Modern Germany

What is Germany? An idea, a place, an empire, a nation? A perpetrator of atrocities, a moral leader of the European Union? We will investigate notions and forms of the German state from before 1848, paying special attention to its place in Europe and its relationship to the Holy Roman Empire, Habsburg Empire, Prussia, and the Baltic World. Important events and periods covered include unification in 1871, the imperial period and Great War, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, Second World War, and the Holocaust, the divided Germanys, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and an increasingly diverse Germany’s leadership of the EU. We will explore a wide variety of primary and secondary sources from history and culture, including historical monographs and articles, newspaper reports, folktales, laws and constitutions, fiction, poems, film, propaganda, visual art, and memoir.