Social history , often called "history from below", is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians.
182-634: Martin Broszat (14 August 1926 – 14 October 1989) was a German historian specializing in modern German social history . As director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History) in Munich from 1972 until his death, he became known as one of the world's most eminent scholars of Nazi Germany . Broszat joined the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in 1955 after obtaining his PhD from
364-658: A communist party , before being democratized and liberalized in 1989 as a result of the pressure against communist governments brought by the Revolutions of 1989 . This paved the way for East Germany's reunification with the West. Unlike the government of West Germany, the SED did not see its state as the successor to the German Reich (1871–1945) and abolished the goal of unification in the constitution ( 1974 ). The SED-ruled GDR
546-715: A legal fiction , and the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR. The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949). The Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West Berlin. The Allies countered
728-476: A "weak dictator" (to use Mommsen's phrase) and the government of Nazi Germany a polycracy (rule by many), not a monocracy (rule by one). It was the chaos of the government that led to the collapse of the state and what Kershaw called the "accelerating progression into barbarism". Broszat wrote: Because of the multiplicity of conflicting forces the Fuhrer's will (even when Hitler had something different in mind)
910-632: A conference between Hitler and the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy , in April 1943 by re-arranging the words to make Hitler appear less brutally antisemitic than the original notes showed. Broszat was a pioneer of Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life). He led the "Bavaria Project" between 1977 and 1983, a comprehensive look at Alltagsgeschichte in Bavaria between 1933 and 1945. The six-volume Bayern in der NS-Zeit ("Bavaria in
1092-480: A dubious educational background but not by the college professor Ernst Nolte." He argued that Andreas Hillgruber had come close to being a Nazi apologist and that Nolte's arguments had, indeed (without any intention on his part), turned into apologetics. He ended his essay by arguing that, to ensure the German people a better future, they should not be persuaded to become less critical of their past. Broszat's call for
1274-460: A few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years. Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient Democratic movement, Neues Forum , to schedule free elections and begin the process of democratization. As part of this process,
1456-404: A firm basis for higher education and advanced research institutions. It was a story of enlightenment and modernization triumphing over ignorance, cost-cutting, and narrow traditionalism whereby parents tried to block their children's intellectual access to the wider world. Teachers dedicated to the public interest, reformers with a wide vision, and public support from the civic-minded community were
1638-640: A free and fair election was held in the country, and international negotiations between the four former Allied countries and the two German states commenced. The negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty , which replaced the Potsdam Agreement on the status and borders of a future, reunited Germany. The GDR ceased to exist when its five states ("Länder") joined the Federal Republic of Germany under Article 23 of
1820-637: A labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17 June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some 700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution , on 18 June 1953 the government of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty people were killed and 10,000 were jailed (see Uprising of 1953 in East Germany ). The German war reparations owed to
2002-464: A limited range of sources to a vast array of records created by modern bureaucracies. Social history flourished. Social history had a "golden age" in Canada in the 1970s, and continues to flourish among scholars. Its strengths include demography, women, labour, and urban studies. Events of Africa's general social history since the 20th century refer to the colonial era for most of the countries with
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#17327650721472184-409: A notion. With Hans Mommsen , Broszat developed a "structuralist" or "functionalist" interpretation of Nazi Germany, arguing in his 1969 book Der Staat Hitlers ( The Hitler State ) that the government had consisted of a welter of competing institutions and power struggles, and that this internal rivalry, not Adolf Hitler , had been the driving force behind the regime. In Broszat's view, Hitler had been
2366-555: A picnic near the border at Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria). The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus
2548-605: A primary goal of ridding East Germany of all traces of Nazism . It is estimated that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were sentenced to imprisonment on political grounds. In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR, France) military government effective until
2730-615: A senior official in the West German Ministry of Health, of having helped to liquidate Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto , Broszat and other experts from the Institut für Zeitgeschichte tried to silence him during an exchange of letters in 1963. Hagen, who had worked during the war in the health department of the General Government area of German-occupied Poland, insisted he had done everything in his power to save
2912-546: A six-volume work about Bavaria under National Socialism , Bayern in der NS-Zeit (1977–1983). In 1985, he began the debate about the historicization of Nazi Germany, arguing that it should be studied like any other period of history, without moralizing and with recognition of its complexity. Born in Leipzig , Germany (the Weimar Republic ), to a Protestant family, the second son of a postmaster, Broszat attended
3094-700: A socialist political constitution establishing its control of the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, Nationale Front der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik ), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the Volkskammer ( People's Chamber ), the East German parliament. The first and only president of
3276-700: A thesis on German antisemitism, Die antisemitische Bewegung im Wilhelminischen Deutschland ("The antisemitism movement in Germany during the Wilhelmine period"). As a teenager, Broszat joined the Hitler Youth in Großdeuben (now part of Böhlen ), at a time when membership was mandatory for "Aryans". In 1944 a membership card for the Nazi Party was issued for him. Broszat acknowledged having joined
3458-593: A train convoy in November 1941 of German Jews passing through Berlin to Riga (whom the SS intended to have shot on arrival) was proof that Hitler did not want the Holocaust. Broszat argued that the "No liquidation" comment referred only to that train and was probably related to concerns that American reporters had been asking about the fate of German Jews deported to Eastern Europe. Broszat criticized Irving for accepting
3640-430: A war-time memo written by Hagen urging that sick Jews "wandering around" be shot down. At the 1963–1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials , in which 20 of those involved with Auschwitz were prosecuted, Broszat and two other researchers from the Institut für Zeitgeschichte— Helmut Krausnick and Hans Buchheim—served as expert witnesses for the prosecution. Their 300-page report, "Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager", became
3822-462: A wider social history. The work of Alun Howkins has been pivotal in the recent historiography, in relation to these three traditions. Howkins, like his precursors, is constrained by an increasingly anachronistic equation of the countryside with agriculture. Geographers and sociologists have developed a concept of a "post-productivist" countryside, dominated by consumption and representation that may have something to offer historians, in conjunction with
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#17327650721474004-492: Is a bilateral Treaty between two States, to which the rules of international law apply and which like any other international treaty possesses validity, it is between two States that are parts of a still existing, albeit incapable of action as not being reorganized, comprehensive State of the Whole of Germany with a single body politic. Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972. From
4186-626: Is a daily email discussion group that covers the field broadly. Historical demography is the study of population history and demographic processes, usually using census or similar statistical data. It became an important specialty inside social history, with strong connections with the larger field of demography , as in the study of the Demographic Transition . Black history or African-American history studies African Americans and Africans in American history. The Association for
