Weitere Publikationen von Stefan Berger

Berger Search for normality
Stefan Berger
The Search for Normality
National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800

386 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-57181-620-7

Oxford/New York: Berghahn Books Inc 1997

2. Auflage mit neuem Vorwort: "The Search for Normality" Six Years Later: History
Writing and National Identity in Germany at the Beginning of the 21st Century', 2003.


The Historikerstreit of the 1980s has ended inconclusively amidst heated debates on the nature and course of German national history. The author follows the debates beyond the unexpected reunification of the country in 1989/90 and analyses the most recent trends in German historiography. Reunification, he observes, has brought in its wake efforts on the extreme right to re-establish a nationalist historiography. Even among the liberal-conservative mainstream of German historiography, an urgent search for the "normality" of the nation-state has begun. Nor have the critical historians been unaffected by this. As a result, so the author fears, the contested definition of national identity might strengthen the, in his eyes, unwelcome predominance of the national perspective in historical research.