131-267 The Rise and Fall of Imperial Germany 1848-1918

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Available as 131-367 at 3rd-year level.

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Subject Description

A survey of the political, social, economic and cultural development of Germany from the 1848 Revolution through the catastrophe of World War I. The subject will explore the controversial contention that modern German history has followed a Sonderweg, a peculiar historical path which helps to explain in part the fateful emergence in the twentieth century of Nazism and the Third Reich. Topics will include: the 1848 Revolution, the development of industrial capitalism and a class society, Bismarck and the unification of Germany, the nature of the Second Reich, the invention of German nationalism, bourgeois culture and the emergence of a counter-culture, the creation of the German working class, the status of women, German imperialism and world policy, the Radical Right and the pre-1914 crisis, the course and impact of World War I, and the collapse of Imperial Germany.

Assessment

Essays, class papers and assignments totalling not more than 5000 words.