4368-484: Is quite separate from genealogy , though often drawing on the same primary sources, such as censuses and family records. The influential pioneering study Women, Work, and Family (1978) was done by Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott . It broke new ground with their broad interpretive framework and emphasis on the variable factors shaping women's place in the family and economy in France and England. The study considered
4550-579: The Republikflucht ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic opportunities induced a brain drain . In response, the GDR closed the inner German border , and on the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall . In 1971, Ulbricht was removed from leadership after Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev supported his ouster; Erich Honecker replaced him. While
4732-551: The 1956 Hungarian Uprising . The highly influential, but confused, definition used by Thompson was not resolved in part because of the cultural turn and the decline of Marxism on the left in the 1970s and 1980s. Social history is associated in the United Kingdom with the work of E.P. Thompson in particular, and his studies The Making of the English Working Class and Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of
4914-482: The Basic Law , and its capital East Berlin united with West Berlin on 3 October 1990. Several of the GDR's leaders, notably its last communist leader Egon Krenz , were later prosecuted for offenses committed during the GDR era. The official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), usually abbreviated to DDR (GDR). Both terms were used in East Germany, with increasing usage of
5096-419: The Berlin Wall in 1961. Many people attempting to flee were killed by border guards or booby traps such as landmines . In 1989 numerous social, economic, and political forces in the GDR and abroad, one of the most notable being peaceful protests starting in the city of Leipzig , led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the establishment of a government committed to liberalization. The following year,
5278-737: The East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into
5460-591: The Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country – except the Soviets ;– that recognized East German sovereignty. In the early 1970s, the Ostpolitik ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt , established normal diplomatic relations with
5642-499: The SED general secretary Walter Ulbricht assumed most executive authority. Socialist leader Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964) became prime minister until his death. The government of East Germany denounced West German failures in accomplishing denazification and renounced ties to the Nazi past, imprisoning many former Nazis and preventing them from holding government positions. The SED set
Martin Broszat - Misplaced Pages Continue
5824-599: The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet-controlled zone. However, the SED quickly transformed into a full-fledged Communist party as the more independent-minded Social Democrats were pushed out. The Potsdam Agreement committed the Soviets to support a democratic form of government in Germany, though the Soviets' understanding of democracy was radically different from that of
6006-610: The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed on 21 April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalized them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by
6188-755: The United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act . This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973; the German Democratic Republic is in the international-law sense a State and as such a subject of international law. This finding is independent of recognition in international law of the German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany. Such recognition has not only never been formally pronounced by
6370-521: The University of Cologne . His work at the Institute included serving as an expert witness for the prosecution at the 1963–1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials , and helping to debunk the forged Hitler Diaries in 1983. He also held an honorary professorship at the University of Konstanz . According to Ian Kershaw , Broszat made important contributions in four areas. From the late 1950s, he worked on
6552-544: The Wehrmacht ( Stammkompanie des Panzergrenadier -Ersatzbataillons 108, Dresden), followed by officer training, then service at the front . After the war, Broszat studied history at the University of Leipzig in the Soviet occupation zone , later East Germany , from 1946. He graduated in 1949, then undertook graduate studies at the University of Cologne . He obtained his PhD in 1952, supervised by Theodor Schieder , for
6734-534: The Zionist Organization during World War II, had effectively declared war on Germany in 1939, on behalf of world Jewry. Broszat wrote that Weizmann's letter to Neville Chamberlain promising the support of the Jewish Agency against Hitler was not a "declaration of war", nor did Weizmann have the legal power to declare war on anyone: "These facts may be overlooked by a right-wing publicist with
6916-426: The de facto and de jure government, but also the sole de jure legitimate representative of a dormant "Germany as whole". The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each other as both capable of representing their own populations de jure in participating in international bodies and agreements, such as
7098-658: The elections of October 1946 . The SED government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants. In March 1948 the German Economic Commission ( Deutsche Wirtschaftskomission –DWK) under its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus becoming the predecessor of an East German government. On 7 October 1949 the SED established the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic – GDR), based on
7280-463: The end of Communism in Hungary in 1989. Marxist historiography collapsed and social history came into its own, especially the study of the demographic patterns of the early modern period. Research priorities have shifted toward urban history and the conditions of everyday life. When Communism ended in 1991, large parts of the Soviet archives were opened. The historians' data base leapt from
7462-673: The equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer 's role in the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle during Prussia's industrialization. Other notable figures and reformers from Prussian history such as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) were upheld by
Martin Broszat - Misplaced Pages Continue
7644-460: The shock-therapy style of privatization , the artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark , and the speed with which the entire process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt. There were four periods in East German political history. These included: 1949–1961, which saw the building of socialism; 1961–1970 after the Berlin Wall closed off escape
7826-424: The "cultural turn" for not incorporating culture in the history of society, for reducing politics to society, and for reducing individuals to structures. Historians of society inverted the traditional positions they criticized (on the model of Marx's inversion of Hegel). As a result, the problems pertaining to the positions criticized were not resolved but only turned on their heads. The traditional focus on individuals
8008-495: The "fantastic" claims of the SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff that he did not know about the Holocaust (Irving's argument was that if Wolff did not know about it, how could Hitler?), despite the fact that Wolff was convicted of war crimes in 1963 on the basis of documentary evidence implicating him in the Holocaust. Broszat also accused Irving of seeking to generate a highly misleading impression of
8190-586: The "historicization" of the Nazi era involved him in a vigorous debate with three Israeli historians in the latter half of the 1980s: Otto Dov Kulka, Dan Diner, and above all the Franco-Israeli historian Saul Friedländer . The debate between Broszat and Friedländer was conducted through a series of letters between 1987 until Broszat's death in 1989. In 1990 the Broszat-Friedländer correspondence
8372-431: The "social nexus" through which broadscale change occurs. This is reflective of his historical materialism. However, Thompson's 1963 book was disproportionately concerned with the lived experience of forgotten or everyday people. The disparity between a society-wide approach (historical materialism) and the narrower preoccupation with giving voice to the voicesless (justice-seeking) is the basis of present-day confusion about
8554-505: The 'state anti-fascism' of the GDR gave way to the 'state anti-communism' of the FRG. From then on, the dominant interpretation of GDR history, based on the concept of totalitarianism, led to the equivalence of communism and Nazism. Historian Anne-Kathleen Tillack-Graf shows, with the help of the newspaper Neues Deutschland , how the national memorials of Buchenwald , Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück were politically instrumentalised in
