The Thirty Years War and German Memory: From ' Historikerstreit 2.0' to a 'New Germany'.
This essay discusses the return to mainstream scholarship of the idea of the Thirty Years War as the historical traumatization of the German nation. Although constructed by nineteenth-century historians to nationalist ends, this interpretation culminated in the middle of the twentieth century. After...
| Published in: | German History Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 448 - 468 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Sep2025
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191222995&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191222995 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02663554 31M jtl: German History issn: 02663554 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2025 vid: 43 iid: 3 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 191222995 10.1093/gerhis/ghaf037 ppf: 448 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 690KB tig: atl: The Thirty Years War and German Memory: From ' Historikerstreit 2.0' to a 'New Germany'. aug: au: Sander-Faes, Stephan affil: University of Bergen, Norway su: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 Historical trauma Nationalism Holy Roman Empire Collective memory Post-Cold War Period German history sug: subj: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 Historical trauma Nationalism Holy Roman Empire Collective memory Post-Cold War Period German history ab: This essay discusses the return to mainstream scholarship of the idea of the Thirty Years War as the historical traumatization of the German nation. Although constructed by nineteenth-century historians to nationalist ends, this interpretation culminated in the middle of the twentieth century. After 1945, it initially lost its relevance, with West German historians eventually beginning, from the 1960s onwards, to reinterpret the Holy Roman Empire in a much more positive way. Yet, the Historikerstreit of the 1980s and the consequences of German unification altered scholarly—and interpretive—trajectories fundamentally: as interest in the events between 1618 and 1648 increased again after the end of the Cold War, the idea of a 'German trauma' returned to the mainstream, albeit confined to popularizing accounts. This essay retraces the origins of the traumatization hypothesis, its most outspoken protagonists and its scholarly, as well as real-world, implications. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: © 2019 German History Society. item: German History holder: Oxford University Press / USA dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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