131-058 The Rise & Fall of the German Empire

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 25 points of First Year History, see Prerequisites.

Semester

Subject Description

This subject is 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 the 20th century emergence of Nazism and the Third Reich. Students should become familiar with topics such as: 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.