8736-665: The 1920s, thanks to the central role of the Annales School . Its journal Annales focuses attention on the synthesizing of historical patterns identified from social, economic, and cultural history, statistics, medical reports, family studies, and even psychoanalysis. Social history developed within West German historiography during the 1950s-60s as the successor to the national history discredited by National Socialism . The German brand of "history of society" - Gesellschaftsgeschichte - has been known from its beginning in
8918-557: The 1930s, despite the efforts of the Nazi regime to stop them, often expressed approval of the antisemitic laws. Through his work on the Bavaria Project, Broszat formed the concept of Resistenz (immunity), which differs from resistance in the sense of Widerstand . Resistenz referred to the ability of institutions such as the Wehrmacht , the Roman Catholic Church and the bureaucracy to enjoy "immunity" from
9100-452: The 1960s for its application of sociological and political modernization theories to German history. Modernization theory was presented by Hans-Ulrich Wehler (1931–2014) and his Bielefeld School as the way to transform "traditional" German history, that is, national political history, centered on a few "great men," into an integrated and comparative history of German society encompassing societal structures outside politics. Wehler drew upon
9282-435: The 1960s. E. P. Thompson identified labour history as the central concern of new social historians because of its "Whiggish narritives", such as the term "labour movement" which erroneously suggests the constant progression toward the perfect future. The older social history included numerous topics that were not part of mainstream historiography, which was then political , military , diplomatic , constitutional history ,
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#17327650721479464-579: The 1990s, the majority of West German historians described the Normandy landings in June 1944 as an "invasion", exonerated the Wehrmacht of its responsibility for the genocide of the Jews and fabricated the myth of a diplomatic corps that "did not know". On the contrary, Auschwitz was never a taboo in the GDR. The Nazis' crimes were the subject of extensive film, theatre and literary productions. In 1991, 16% of
9646-435: The 19th century that reflected not only their relationship to England but also significant contemporaneous economic and social change. This article seeks to create a basis for comparative work by identifying research that has treated this period, offering brief analytical commentaries on some key works, discussing developments in educational historiography, and pointing to lacunae in research. Historians have recently looked at
9828-403: The 21st century— that led to the mass migration of youth and skilled workers. Political and economic stability with respect to measures taken by international donor groups such as sanctions and subsequent responses from various nationals to such measures and Pan-Africanism are other dimensions of Africa's social history. In Australia, social history took on a non-Marxist concern for revealing
10010-451: The American case, see Marilyn Coleman and Lawrence Ganong, eds. The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia (4 vol, 2014). The history of childhood is a growing subfield. For much of the 20th century, the dominant American historiography, as exemplified by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley (1868–1941) at Stanford, emphasized the rise of American education as a powerful force for literacy, democracy, and equal opportunity, and
10192-585: The American public schooling. In recent years most histories of education deal with institutions or focus on the ideas histories of major reformers, but a new social history has recently emerged, focused on who were the students in terms of social background and social mobility. In the US attention has often focused on minority and ethnic students. In Britain, Raftery et al. (2007) looks at the historiography on social change and education in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with particular reference to 19th-century schooling. They developed distinctive systems of schooling in
10374-516: The Black Act . Emerging after the second world war, it was consciously opposed to traditional history's focus on 'great men', which it counter-posed with 'History from below'. Thus in the UK social history has often had a strong political impetus, and can be contrasted sharply with traditional history's (partial) documentation of the exploits of the powerful, within limited diplomatic and political spheres, and its reliance on archival sources and methods (see historical method and archive ) that exclude
10556-464: The English author David Irving 's argument in the latter's Hitler's War (1977) that Hitler had wanted to expel the Jews and make Europe judenfrei ("free of Jews") but had not known about the Holocaust until autumn 1943. The genocide of the Jews, Irving wrote, had been ordered by Heinrich Himmler and other senior Nazis. Broszat's essay was first published in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte journal in 1977 and later in English as "Hitler and
10738-585: The FRG. While in West Germany, a work of memory on the resurgence of Nazism was carried out, this was not the case in the East. Indeed, as Axel Dossmann, professor of history at the University of Jena , notes, "this phenomenon was completely hidden. For the state-SED (the East German communist party), it was impossible to admit the existence of neo-Nazis, since the foundation of the GDR was to be an anti-fascist state. The Stasi kept an eye on them, but they were considered to be outsiders or thick-skinned bullies. These young people grew up hearing double talk. At school, it
10920-415: The Federal Republic of Germany but on the contrary repeatedly explicitly rejected. If the conduct of the Federal Republic of Germany towards the German Democratic Republic is assessed in the light of its détente policy, in particular, the conclusion of the Treaty as de facto recognition, then it can only be understood as de facto recognition of a special kind. The special feature of this Treaty is that while it
11102-417: The Federal Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner as Bremen and Hamburg ). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark" was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency. Although the Volkskammer 's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the process of reunification,
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#173276507214711284-400: The French Annales School . According to C. J. Coventry , new social history arose in the 1930s at the University of Cambridge with the Communist Party Historians Group . Citing the reflections of Eric Hobsbawm , a contemporary of Thompson's and a fellow member of the Historians' Group, Coventry shows that the "new" social history popularly associated with Thompson's "history from below"
11466-651: The GDR was established in East Germany in October 1949. The emergence of the two sovereign states solidified the 1945 division of Germany. On 10 March 1952, (in what would become known as the " Stalin Note ") the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , Joseph Stalin , issued a proposal to reunify Germany with a policy of neutrality, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for "the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction, and assembly" and free activity of democratic parties and organizations. The West demurred; reunification
11648-420: The GDR, particularly during the celebrations of the liberation of the concentration camps. Although officially built in opposition to the 'fascist world' in West Germany, in 1954, 32% of public administration employees were former members of the Nazi Party . However, in 1961, the share of former NSDAP members among the senior Interior Ministry administration staff was less than 10% in the GDR, compared to 67% in
11830-431: The GDR. SPDA Vice President Wolfgang Thierse , for his part, complained in Die Welt about the rise of the extreme right in the everyday life of the inhabitants of the former GDR, in particular the terrorist group NSU, with the German journalist Odile Benyahia-Kouider explaining that "it is no coincidence that the neo-Nazi party NPD has experienced a renaissance via the East". The historian Sonia Combe observes that until
12012-421: The Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses". Broszat did accept that there was no evidence of a written order from Hitler to enact the " Final Solution to the Jewish Question ". When faced with the stalemate on the Eastern Front , the overwhelming of the European rail system by successive deportations of Jews to Poland, and the self-imposed "problem" of the three million Polish Jews
12194-404: The German Democratic Republic was Wilhelm Pieck . However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht . On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new Stalinallee boulevard in East Berlin according to the GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design , rioted against a 10% production-quota increase. Initially
