Writing the history of revolutions in Germany — Australian Historical Association annual conference hosted by The Australian National University

Writing the history of revolutions in Germany (217)

Andrew Bonnell 1
  1. University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

An opportunity to write a book on the history of revolution in modern Germany raises large questions of method and scale, as the proposed work will cover 200 years from 1789 to 1989. The project will examine the history of revolution in modern Germany by focussing on key revolutionary developments in the German states – Germany and the French revolution, the 1848 revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, the 1918-19 revolution, the Nazi “revolution” of 1933, the revolution from above in Eastern Germany 1945-49, and the revolution in East Germany in 1989-90. It will seek to shed new light on this history by: stressing the continuity of conflicts between revolution and counter-revolution in German history, thereby restoring a sense of the dramatic social conflicts that punctuated the history of modern Germany; stressing the wider European and transnational developments of revolutionary (and counter-revolutionary) movements and events; and by seeking to reconstruct a sense of participants’ changing “horizon of expectations” during these events and their associated social and political changes. This will include incorporating specific examples of how the events under discussion were experienced at the time by individual men and women who participated in them.

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