Part I
Write a short essay of 2-3 paragraphs on one of the following topics.
1. How did German’s deal with (“work through”) the history and memory of the Nazi period and the Holocaust in the two Germanies between 1945 and 1990?
2. How did notions of German nationalism and German identity evolve in the post-war era?
Part II
Write a short essay of 2-3 paragraphs summarizing the main points of one of the below articles:
1. Robert Gellately, “The Gestapo and German Society: Political Denunciation in the Gestapo Case Files”
2. Alon Confino, “Edgar Reitz’s Heimat and German Nationhood: Film, Memory, and Understandings of the Past”
Part III
This essay focuses on your reading of Berger, Inventing the Nation. Germany.
Choose one of the below:
1. What was the role of the military and militarism in German national identity? How has the role of the military and militarism evolved between 1848 and 2009?
2. In what ways are gender roles and particularly the role and place of women important in how Germans have “imagined” their nation?
3. How strong is the democratic tradition in Germany and how has democracy fared in its conflict with authoritarian forms of politics in German history? Do not neglect the post-1945 period in discussing this issue.
4. Germans have often understood (or “constructed”) their identity along racial or ethnic lines. Discuss racial/ethnic constructions of German identity and nationalism across the period we have discussed in this course.
Part IV
Essay on Holocaust and Historical Memory
Choose one of the below:
1. What aspects of German culture and political culture would you identify as important in the rise of the Nazis? How far back into 19th century German history can you traces these issues and what happened to them after 1945?
2. How would you characterize the relationship between World War Two and the Holocaust? Crudely put, was the Holocaust the result of the Nazis taking advantage of the opportunity created by the war, or was it the result of a long-term plan or program that was inherent to Nazi ideology? Make sure you use the Browning and Bartov books for this question, as well as Berger and other readings from the course.
3. Does the overriding concern with the Nazis and the Holocaust undermine an effective historical understanding of German history in the modern period? Or, does the centrality of this “historical moment” provide German history with a focus that gives modern German history a particular coherence?
