How did beer become one of the central commodities associated with the German nation? How did a little-known provincial production standard – the Reinheitsgebot, or Beer Purity Law – become a pillar of national consumer sentiments? How did the jovial, beer-drinking German become a fixture in the global imagination? While the connection between beer and Germany seems self-evident, A Nation Fermented reveals how it was produced through a strange brew of regional commercial ...

How did beer become one of the central commodities associated with the German nation? How did a little-known provincial production standard—the Reinheitsgebot, or Beer Purity Law—become a pillar of national consumer sentiments? How did the jovial, beer-drinking German become a fixture in the global imagination?While the connection between beer and Germany seems self-evident, A Nation Fermented reveals how it was produced through a strange brew of regional commerci...

**Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize • One of The Telegraph’s 50 Best Books of 2023 • Named a Best Book of 2024 by Kirkus ReviewsA gripping and nuanced history of the German people from the Second World War to the present day, including hugely revealing new primary source material on every aspect of its transformation.**In 1945, Germany lay ruined. Its citizens stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and war of exterminatio...

In the spring of 1945, as the German army fell in defeat and the world first learned of the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, few would have expected that, only half a century later, the Germans would emerge as a prosperous people at the forefront of peaceful European integration. How did the Germans manage to recover from the shattering experience of defeat in World War II and rehabilitate themselves from the shame and horror of the Holocaust? In After Hitler, Konrad H. Jaraus...

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they promised to build a vibrant consumer society. But they faced a dilemma. They recognized that consolidating support for the regime required providing Germans with the products they desired. At the same time, the Nazis worried about the degrading cultural effects of mass consumption and its association with 'Jewish' interests. This book examines how both the state and private companies sought to overcome this predicament. Drawing on a wide range of ...

In the 1980s and 1990s, Black German women began to play significant roles in challenging the discrimination in their own nation and abroad. Their grassroots organizing, writings, and political and cultural activities nurtured innovative traditions, ideas, and practices. These strategies facilitated new, often radical bonds between people from disparate backgrounds across the Black Diaspora.Tiffany N. Florvil examines the role of queer and straight women in shaping the contours of ...

Challenging assumptions about the separation of high politics and everyday life, Belinda Davis uncovers the important influence of the broad civilian populace — particularly poorer women — on German domestic and even military policy during World War I.As Britain’s wartime blockade of goods to Central Europe increasingly squeezed the German food supply, public protests led by “women of little means” broke out in the streets of Berlin and other German cities. These “street scenes” ri...

Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free mark...

In The Heroic Earth, David T. Murphy argues that geopolitical ideas were most dynamic and significant in Germany not during the Nazi era (1933-45) but in the democratic culture of the Weimar republic (1919-33). By helping to condition the German population to geopolitical ideas, which emphasized revision of the Versailles settlement and enlarging Germany’s living space, geopolitics helped contribute to Nazi imperialism. From the defeat of Germany in 1918 until the rise of National...

A comprehensive history and examination of global infrastructures and the outsized role they play in our lives.Infrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today’s strongest global force over government and individual lives. Who should build and maintain infrastructures? How are they to be protected? And why are they all in such bad shape? In Lifelines of Our Society,...

This book is the first comprehensive survey of women in the Weimar Republic, exploring the diversity and multiplicity of women’s experiences in the economy, politics and society. Taking the First World War as a starting point, this book explores the great changes in the lives, expectations, and perceptions of German women, with new opportunities in employment, education and political life and greater freedoms in their private and social life, all played out in the media spotlight. Engaging...

From 1884 to 1914, the world's fourth-largest overseas colonial empire was that of the German Kaiserreich. Yet this fact is little known in Germany and the subject remains virtually absent from most school textbooks. While debates are now common in France and Britain over the impact of empire on former colonies and colonizing societies, German imperialism has only more recently become a topic of wider public interest. In 2015, the German government belatedly and half-heartedly conceded tha...