Details

Biography Between Structure and Agency

Central European Lives in International Historiography
Studies in German History, Band 9 1. Aufl.

von: Volker Berghahn, Simone Lässig
37,99 €
Verlag:	Berghahn Books
Format:	PDF
Veröffentl.:	01.09.2008
ISBN/EAN:	9780857450494
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	288

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

While bookstore shelves around the world have never ceased to display best-selling “life-and-letters” biographies in prominent positions, the genre became less popular among academic historians during the Cold War decades. Their main concern then was with political and socioeconomic structures, institutions, and organizations, or—more recently—with the daily lives of ordinary people and small communities. The contributors to this volume—all well known senior historians—offer self-critical reflections on problems they encountered when writing biographies themselves. Some of them also deal with topics specific to Central Europe, such as the challenges of writing about the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Although the volume concentrates on European historiography, its strong methodological and conceptual focus will be of great interest to non-European historians wrestling with the old “structure-versus-agency” question in their own work.
 Contributors: Volker R. Berghahn, Hartmut Berghoff, Hilary Earl, Jan Eckel, Willem Frijhoff, Ian Kershaw, Simone Lässig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, John C. G. Röhl, Angelika Schaser, Joachim Radkau, Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Mark Roseman, Christoph Strupp and Michael Wildt.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
 Chapter 1. Introduction: Biography in Modern History—Modern Historiography in Biography Simone Lässig
 Chapter 2. Biography and the Historian: Opportunities and Constraints Ian Kershaw
 Chapter 3. Dreams and Nightmares: Writing the Biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II John C.G. Röhl
 Chapter 4. Gustav Stresemann: A German Bürger? Karl Heinrich Pohl
 Chapter 5. Women’s Biographies—Men’s History? Angelika Schaser
 Chapter 6. Historiography, Biography, and Experience: The Case of Hans Rothfels Jan Eckel
 Chapter 7. A Historian’s Life in Biographical Perspective: Johan Huizinga Christoph Strupp
 Chapter 8. The Heroic Ecstasy of Drunken Elephants: The Substrate of Nature in Max Weber—A Missing Link between his Life and Work Joachim Radkau
 Chapter 9. Generational Experience and Genocide: A Biographical Approach to Nazi Perpetrators Michael Wildt
 Chapter 10. Criminal Biographies and Biographies of Criminals: Understanding the History of War Crimes Trials and Perpetrator “Routes to Crime” Using Biographical Method Hilary Earl
 Chapter 11. From Himmler’s Circle of Friends to the Lions Club: The Career of a Provincial Nazi Leader Hartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh-Kühne
 Chapter 12. Contexts and Contradictions: Writing the Biography of a Holocaust Survivor Mark Roseman
 Chapter 13. The Improbable Biography: Uncommon Sources, a Moving Identity, a Plural Story? Willem Frijhoff
 Chapter 14. Structuralism and Biography: Some Concluding Thoughts on the Uncertainties of a Historiographical Genre Volker R. Berghahn
 Bibliography Notes on Contributors

Autorenportrait

Simone Lässig has been Director of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany and Professor of Modern History at the University of Braunschweig since October 2006. From 2002 to 2006 she was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. She has published mainly on modern German and Jewish history. Her last book focused on the question of how nineteenth century German Jews entered the bourgeoisie. She is currently preparing a biographical study on a German-American banking family.