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For a Differently Centered Central European History: Reflections on Jürgen Osterhammel, Geschichtswissenschaft Jenseits des Nationalstaats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Helmut Walser Smith
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University

Abstract

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Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2004

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References

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18. See Ther, Philipp, “Beyond the Nation: The Relational Basis of a Comparative History of Germany and Europe, Central European History 36, no. 1 (2003): 4573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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29. Osterhammel, , “Alexander von Humboldt,” 131.Google Scholar

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33. We might consider as a starting point of this reception, Medick, Hans, “Missionäre im Ruderboot,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10 (1984): 295319Google Scholar, and the negative reaction, first circulated as a kind of underground, unpublished manuscript, by Hans Ulrich Wehler, and later published as “Alltagsgeschichte: Königsweg zu neuen Ufern oder Irrgarten der Illusionen,” in Wehler, , Aus der Geschichte lernen (Munich, 1988).Google Scholar

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45. For the initial discussion, which has since taken on ever larger proportions, see Schöttler, Peter, ed. Geschichtsschreibung als Legitimationswissenschaft 1918–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997)Google Scholar, especially Schöttler's introductory remarks, 7–30.

46. Underlined in the original. Published in Ebbinghaus, Angelika and Roth, Karl Heinz, “Vorläufer des ‘Generalplans Ost’: Eine Dokumentation über Theodor Schieders Polendenkschrift vom 7. Oktober 1939,” in 1999, vol. 7, no. l (1992): 86.Google Scholar On this aspect of Conze's thinking, see Etzemüller, Thomas, “Sozialgeschichte als politische Geschichte: Die Etablierung der Sozialgeschichte in der westdeutschen Geschichtswissenschaft,” Comparativ 12, no. 1 (2002): 27.Google Scholar

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49. For the influence of an essentially American assimilation theory, see Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, “Zur neuen Geschichte der Masuren,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 11 (1962): 147–72Google Scholar; Klessmann, Christoph, Polnische Bergarbeiter im Ruhrgebiet, 1870–1945 (Göttingen, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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54. On the significance of the margins for twentieth-century European history, see Diner, Dan, Das Jahrhundert verstehen: Eine universalhistorische Deutung (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 12, 199.Google Scholar On the expellees and ethnic complexity in German and Central European history, see now Ther, Philipp, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene: Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1946 (Göttmgen, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, with respect to religious complexity, Dark, Joel, “Religion and Refugees in postwar West Germany” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998).Google Scholar

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58. Schlögel, , Die Mitte liegt ostwärts, 4445.Google Scholar

59. For an introduction, Herbert, Ulrich, Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik, 1939–1945 (Frankfort am Main, 1998).Google Scholar

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63. For the American discussion, see the excellent collection, with an incisive introduction, by Bender, Thomas, Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for France, Werner and Zimmermann, “Penser l'histoire croisée;” for a startling work that employs this way of seeing in the British context, see Colley, Linda, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850 (New York, 2003).Google Scholar

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