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Author Niethammer, Lutz, 1939- author.

Title Memory and history : essays in contemporary history / Lutz Niethammer
Published Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang, 2012

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Description 1 online resource (453 pages) : illustrations
Series Geschichte, Erinnerung, Politik, 2191-3528 ; Bd. 4
Geschichte, Erinnerung, Politik ; Bd. 4. 2191-3528
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
Summary 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
Subject Culture
Memory -- Collective memory
Civilization -- History.
HISTORY -- Historiography.
Civilization
Culture
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9783653017830
3653017831
9783653017830