Memory and History

Die Reihe "Geschichte - Erinnerung - Politik. Posener Studien zur Geschichts-, Kultur- und Politikwissenschaft" umfasst Publikationen, die sich im weitesten Sinn mit Erinnerungskultur aus polnischer Perspektive befassen. Die Serie verfolgt das Ziel, dem Leser die Leistungen vieler wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen vor Augen zu führen, u. a. der Geschichtswissenschaft, der Soziologie, der Anthropologie, der Kulturwissenschaft, der Literaturwissenschaft, der Politikwissenschaft und der Philosophie.

This book brings together eighteen English language essays on the fringes, overlap, and tensions of memory and history that the author has published over the last three decades. It is characteristic that the two longest essays in this volume, and the most recent one, are reflections on the author's ambiguity vis-à-vis autobiographical Ego-histoire, on his role and experiences as a government advisor during the international negotiations on compensation for Nazi forced labor, and on the contexts of the essays of this book. The author was also instrumental in bringing Oral History to Germany and making it academically respectable. So the second largest part of this book displays some examples of his approaches to German 'Erfahrungsgeschichte' West and East, and to their roots in and beyond the Nazi period, being analytical and literary at the same time. The third major group of essays documents some of the author's interventions into intellectual and conceptual history: with the examples of 'Collective Identity' and 'Posthistoire' he shows the merits of investigative 'Geistesgeschichte' contesting mainstream intellectual assumptions. With the method of Comparative Considerations he tries to specify the situation of German Labor after the 'Third Reich', the mythological potential of Soviet Special Camps in Germany after World War II, or the perspectives of the German 'Sonderweg' after 1990.

Autorentext

Lutz Niethammer, born 1939 in Stuttgart, studied Theology, History, and Social Sciences mainly at Heidelberg. Professor of Modern History at Essen 1973, Hagen 1982, and Jena 1993, Emeritus 2005. Senior advisor, Imre Kertész Kolleg on Europe s East in the 20th Century. Visiting scholar at Oxford, Paris, both Berlins of the later Cold War, Basle, Florence, Vienna, and Warsaw. Founding director, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (Essen), member, Kuratorium Buchenwald, and government advisor on compensation for Nazi forced labor. His fields include German and European transformations after 1945 and after 1989, social and urban history, oral history, memory and generational studies, and intellectual history.

Inhalt
Contents: Ego-Histoire? Oral History in Germany West and East The Perils of Collective Identity The late Compensation for Nazi Slave Labour Comparative Reflexions on Postwar German Labour Soviet Special Camps in Germany The Continuation of the German 'Sonderweg' Posthistoire or the Post-totalitarian End of History.