The End of National Histories? Anglo-German Relations in Historiography
The symposium and workshop bring together historians from Germany, the UK, and the US to debate and evaluate current developments in historical research on Germany. The conference focusses on the interconnections between English-speaking and German historical scholarship from the nineteenth century to the present.
Firstly, we will discuss how distinct traditions and different working conditions at universities in Germany, the UK and the US have influenced the study of German history. This is not an attempt to reframe historiography in national paradigms. However, we take seriously the fact that historiography as an academic discipline has emerged and developed in the context of nation-building, especially in Germany. This political context has profoundly shaped the questions asked by historians and it is a perspective that historians have only recently begun to question. Increasingly working together on multilateral research projects, they are ever more engaged in comparative histories of the European states and nations. At the same time, they emphasise more than ever before the need to consider the global alliances and networks of these states. The conference will consider how such collaborative work can be further enhanced in the future. We aim to evaluate the current state of Anglo-German academic collaboration and examine differences in institutional structures, funding systems, and academic career schemes. How can historians continue to weave together discourses in the time of seeming power-political divisions?
Secondly, the conference seeks to historicise the apparent divide between public discourse and academic research in the US, the UK and Germany. While many historians have proclaimed the end of national histories in favour of comparative and transnational approaches, populist voices in many countries have renewed the quest for national master narratives. This raises the question of how historians interact with a broader public. A new focus on the impact of academic research has recently motivated many UK-based historians to seek new ways of communicating with the public. German historians, on the other hand, have traditionally featured prominently in the Feuilleton of the leading national newspapers. They frame political events historically and integrate them or set them apart from dominant historical narratives. The prominence of the historian’s voice in German public discourse seems not so much driven by academic line managers demanding a measurable output but by the traditional role accorded to the intellectual-historian in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. We want to assess similarities and differences in the historians’ relations with the public and identify ways to counter the divide between academic elites and a wider readership.
Lastly, we want to discuss how perspectives on the history of Germany change if we cease to refer to Western liberal democracies as a corrective. The long-term political, cultural, and intellectual consequences of Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency are unforeseeable. Yet, it seems that the perceived ‘fall of liberalism’ in the leading nations of ‘the West’ has had an intellectually productive effect on historians of Germany. They are showing a renewed interest in the liberal or federal continuities of German history, without, however, diminishing the singularity of the Holocaust and the Third Reich. In other words, the current power-political climate has furthered an interest in re-examining the continuities of German history. We want to discuss these in the light of recent historiography.
Special Announcement: On the evening of 21 March, Konrad H. Jarausch (Chapel Hill) will discuss his recent books ‘Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century’ (Princeton UP, 2015) and ‘Broken Lives How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century’ (Princeton UP 2018) with Oliver F. J. Haardt (Cambridge). This event will take place at Sidney Sussex College Cambridge (Knox Shaw Room).
The symposium and workshop as well as the book talk are funded by the DAAD Research Hub for German Studies and the Tiarks Fund in Cambridge.
Cambridge
22.03.2019
Programm
10-1030 – Welcome and Opening – Thomas Dahms and Margarete Tiessen (both Cambridge)
1030-12 – ‘Anglo-German Relations in Historiography, Past and Present’, PANEL DISCUSSION, chaired by Timothy Schmalz (Cambridge)
With: Patrick Bahners (F. A. Z.), Stefan Berger (Bochum), Konrad Jarausch (Chapel Hill), Jan Rueger (London), and Maiken Umbach (Nottingham)
1330-15 – WORKSHOP PANEL I, chaired by Mary-Ann Middelkoop (Cambridge)
Len Scales (Durham): Making Medieval Europeans: Some Recent British and German Perspectives
Jan Tattenberg (Oxford): Demilitarising Military History? Anglo-German Historiography in/on Conflict
Daniel Siemens (Newcastle): Writing Modern German History from the East
1530-1645 – WORKSHOP PANEL II, chaired by Sabine Lee (Birmingham)
Martina Steber (Munich): National Trajectories and European Horizons: British and West German Conservatism after 1945
Patrick Bahners (F. A. Z.): How Not to Be Special: Heinrich August Winkler on Germany and the West
1645-1745 – KEYNOTE, chaired by Charlotte Johann (Cambridge)
Sir Richard J. Evans (Cambridge): British Historians and the German Past: Half a Century of Changing Perspectives
1745-1830 – CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-39449