12376-454: The German historian Rainer Zitelmann suggested that Broszat's approach was a fruitful one, arguing that just as not everything was evil in the Soviet Union, not everything was evil in Nazi Germany, and that the Nazi regime had accomplished many successful social reforms. Several other scholars supported Broszat's arguments, including the American historian John Lukacs (who said the process of historization had, in fact, begun over 30 years ago),
12558-442: The German labour movement and the victims of the camps, it was "staged, censored, ordered" and, during the 40 years of the regime, was an instrument of legitimisation, repression and maintenance of power. In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The impetus for this exodus of East Germans
12740-451: The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas , the German historian Hans Mommsen , and the British historian Richard J. Evans . The Historikerstreit ("historians' dispute") of 1986–1988 was triggered by an article the German historian Ernst Nolte wrote for the conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in June 1986: "The past that will not pass". Rather than being studied as any other historical period would, Nolte wrote,
12922-433: The Germans had forced into ghettos, German officials in Poland had embarked on improvised killing schemes on their own initiative, he argued. The genocide of the Jews had developed "stück- und schubweise" ("bit by bit"), he wrote, because the Germans had led themselves into a " Sackgasse " ("blind alley"). Broszat's essay was the first account of the origins of the Holocaust by a respected historian in which responsibility for
13104-548: The Hitler Youth, but that a Nazi Party card existed in his name was first made public after his death. It is not known whether he applied to join the party, or whether the card was issued to him automatically as a Hitler Youth member who had come of age; at that point, members were admitted from age 17. His card (number 9994096) is one of ten million held by the German Bundesarchiv . When he applied to study at
13286-496: The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto and asked the Institut für Zeitgeschichte to support his version of events. Broszat wrote a letter to Wulf demanding that he retract his allegations against Hagen "in the interest of the tidiness of the historical document". Ian Kershaw wrote that the correspondence between Broszat and Wulf did not present Broszat in the best light. Broszat accepted Wulf's version of events only after Wulf produced
13468-626: The Königin-Carola Gymnasium from 1937 and completed his Abitur there in 1944. Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, when Broszat was six, and World War II (1939–1945) had started when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, and France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, as they had warned they would. After leaving school, Broszat enlisted and completed basic military training with
13650-534: The National Socialist Era") depicted actions such as refusal to give the Nazi salute as a form of resistance . The emphasis upon resistance in "everyday life" portrayed Widerstand (resistance) in shades of grey, noting that people who refused to behave as the Nazi regime wanted in one area often conformed in others. For example, the Bavarian peasants who did business with Jewish cattle dealers in
13832-710: The Nazi era hung over Germany like a sword. Comparing Auschwitz to the Gulag , he suggested that the Holocaust had been a response to Hitler's fear of the Soviet Union. Although parts of Nolte's argument sounded similar to Broszat's, Broszat strongly criticized Nolte's views in an essay entitled "Wo sich die Geister scheiden" ("Where the Roads Part") in October 1986, also in Die Zeit . He was particularly critical of an earlier claim of Nolte's that Chaim Weizmann , president of
14014-495: The Nazi state was a jumble of competing bureaucracies has been widely accepted by historians. The second element, that Hitler was a "weak dictator", is less accepted. The argument is that, although Hitler did not involve himself much in daily administration, this stemmed not from an inability to do so (as Broszat suggested), but from a lack of interest in the quotidian. In his essay "Hitler und die Genesis der 'Endlösung': Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving" (1977), Broszat criticized
14196-597: The Nazis as the middle classes, who turned to Nazism to alleviate their anxieties about impoverishment and "proletarianization" in the wake of hyperinflation in the early 1920s and the mass unemployment that began with the Great Depression. In 1962 Broszat wrote a letter to the Die Zeit newspaper to "hammer home, once more, the persistently ignored or denied difference between concentration and extermination camps". The Germans had built concentration camps in Germany, but their six extermination camps —built for
14378-848: The Nazis' claims to total power, and to continue functioning according to their traditional values, without having to challenge the regime's political monopoly. Broszat used the Resistenz concept to advance the view that at the local level, there was much continuity in Germany between the Weimar and Nazi eras. In "A Plea for a Historicization of National Socialism", an essay published in Merkur in May 1985, Broszat argued that historians should approach Nazi Germany as they would any other period of history, without moralizing. Recommending an Alltagsgeschichte approach that would allow shades of gray by examining both
14560-672: The Roads Part: History Is Not a Suitable Substitute for a Religion of Nationalism", in James Knowlton and Truett Cates (translators). Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 126 (125–129). Social history Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading from schools of thought in the United Kingdom and France which posited that the Great Man view of history
14742-465: The SED as examples and role models. The communist regime of the GDR based its legitimacy on the struggle of anti-fascist militants. A form of resistance "cult" was established in the Buchenwald camp memorial site, with the creation of a museum in 1958, and the annual celebration of the Buchenwald oath taken on 19 April 1945 by the prisoners who pledged to fight for peace and freedom. In the 1990s,
14924-588: The SED eliminated the clause in the East German constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in the Volkskammer on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0. East Germany held its last election in March 1990 . The winner was Alliance for Germany , a coalition headed by the East German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union , which advocated speedy reunification. Negotiations ( 2+4 Talks) were held involving
15106-452: The Soviets administered their zone without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in 1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone. Seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies,
15288-520: The Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$ 10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. The poverty of East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked
15470-555: The Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin. On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany ( Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany ( Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED – Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands ), which then won
15652-749: The Soviets, its economy became the most successful in the Eastern Bloc . Before its establishment, the country's territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the Berlin Declaration abolishing German sovereignty in World War II . The Potsdam Agreement established the Soviet-occupied zone , bounded on the east by the Oder-Neiße line . The GDR was dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED),
15834-613: The Study of African American Life and History was founded by Carter G. Woodson in 1915 and has 2500 members and publishes the Journal of African American History , formerly the Journal of Negro History. Since 1926 it has sponsored Black History Month every February. Ethnic history is especially important in the US and Canada, where major encyclopedias helped define the field. It covers
16016-695: The USSR via the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , a Communist proponent of reunification, died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria , the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR, pursued German reunification, but he
16198-575: The Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and peasants". Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany
16380-578: The United Nations on 18 September 1973. This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect. Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany
16562-486: The United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and the Soviet Union (USSR), agreed on dividing a defeated Nazi Germany into occupation zones , and on dividing Berlin, the German capital, among the Allied powers as well. Initially, this meant the formation of three zones of occupation, i.e., American, British, and Soviet. Later, a French zone was carved out of the US and British zones. The ruling communist party, known as
