(These eleven essays are concerned with the central debates about German history from Bismarck to Hitler. David Blackbourn is one of the leading historians in the field and this collection of writing, which includes pieces previously unpublished or hitherto unavailable in English, opens up many unfamiliar aspects of the period as well as providing fresh interpretations of more familiar themes.The author questions many widely held assumptions, whether about the natural conservatism of the German peasantry or the 'feudalization' of the middle classes, and offers a new angle of approach to subjects such as liberalism, anti-semitism and the continuing importance of religion in German history. These essays bring together social, economic, cultural and political history, and cover subjects that range from Thomas Mann to agricultural tariffs, from Bismarck's politics to apparitions of the Virgin Mary. All are concerned, however, with the extraordinary social and political flux that characterized the period, and with the problems and opportunities it presented.This book broadens our understanding of the tensions that existed in Germany before the First World War, and it advances powerful new arguments about the continuities that linked Imperial Germany with the Weimar Republic and the advent of National Socialism. It will be essential reading for all those who teach or study the history of modem Gennany)

Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History

Politics & Social Sciences

BLACKBOURN, David

Social Sciences

Unwin Hyman

The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918

In the late eighteenth century, German-speaking Europe was a patchwork of principalities and lordships. Most people lived in the countryside, and just half survived until their late twenties. By the beginning of our own century, unified Germany was the most powerful state in Europe. No longer a provincial "land of poets and thinkers," the country had been transformed into an industrial and military giant with an advanced welfare system. 
The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918, is a masterful account of this transformation. Spanning 150 years, from the eve of the French Revolution to the end of World War I, it introduces readers to crucial areas of German social and cultural history -- demography and social structure, work and leisure, education and religion -- while providing a comprehensive account of political events. The text explains how Germany came to be unified, and the consequences of that unification. It describes the growing role of the state and new ways in which rulers asserted their authority, but questions cliches about German "obedience." Drawing on a generation of work devoted to migration, housing, crime, medicine, and popular culture, Blackbourn offers a powerful and original account of a changing society, trying to do justice to the experiences of contemporary Germans, both women and men. Informed by the latest scholarship, this book provides a complete and up-to-date alternative to conventional political histories of this period.

History

Europe

Oxford University Press

In the late eighteenth century, German-speaking Europe was a patchwork of principalities and lordships. Most people lived in the countryside, and just half survived until their late twenties. By the beginning of our own century, unified Germany was the most powerful state in Europe. No longer a provincial "land of poets and thinkers," the country had been transformed into an industrial and military giant with an advanced welfare system. The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918, is a masterful account of this transformation. Spanning 150 years, from the eve of the French Revolution to the end of World War I, it introduces students to crucial areas of German social and cultural history -- demography and social structure, work and leisure, education and religion -- while providing a comprehensive account of political events. The text explains how Germany came to be unified, and the consequences of that unification. It describes the growing role of the state and new ways in which rulers asserted their authority, but questions clichés about German "obedience." It also looks at the ways in which the factory, the railway, and the movement into towns created new social relations and altered perceptions of time and place. Drawing on a generation of work devoted to migration, housing, crime, medicine, and popular culture, Blackbourn offers a powerful and original account of a changing society, trying to do justice to the experiences of contemporary Germans, both women and men. Informed by the latest scholarship, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918, provides a complete and up-to-date alternative to conventional political histories of this period and is essential reading for undergraduates in German history and political science courses.

In July 1876 three eight-year-old girls from Marpingen, a village in the west German border region of Saarland, claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Their visions attracted tens of thousands of pilgrims and prompted numerous claims of miraculous cures. They also led to military intervention, the dispatching of an undercover detective, parliamentary debate, and a dramatic trial. This book examines an episode that contemporaries dubbed the 'German Lourdes', its background and its repercussions. David Blackbourn sets out to recreate the Catholic world of Bismarckian Germany through a detailed analysis of the changing social, economic, and community structures in which it was embedded, and a sensitive account of popular religious beliefs. He powerfully evokes the crisis-laden atmosphere of the 1870s, and offers a subtle interpretation of the interplay between politics and religion in newly unified Germany. The book ranges boldly across the fields of social, cultural and political history, in an engrossing story with many contemporary resonances.

Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany

Clarendon Pr

"A well-written, stimulating. . . piece of scholarship." -German Studies Review. In a major re-evaluation of the cultural, political, and sociological assumptions about the "peculiar" course of modern German history, the authors challenge the widely-held belief that Germany did not have a Western-style bourgeois revolution. Contending that it did indeed experience one, but that this had little to do with the mythical rising of the middle class, the authors provide a new context for viewing the tensions and instability of 19th-and early 20th-century Germany.

The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Eley, Geoff

This book investigates the role of bourgeoisie society and the political developments of the nineteenth century in the peculiarities of German history. Most historians attribute German exceptionalism to the failure or absence of bourgeois revolution in German history and the failure of the bourgeoisie to conquer the pre-industrial traditions of authoritarianism. However, this study finds that there was a bourgeois revolution in Germany, though not the traditional type. This so-called silent bourgeois revolution brought about the emergence and consolidation of the capitalist system based on the sanctity and disposability of private property and on production to meet individual needs through a system of exchange dominated by the market. In this connection, this book proposes a redefinition of the concept of bourgeois revolution to denote a broader pattern of material, institutional, legal, and intellectual changes whose cumulative effect was all the more powerful for coming to be seen as natural.

Peculiarities of German History

The Conquest of Nature

"Brilliantly conceived....[A] tour de force in historical writing."―Ian Kershaw Majestic and lyrically written, The Conquest of Nature traces the rise of Germany through the development of water and landscape. David Blackbourn begins his morality tale in the mid-1700s, with the epic story of Frederick the Great, who attempted―by importing the great scientific minds of the West and by harnessing the power of his army―to transform the uninhabitable marshlands of his scattered kingdom into a modern state. Chronicling the great engineering projects that reshaped the mighty Rhine, the emergence of an ambitious German navy, and the development of hydroelectric power to fuel Germany's convulsive industrial growth before World War I, Blackbourn goes on to show how Nazi racial policies rested on German ideas of mastery of the natural world. Filled with striking reproductions of paintings, maps, and photographs, this grand work of modern history links culture, politics, and the environment in an exploration of the perils faced by nations that attempt to conquer nature. 70 illustrations

The Conquest of Nature: Water & the Making of the Modern German Landscape

W.W.Norton

1980 Hardcover. No dust jacket. Minimal wear, foxing on outer edges, remainder mark, otherwise nice clean readable copy.

Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wurttemberg before 1914

Politics & Government

Yale University Press

"Brilliantly conceived....[A] tour de force in historical writing."―Ian Kershaw Majestic and lyrically written, The Conquest of Nature traces the rise of Germany through the development of water and landscape. David Blackbourn begins his morality tale in the mid-1700s, with the epic story of Frederick the Great, who attempted―by importing the great scientific minds of the West and by harnessing the power of his army―to transform the uninhabitable marshlands of his scattered kingdom into a modern state. Chronicling the great engineering projects that reshaped the mighty Rhine, the emergence of an ambitious German navy, and the development of hydroelectric power to fuel Germany's convulsive industrial growth before World War I, Blackbourn goes on to show how Nazi racial policies rested on German ideas of mastery of the natural world. Filled with striking reproductions of paintings, maps, and photographs, this grand work of modern history links culture, politics, and the environment in an exploration of the perils faced by nations that attempt to conquer nature. 70 illustrations

The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany

Americas

W.W.Norton&Company

"Brilliantly conceived....[A] tour de force in historical writing."―Ian Kershaw Majestic and lyrically written, The Conquest of Nature traces the rise of Germany through the development of water and landscape. David Blackbourn begins his morality tale in the mid-1700s, with the epic story of Frederick the Great, who attempted―by importing the great scientific minds of the West and by harnessing the power of his army―to transform the uninhabitable marshlands of his scattered kingdom into a modern state. Chronicling the great engineering projects that reshaped the mighty Rhine, the emergence of an ambitious German navy, and the development of hydroelectric power to fuel Germany's convulsive industrial growth before World War I, Blackbourn goes on to show how Nazi racial policies rested on German ideas of mastery of the natural world. Filled with striking reproductions of paintings, maps, and photographs, this grand work of modern history links culture, politics, and the environment in an exploration of the perils faced by nations that attempt to conquer nature. 70 illustrations

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BLACKBOURN, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BLACKBOURN, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BLACKBOURN, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History

The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918

The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918

Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany

The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Peculiarities of German History

The Conquest of Nature: Water & the Making of the Modern German Landscape

Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wurttemberg before 1914

The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany

The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany