GERM 304-01, Literature, Culture, Society 1870-1945, Fall 2006

Abstract

The course is an introduction into the culture of the time period between Germany’s consolidation into a nation state and the end of WWII, which introduced developmetns that brought an end to German national unity. At the center of many of our discussions will be the very problem of unity. Already in its political-historical sense, it appears to be a simplification: why was Austria not part of the unified Germany, although its citizens to a large extent called themselves ‘German’? If understood as a social or cultural concept, unity appears even more problematic. Those forces that appear to unite a group – e.g., religion, trade, tradition, law, political institutions - often contradict, and clash with, each other, and are therefore not unified amongst themselves. German history may indeed provide one of the prime examples of the impasses of social and cultural unity, and of the clash between ideologies and factual forces.