16744-643: The University of Leipzig in 1946, he answered no to the question on the form: "Were you a member of the NSDAP?" By then, Leipzig had fallen under the control of the Soviet Union and had been annexed to East Germany . The historian Norbert Frei writes that making a false statement would have been risky, and concludes that Broszat probably did not know that a membership card had been issued in his name. After university, Broszat worked with Theodor Schieder on
16926-581: The West more accessible than ever before, 30,000 East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When the Volkskammer rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned. This left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between East and West. On 9 November 1989,
17108-570: The abbreviated form, especially since East Germany considered West Germans and West Berliners to be foreigners following the promulgation of its second constitution in 1968. West Germans, the western media and statesmen initially avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone (Eastern Zone), Sowjetische Besatzungszone (Soviet Occupation Zone; often abbreviated to SBZ ) and sogenannte DDR or "so-called GDR". The centre of political power in East Berlin
17290-509: The act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and qualifications, some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990 – that is, through a binding agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic, now recognising each other as separate sovereign states in international law. The treaty
17472-503: The area within the boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, this use was not always consistent and West Berliners frequently used the term Westdeutschland to denote the Federal Republic. Before World War II, Ostdeutschland (eastern Germany) was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe ( East Elbia ), as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt . Explaining
17654-706: The barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down their own country's borders. The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did so in
17836-577: The basis of their two-volume book (with Hans-Adolf Jacobsen), Anatomie des SS-Staates (1965), published in English as Anatomy of the SS State (1968). It was the first comprehensive study of Auschwitz and the SS . In Der Staat Hitlers ( The Hitler State ) Broszat argued against characterizing Nazi Germany as a totalitarian regime and criticized Karl Dietrich Bracher and Ernst Nolte for advancing such
18018-597: The beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. Because of the imperial and military legacy of Prussia , the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian aristocracy ; Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed and the Palace of the Republic was built in its place, and
18200-644: The border on the Iron Curtain . In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union , which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg , distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to
18382-432: The bottom-up" and is closely related to "peoples history", associated in popular consciousness with Howard Zinn and his 1980 book, A People's History of the United States . Charles Tilly argues the tasks of the social historian are 1) "documenting large structural changes; 2) reconstructing the experiences of ordinary people in the course of those changes; and (3) connecting the two". Americanist Paul E. Johnson recalls
18564-417: The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg , who proposed it to Miklós Németh , then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay , who did not attend the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev 's reaction to an opening of
18746-564: The capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied Control Council . According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. In practice, the ACC's authority was rendered moot by the Cold War , East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became
18928-411: The constants were anti-communism , antisemitism and a perceived need for Lebensraum . In his view, these were a cloak for the essence of National Socialism: an intense desire to realize the "rebirth" of "the German nation", and irrational hatred of those considered Volksfeinde (enemies of the German people) and Volksfremde (those foreign to the German "race"). Broszat saw the primary supporters of
19110-596: The country's de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States , United Kingdom , and France known collectively as West Berlin ( de facto part of the FRG). Emigration to the West was a significant problem as many emigrants were well-educated young people; such emigration weakened the state economically. In response, the GDR government fortified its inner German border and later built
19292-413: The defeminization of farm work encouraged the rural version of the "women's sphere." These findings strongly contrast with those in the old frontier history as well as those found in the new urban history. The historiography of religion focuses mostly on theology and church organization and development. Recently the study of the social history or religious behavior and belief has become important. While
19474-421: The definition of social history. The confusion arose from Thompson's own inner political turmoil. Staughton Lynd sees Thompson's career as a gradual departure from Marxism until, in his last interview, he declined to describe himself as a Marxist. Where Thompson had said he did not believe in "theory with a capital T" and Marxism, Lynd shows that Thompson's departure was actually much more gradual, beginning with
19656-478: The dimensions of class, gender and race, reflecting a leftist political agenda that assumes outsiders in politics are more interesting than the actual decision makers. Social history, with its leftist political origins, initially sought to link state power to everyday experience in the 1960s. Yet by the 1970s, social historians increasingly excluded analyses of state power from its focus. Social historians have recently engaged with political history through studies of
19838-527: The direction of urbanization. The subfield has flourished in Australia—where most people live in cities. Agricultural History handles the economic and technological dimensions, while Rural history handles the social dimension. Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of modern English rural history and identifies an "orthodox" school, focused on the economic history of agriculture. This historiography has made impressive progress in quantifying and explaining
20020-453: The early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East Germany was recognized primarily by socialist countries and by the Arab bloc , along with some "scattered sympathizers". According to
20202-517: The east), and antisemitism and fascism in south-eastern and eastern Europe. During this period he wrote two books about German involvement in Poland, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik (1961), which examined the German occupation of Poland, and Zweihundert Jahre deutscher Polenpolitik (1963). The work won him accolades in Poland as one of the first German historians to offer an honest account of German–Polish relations. A recurring interest for Broszat
20384-417: The eight-volume Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa (1954–1957), and in 1955 he joined the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. The Institute had been founded to study the Nazi era; the head of its advisory board at the time was Hans Rothfels , who also edited its journal, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Initially Broszat's work focused on German Ostpolitik (policy in
20566-560: The emergence of other approaches to social history, including a social liberal approach and a more ambiguious critical theory approach. In its "golden age" it was a major field in the 1960s and 1970s among young historians, and still is well represented in history departments in Britain, Canada, France, Germany and the United States. In the two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while
20748-582: The exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, which are never colonized. Major processes in the continent involve resistance, independence, reconstruction, self-rule, and the process of modern politics including the formation of the African Union. Post-colonial milestones towards stability, economic growth, and unity have been made with continuous developments. Natural phenomena and subsequent economic effects have been more pronounced in countries such as Ethiopia followed by ethnic-based social crises and violence in
20930-464: The field is declining, and stresses its innovation, modification and renewal. Kirk also detects a move into conservative insularity and academicism. He recommends a more extensive and critical engagement with the kinds of comparative, transnational and global concerns increasingly popular among labour historians elsewhere, and calls for a revival of public and political interest in the topics. Meanwhile, Navickas, (2011) examines recent scholarship including
21112-534: The first application of social history as McQueen's A New Britannia (1970), although some believe Russel Ward 's The Australian Legend (1958) may have been a prototype new social history. The study of the lives of ordinary people was revolutionized in the 1960s by the introduction of sophisticated quantitative and demographic methods, often using individual data from the census and from local registers of births, marriages, deaths and taxes, as well as theoretical models from sociology such as social mobility . H-DEMOG
21294-409: The following weeks. Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party , especially in the city of Leipzig . The Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. The protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against
21476-514: The forerunner of the West German social insurance plan of 1957, with such features as pensions guaranteed by the state indexed to the level of GNP (which was not surprising given that many of the same people worked on both plans). Broszat's "historicization" concept was criticized by the Israeli historian Omer Bartov , who accused Broszat of attempting to white-wash the German past and of trying to diminish Jewish suffering. Bartov argued that Broszat
21658-478: The formation of the Society for the Study of Labour History in 1960. He reports that labour history has been mostly pragmatic, eclectic and empirical; it has played an important role in historiographical debates, such as those revolving around history from below, institutionalism versus the social history of labour, class, populism, gender, language, postmodernism and the turn to politics. Kirk rejects suggestions that
21840-420: The full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command economy . But many East German critics contend that
22022-402: The genocide was not assigned entirely to Hitler. Christopher Browning wrote that, after Broszat's essay, "the floodgates opened", and the issue of when and whether Hitler had made a decision to kill the Jews became for a time the key issue of Holocaust historiography. In the same essay, Broszat was extremely critical of Irving's handling of sources, accusing him of repeatedly seeking to distort
22204-453: The heady early promise of the movement in the late 1960s: The Social Science History Association was formed in 1976 to bring together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history. It is still active and publishes Social Science History quarterly. The field is also the specialty of the Journal of Social History , edited since 1967 by Peter Stearns It covers such topics as gender relations; race in American history;
22386-485: The heroes. The textbooks help inspire students to become public schools teachers and thereby fulfill their own civic mission. The crisis came in the 1960s, when a new generation of New Left scholars and students rejected the traditional celebratory accounts, and identified the educational system as the villain for many of America's weaknesses, failures, and crimes. Michael Katz (1939–2014) states they: The old guard fought back and bitter historiographical contests, with
22568-638: The historical record in Hitler's favour. He complained that Irving focused too much on military events at the expense of the broader political context, and that he accepted Nazi claims at face value, such as accepting the claim that the Action T4 "euthanasia" program of the "incurably sick" began in September 1939 to free up hospital space for wounded German soldiers, when in fact it began in January 1939. Broszat criticized Irving's claim that one telephone note written by Himmler stating "No liquidation" with regard to
22750-452: The histories of collective action, environment and human ecology, and gender issues, with a focus on work by James Epstein, Malcolm Chase , and Peter Jones. Women's history exploded into prominence in the 1970s, and is now well represented in every geographical topic; increasingly it includes gender history. Social history uses the approach of women's history to understand the experiences of ordinary women, as opposed to "Great Women," in
22932-636: The history of great men and intellectual history . It was a hodgepodge without a central theme, and it often included political movements, such as populism , that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. The popular view is that new social history emerged in the 1960s with the publication of Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963). Writing in 1966 in The Times Literary Supplement , Thompson described his approach as "history from below" and explained that it had come from earlier developments within
23114-558: The history of Eastern Europe, especially Poland, and on Nazi concentration camps . This led to his exploration of the structure of the Nazi German state, which resulted in his book Der Staat Hitlers (1969), published in English as The Hitler State (1981). In the 1970s he became interested in Alltagsgeschichte and examined everyday life under the Nazis, developing the concept of " Resistenz " (immunity) and co-editing
23296-470: The history of ethnic groups (usually not including Black or Native Americans). Typical approaches include critical ethnic studies; comparative ethnic studies; critical race studies; Asian-American, and Latino/a or Chicano/a studies. In recent years Chicano/Chicana studies has become important as the Hispanic population has become the largest minority in the US. Labor history , deals with labor unions and
23478-463: The history of personal relationships; consumerism; sexuality; the social history of politics; crime and punishment, and history of the senses. Most of the major historical journals have coverage as well. However, after 1990 social history was increasingly challenged by cultural history , which emphasizes language and the importance of beliefs and assumptions and their causal role in group behavior. Social history has dominated French historiography since
23660-413: The inarticulate masses in the cities, as opposed to the mayors and elites. A major early study was Stephan Thernstrom 's Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (1964), which used census records to study Newburyport, Massachusetts , 1850–1880. A seminal, landmark book, it sparked interest in the 1960s and 1970s in quantitative methods, census sources, "bottom-up" history, and
23842-412: The influence of the more prosperous West, against which East Germans continually measured their own nation. The notable transformations instituted by the communist regime were particularly evident in the abolition of capitalism, the overhaul of industrial and agricultural sectors, the militarization of society, and the political orientation of both the educational system and the media. On the other hand,
24024-485: The interaction of production, or traditional labor, and reproduction, the work of caring for children and families, in its analysis of women's wage labor and thus helped to bring together labor and family history. Much work has been done on the dichotomy in women's lives between the private sphere and the public. For a recent worldwide overview covering 7000 years see Maynes and Waltner's 2012 book and ebook, The Family: A World History (2012). For comprehensive coverage of
24206-417: The internal impact of the GDR government from the perspective of German history in the long term, historian Gerhard A. Ritter (2002) has argued that the East German state was defined by two dominant forces – Soviet communism on the one hand, and German traditions filtered through the interwar experiences of German communists on the other. Throughout its existence GDR consistently grappled with
24388-480: The letter that a gas chamber was built there shortly before the end of the war to convert Dachau into a death camp, but it was never used. He argued that the confusion in the public's mind between concentration and death camps, and the tendency erroneously to describe Dachau as a death camp, was aiding the deniers. When the German-Jewish historian Joseph Wulf accused a prominent German doctor, Wilhelm Hagen,
24570-447: The lives of people who had previously been neglected by older generations of historians. The two most significant social historians of Australian historiography, Ann Curthoys and Humphrey McQueen have both identified a lack of interest in social history among scholars compared with other national historiographies and a general non-Marxist, a-theoretical approach to social history among Australian social historians. Scholars generally see
24752-999: The measurement of upward social mobility by different ethnic groups. Other exemplars of the new urban history included Kathleen Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836-1860 (1976); Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (1975; 2nd ed. 2000); Michael B. Katz, The People of Hamilton, Canada West (1976); Eric H. Monkkonen , The Dangerous Class: Crime and Poverty in Columbus Ohio 1860-1865 (1975); and Michael P. Weber, Social Change in an Industrial Town: Patterns of Progress in Warren, Pennsylvania, From Civil War to World War I. (1976). Representative comparative studies include Leonardo Benevolo, The European City (1993); Christopher R. Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (1995), and James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru. eds. Edo and Paris (1994) (Edo
24934-500: The modernization theory of Max Weber , with concepts also from Karl Marx , Otto Hintze , Gustav Schmoller , Werner Sombart and Thorstein Veblen . In the 1970s and early 1980s German historians of society, led by Wehler and Jürgen Kocka at the "Bielefeld school" gained dominance in Germany by applying both modernization theories and social science methods. From the 1980s, however, they were increasingly criticized by proponents of
25116-586: The new regime made relatively few changes in the historically independent domains of the sciences, the engineering professions, the Protestant churches, and in many bourgeois lifestyles. Social policy, says Ritter, became a critical legitimization tool in the last decades and mixed socialist and traditional elements about equally. At the Yalta Conference during World War II, the Allies , i.e.,
25298-455: The normality of everyday life and the barbarity of the regime, he wrote that "not all those historically significant developments which occurred in Germany during the Nazi period merely served the regime's goals of inhuman and dictatorial domination". Broszat used as an example the wide-ranging reform of the German social insurance system proposed in 1940 by the DAF , which he argued was in many ways
25480-444: The output and productivity achievements of English farming since the "agricultural revolution." The celebratory style of the orthodox school was challenged by a dissident tradition emphasizing the social costs of agricultural progress, notably enclosure, which forced poor tenant farmers off the land. Recently, a new school, associated with the journal Rural History, has broken away from this narrative of agricultural change, elaborating
25662-430: The past have unfolded and continue to unfold. In keeping with the cultural turn , many social historians are also gender historians who study how discourses interact with everyday experiences. The History of the family emerged as a separate field in the 1970s, with close ties to anthropology and sociology. The trend was especially pronounced in the US and Canada. It emphasizes demographic patterns and public policy, but
25844-538: The past. Feminist women's historians such as Joan Kelly have critiqued early studies of social history for being too focused on the male experience. Gender history focuses on the categories, discourses and experiences of femininity and masculinity as they develop over time. Gender history gained prominence after it was conceptualized in 1986 by Joan W. Scott in her article "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." Many social historians use Scott's concept of "perceived differences" to study how gender relations in
26026-661: The politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in." In Germany the Gesellschaftsgeschichte movement introduced a vast range of topics, as Kocka, a leader of the Bielefeld School recalls: Before World War II, political history was in decline and an effort was made to introduce social history in the style of the French Annales School. After the war only Marxist interpretations were allowed. With
26208-470: The population in West Germany and 6% in East Germany had antisemitic prejudices. In 1994, 40% of West Germans and 22% of East Germans felt that too much emphasis was placed on the genocide of the Jews. Historian Ulrich Pfeil , nevertheless, recalls the fact that anti-fascist commemoration in the GDR had "a hagiographic and indoctrination character". As in the case of the memory of the protagonists of
26390-432: The proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%. In the history departments of British and Irish universities in 2014, of the 3410 faculty members reporting, 878 (26%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 841 (25%). There is an important distinction between old social history and new social history that exists in what are now sub-fields of social history that predate
26572-456: The purpose of gassing Jews—were in occupied Poland. (The death toll in the concentration camps was high nevertheless, from starvation, disease, beatings, and forced labour.) Holocaust deniers such as Paul Rassinier , Harry Elmer Barnes and David Hoggan made much of the fact in the 1960s that there had been no functioning gas chamber at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. Broszat noted in
26754-476: The quality of labor, productivity and economic growth, and rates of return on investment in education. A major recent exemplar is Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz , The Race between Education and Technology (2009), on the social and economic history of 20th-century American schooling. The "new urban history" emerged in the 1950s in Britain and in the 1960s in the US. It looked at the "city as process" and, often using quantitative methods, to learn more about
26936-538: The regime on 4 November. Kurt Masur , conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra , led local negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. The demonstrations eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate communist, Egon Krenz . The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally opening its border to West Germany. With
27118-457: The relationship between schooling and urban growth by studying educational institutions as agents in class formation, relating urban schooling to changes in the shape of cities, linking urbanization with social reform movements, and examining the material conditions affecting child life and the relationship between schools and other agencies that socialize the young. The most economics-minded historians have sought to relate education to changes in
27300-584: The relationships between state formation, power and everyday life with the theoretical tools of cultural hegemony and governmentality . East Germany in Europe (dark grey) East Germany ( German : Ostdeutschland , [ˈɔstˌdɔʏtʃlant] ), officially known as the German Democratic Republic ( GDR ; Deutsche Demokratische Republik , [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʁaːtɪʃə ʁepuˈbliːk] , DDR ),
27482-403: The restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ – Sowjetische Besatzungszone ) comprised the five states ( Länder ) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , Brandenburg , Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt , and Thuringia . Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and
27664-400: The risky crossing into Austria but remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest . The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since
27846-451: The ruling party for the entire duration of the East German state. It had close ties with the Soviets, which maintained military forces in East Germany until the dissolution of the Soviet regime in 1991 ( Russia continued to maintain forces in the territory of the former East Germany until 1994), with the purpose of countering NATO bases in West Germany. As West Germany was reorganized and gained independence from its occupiers (1945–1949),
28028-575: The social history of workers. See for example Labor history of the United States The Study Group on International Labor and Working-Class History was established: 1971 and has a membership of 1000. It publishes International Labor and Working-Class History . H-LABOR is a daily email-based discussion group formed in 1993 that reaches over a thousand scholars and advanced students. the Labor and Working-Class History Association formed in 1988 and publishes Labor: Studies in Working-Class History . Kirk (2010) surveys labour historiography in Britain since
28210-421: The socialist parties and symbolic of the new friendship of German socialists after defeating their common enemy; however, there is much evidence that the merger was more troubled than commonly portrayed, and that the Soviet occupation authorities applied great pressure on the SPD's eastern branch to merge with the KPD, and the communists, who held a majority, had virtually total control over policy. The SED remained
28392-523: The study of elites and political institutions has produced a vast body of scholarship, the impact after 1960 of social historians has shifted emphasis onto the politics of ordinary people—especially voters and collective movements. Political historians responded with the "new political history," which has shifted attention to political cultures. Some scholars have recently applied a cultural approach to political history. Some political historians complain that social historians are likely to put too much stress on
28574-425: The two German states and the former Allies , which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in the 1952 redistricting were restored. On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined
28756-462: The voices of less powerful groups within society. Social history has used a much wider range of sources and methods than traditional history and source criticism, in order to gain a broader view of the past. Methods have often including quantitative data analysis and, importantly, Oral History which creates an opportunity to glean perspectives and experiences of those people within society that are unlikely to be documented within archives. Eric Hobsbawm
28938-461: The well-established historiography of the "rural idyll." Most rural history has focused on the American South —overwhelmingly rural until the 1950s—but there is a "new rural history" of the North as well. Instead of becoming agrarian capitalists, farmers held onto preindustrial capitalist values emphasizing family and community. Rural areas maintained population stability; kinship ties determined rural immigrant settlement and community structures; and
29120-399: The younger students and scholars largely promoting the proposition that schools were not the solution to America's ills, they were in part the cause of Americans problems. The fierce battles of the 1960s died out by the 1990s, but enrollment in education history courses never recovered. By the 1980s, compromise had been worked out, with all sides focusing on the heavily bureaucratic nature of
29302-516: Was a de facto government within a single German nation and a de jure state organisation of parts of Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not within its own structures recognize the GDR de jure as a sovereign state under international law; but it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries, not only
29484-399: Was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally viewed as a communist state and described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". The economy of the country was centrally planned and state-owned . Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to
29666-434: Was a period of stability and consolidation; 1971–1985 was termed the Honecker Era, and saw closer ties with West Germany; and 1985–1990 saw the decline and extinction of East Germany. The ruling political party in East Germany was the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands ( Socialist Unity Party of Germany , SED). It was created in 1946 through the Soviet-directed merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and
29848-446: Was an illegally-constituted puppet state of NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945 . This was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of Germany. From 1949 to
30030-410: Was an important UK social historian, who has both produced extensive social history of the UK, and has written also on the theory and politics of UK social history. Eric Hobsbawn and EP Thompson were both involved in the pioneering History Workshop Journal and Past & Present . Ireland has its own historiography. In United States historiography, history from below is referred to as "history from
30212-420: Was broader, and the Germans called it Gesellschaftsgeschichte . It is the history of an entire society from a social-historical viewpoint. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible." While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with
30394-478: Was calling on German historians to show more empathy for their own history. In Bartov's view, empathy was never lacking; rather, it was empathy for the victims that was lacking. Historians distanced themselves from the perpetrators, but they did not distance themselves from the German people, "the (often complicit) bystanders". Showing empathy for the victims would "block the option of empathy for oneself, creating thereby an unbearable psychological burden". Against this,
30576-426: Was forbidden to talk about the Third Reich and, at home, their grandparents told them how, thanks to Hitler , we had the first motorways." On 17 October 1987, thirty or so skinheads violently threw themselves into a crowd of 2,000 people at a rock concert in the Zionskirche without the police intervening. In 1990, the writer Freya Klier received a death threat for writing an essay on antisemitism and xenophobia in
30758-471: Was in fact a conscious revival of historical materialism by young British Marxist intellectuals under the tutelage of the Cambridge economist Maurice Dobb . As such, the foundational text of social history is Karl Marx 's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), which is marked by its society-wide approach and consideration of everyday peoples. It was not until the 1960s, however, that social history gained popularity and scholarship flourished. This
30940-415: Was inaccurate because it did not adequately explain how societies changed. Instead, social historians wanted to show that change arose from within society, complicating the popular belief that powerful leaders were the source of dynamism. While social history came from the Marxist view of history ( historical materialism ), the cultural turn and linguistic turn saw the number of sub-fields expand as well as
31122-474: Was inverted into a modern focus on structures, the traditional focus on culture was inverted into a modern focus on structures, and traditional emphatic understanding was inverted into modern causal explanation. Jürgen Kocka finds two meanings to "social history." At the simplest level, it was the subdivision of historiography that focused on social structures and processes. In that regard, it stood in contrast to political or economic history. The second meaning
31304-428: Was not then a priority for the leadership of West Germany, and the NATO powers declined the proposal, asserting that Germany should be able to join NATO and that such a negotiation with the Soviet Union would be seen as a capitulation. In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the SED , headed by Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), who became President of the GDR and held the office until his death, while
31486-408: Was often described as a Soviet satellite state ; historians described it as an authoritarian regime. Geographically the GDR bordered the Baltic Sea to the north, Poland to the east, Czechoslovakia to the southeast, and West Germany to the southwest and west. Internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin , known as East Berlin , which was also administered as
31668-429: Was removed from power that same year before he could act on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev , rejected reunification as equivalent to returning East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification was off the table until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as
31850-416: Was the old name for Tokyo). There were no overarching social history theories that emerged developed to explain urban development. Inspiration from urban geography and sociology, as well as a concern with workers (as opposed to labor union leaders), families, ethnic groups, racial segregation, and women's roles have proven useful. Historians now view the contending groups within the city as "agents" who shape
32032-405: Was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary 's border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia , and then make the illegal crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. By July, 25,000 East Germans had crossed into Hungary; most of them did not attempt
32214-418: Was then voted into effect prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities, effecting on the one hand the extinction of the GDR, and on the other the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic. The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required government subsidies for
32396-547: Was translated into English and published in Reworking the Past: Hitler, The Holocaust and the Historians' Debate , edited by Peter Baldwin . Broszat married Alice Welter in 1953; the couple had three children. Browning, Christopher R. (1984). "A Reply to Martin Broszat Regarding the Origins of the Final Solution". Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual . 1 (6): 113–132. Partly reproduced in "The Past That Will Not Pass" (translation), German History in Documents and Images. Published in English as Broszat, Martin (1993). "Where
32578-432: Was ultimately only able to influence events in this or that direction in an uncoordinated and abrupt fashion, and it was certainly not in a position to watch over and curb the new organizations, authorities and ambitions which developed as a result. The institutional and legal results of the intermittent orders and decrees of the Fuhrer became increasingly unfathomable and clashed with later authorizations granted by him. That
32760-492: Was when "social history truly came into being, with historians reflecting on their aristocratic and middle-class preoccupations, their veneration of elites (especially Great Men), their Protestant moralising and misanthropic tendencies". There are many definitions of social history, most of them isolated to national historiographies. The most consequential definition of social history is the one Thompson provided. Thompson saw his "history from below" approach as an attempt to reveal
32942-529: Was why and how National Socialism had taken hold in Germany. "Broszat's driving incentive was to help an understanding of how Germany could sink into barbarity," Kershaw wrote. "That he himself had succumbed to the elan of the Nazi Movement was central to his motivation to elucidate for later generations how it could have happened." In his book Der Nationalsozialismus (1960), published in English as German National Socialism 1919–1945 (1966), Broszat examined Nazi ideology, which he regarded as incoherent. For Broszat,
33124-440: Was – in the West – referred to as Pankow (the seat of command of the Soviet forces in Germany was in Karlshorst , a district in the East of Berlin). Over time, however, the abbreviation "DDR" was also increasingly used colloquially by West Germans and West German media. When used by West Germans, Westdeutschland ( West Germany ) was a term almost always in reference to the geographic region of Western Germany and not to
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