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The Conquest Of Nature
The modern idea of 'mastery' over nature always had its critics, whether their motives were aesthetic, religious or environmentalist. By investigating how the most fundamental element - water - was 'conquered' by draining fens and marshes, straightening the courses of rivers, building high dams and exploiting hydro-electric power, The Conquest of Nature explores how over the last 250 years, the German people have shaped their natural environment and how the landscapes they created took a powerful hold on the German imagination. From Frederick the Great of Prussia to Johann Gottfried Tulla, 'the man who tamed the wild Rhine' in the nineteenth century to Otto Intze, 'master dambuilder' of the years around 1900, to the Nazis who set out to colonise 'living space' in the East, this groundbreaking study shows that while mastery over nature delivers undoubted benefits, it has often come at a tremendous cost to both the natural environment and human life.
Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000
Brilliantly conceived and majestically written, this monumental work of European history recasts the five-hundred-year history of Germany. With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification—and revealing a national identity far more complicated than previously imagined. Blackbourn traces Germany’s evolution from the loosely bound Holy Roman Empire of 1500 to a sprawling colonial power to a twenty-first-century beacon of democracy. Viewed through a global lens, familiar landmarks of German history—the Reformation, the Revolution of 1848, the Nazi regime—are transformed, while others are unearthed and explored, as Blackbourn reveals Germany’s leading role in creating modern universities and its sinister involvement in slave-trade economies. A global history for a global age, Germany in the World is a bold and original account that upends the idea that a nation’s history should be written as though it took place entirely within that nation’s borders.
Iron Kingdom
'Of the "Great Powers" that dominated Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, Prussia is the only one to have vanished ... Iron Kingdom is not just good: it is everything a history book ought to be ... The nemesis of Prussia has cast such a long shadow that German historians have tiptoed around the subject. Thus it was left to an Englishman to write what is surely the best history of Prussia in any language' Sunday Telegraph
Marpingen
In a riveting work of historical research, David Blackbourn brings might the period surrounding the days in July 1876 when three young girls claimed to have sighted the Virgin Mary in the fields outside the German town of Marpingen. As journalists, priests, and sellers of pious memorabilia descended on Marpingen, the sleepy town rapidly metamorphosed into a cause celebre, with supporters and opponents referring to it as "the German Lourdes," and even "the Bethlehem of Germany." "It is an undeniable fact that the whole world is talking about Marpingen," wrote one sympathetic commentator. "Marpingen has become the center of events that have shaken the world," suggested another. Tens of thousan...
Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life
This first English language biography of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in two decades paints a strikingly new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons. Drawing on letters, diaries and unpublished material, including Brecht's medical records, Parker offers a rich and enthralling account of Brecht's life and work, viewed through the prism of the artist. Tracing his extraordinary life, from his formative years in Augsburg, through the First World War, his politicisation during the Weimar Republic and his years of exile, up to the Berliner Ensemble's dazzling productions in Paris and London, Parker shows how Brecht achieved his transformative effect upon world theatre and poetry. Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life is a powerful portrait of a great, compulsively contradictory personality, whose artistry left its lasting imprint on modern culture.
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (The Global Century Series)
"One of those rare books that’s both sweeping and specific, scholarly and readable…What makes the book stand out is its wealth of historical detail." —Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker The history of the twentieth century is most often told through its world wars, the rise and fall of communism, or its economic upheavals. In his startling book, J. R. McNeill gives us our first general account of what may prove to be the most significant dimension of the twentieth century: its environmental history. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the earth's air, water, and soil, and the biosphere of which we are a part. Based on exhaustive research, McNeill's story—a compelling blend of anecdotes, data, and shrewd analysis—never preaches: it is our definitive account. This is a volume in The Global Century Series (general editor, Paul Kennedy).
Populists and Patricians (Routledge Revivals)
First published in 1987, this collection of essays, from one of the leading historians in the field, is concerned with the central debates about German history from Bismarck to Hitler. David Blackbourn questions many previously held assumptions, whether about the natural conservatism of the German peasantry of the ‘feudalization’ of the middle classes, and offers an innovative approach to such subjects as liberalism, anti-semitism and the continuing importance of religion in German history. Bringing together social, economic, cultural and political history, each essay is concerned with the social and political flux that characterized the period, and with the problems and opportunities it presented. This reissue will be of great value to any students and academics with an interest in the history of modern Germany.
A Demon-Haunted Land
This account of German citizens swept up in a wave of supernatural obsessions after WWII and the Holocaust is “an engrossing story from beginning to end” (Booklist). In the aftermath of World War II in Germany, a messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder. What linked these events, in the wake of an annihilationist war and the Holocaust, was a widespread preoccupation with evil. While many histories emphasi...
The Peculiarities of German History
A well-written, stimulating...piece of scholarship. —German Studies Review. In a major re-evaluation of the cultural, political, and sociological assumptions about the "peculiar" course of modern German history, the authors challenge the widely held belief that Germany did not have a Western-style bourgeois revolution. Contending that it did indeed experience one, but that this had little to do with the mythical rising of the middle class, the authors provide a new context for viewing the tensions and instability of 19th-and early 20th-century Germany.
The German Bourgeoisie (Routledge Revivals)
First published in 1991, this collection of original studies by British, German and American historians examines the whole range of modern German bourgeoisie groups, including professional, mercantile, industrial and financial bourgeoisie, and the bourgeois family. Drawing on original research, the book focuses on the historical evidence as counterpoint to the well-known literary accounts of the German bourgeoisie. It also discusses bourgeois values as manifested in the cult of local roots and in the widespread practice of duelling. Edited by two of the most respected scholars in the field, this important reissue will be of value to any students of modern German and European history.
