Download full text
(651.2Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-379187
Exports for your reference manager
Contemporary history as transatlantic project: autobiographical reflections on the German problem 1960-2010
Zeitgeschichte als transatlantisches Projekt: autobiographische Überlegungen zur deutschen Frage
[journal article]
Abstract "This autobiographical retrospective discusses the author's scholarship as an example of the topical and methodological development of contemporary history. In contrast to nationally bound scholars, his career in the United States and involvement in German debates illuminates the transatlantic conne... view more
"This autobiographical retrospective discusses the author's scholarship as an example of the topical and methodological development of contemporary history. In contrast to nationally bound scholars, his career in the United States and involvement in German debates illuminates the transatlantic connections of historicizing the recent past. The need to confront the Nazi dictatorship initially privileged political history, but the societal upheavals of the 1960 shifted interests towards quantitative methods and the new social history. The peaceful revolution of 1989 then challenged historians to establish a nuanced interpretation of the GDR in scholarship and memory culture. At the same time the cultural turn called for an engagement with postmodern methods of narratology, transforming theoretical approaches towards constructivism. The growing sensitivity towards the European and global embeddedness of the German past finally inspired a move towards transnational perspectives. This intellectual trajectory is therefore emblematic of successive changes which opened contemporary history towards a new plurality." (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
contemporary history; Nazism; German Democratic Republic (GDR); GDR research; culture of remembrance; politics; transnationalization; political history; quantitative method; World War II; biography; political science; social history; Weimar Republic (Germany, 1918-33); cooperation; science; pluralism; reunification; historical analysis; history of science; cultural turn
Classification
General History
Social History, Historical Social Research
Sociology of Science, Sociology of Technology, Research on Science and Technology
Document language
English
Publication Year
2012
Page/Pages
p. 7-49
Journal
Historical Social Research, Supplement (2012) 24
Issue topic
Contemporary history as transatlantic project: the German problem 1960-2010
ISSN
0936-6784
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed