German Modernities from Wilhelm to Weimar: A Contest of Futures

Description

What was German modernity? What did the years between 1880 and 1930 mean for Germany’s navigation through a period of global capitalism, imperial expansion, and technological transformation? German Modernities From Wilhelm to Weimar brings together leading historians of the Imperial and Weimar periods from across North America to readdress the question of German modernities. Acutely attentive to Germany’s eventual turn towards National Socialism and the related historiographical arguments about ‘modernity’, this volume explores the variety of social, intellectual, political, and imperial projects pursued by those living in Germany in the Wilhelmine and Weimar years who were yet uncertain about what they were creating and which future would come. It includes varied case studies, based on cutting-edge research, which rethink the relationship of the early 20th century to the rise of Nazism and the Third Reich. A range of political, social and cultural issues, including citizenship, welfare, empire, aesthetics and sexuality, as well as the very nature of German modernity, are analyzed and placed in a global context. German Modernities From Wilhelm to Weimar is a book of vital significance to all students of modern German history seeking to further understand the complex period from 1880 to 1930. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Contributors 1 Introduction: German Modernities and the Contest of Futures 2 Neither Singular nor Alternative: Narratives of Modernity and Welfare in Germany, 1870–1945 3 What Was German Modernity and When? 4 Alternative Modernities: Imperial Germany through the Lens of Russia 5 Elsewhere in Central Europe: Jewish Literature in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy between “Habsburg Myth” and “Central Europe Effect” 6 Communism and Colonialism in the Red and Black Atlantic: Toward a Transnational Narrative of German Modernity 7 The Racial Economy of Weltpolitik: Imperialist Expansion, Domestic Reform, and War in Pan-German Ideology, 1894–1918 8 The Prussian Commerce Ministry, the Deutscher Werkbund, and Germany’s Global Commercial Ambitions 9 Prevention, Welfare, and Citizenship: The War on Tuberculosis and Infant Mortality in Germany, 1900–30 10 Secularism, Subjectivity, and Reform: Shifting Variables 11 War, Citizenship, and Rhetorics of Sexual Crisis: Reflections on States of Exception in Germany, 1914–20 12 Anchoring the Nation in the Democratic Form: Weimar Symbolic Politics beyond the Failure Paradigm 13 The Werkbund Exhibition “The New Age” of 1932 14 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough: Emancipation, Sexuality, and Female Political Subjectivity 15 National Socialism and the Limits of “Modernity” Index