -- Mauerfall Fall of the wall: the post-unification scene in West and East.