Horizont: Ve stínu nacistické epochy. Soudobé dějiny jako paradigma západoněmecké historiografie
Horizons: In the Shadow of the Nazi Period. Contemporary History as a Paradigm of (Federal) Republic Historiography

Summary/Abstract: The article is a translation of “Im Schatten der NS-Zeit: Zeitgeschichte als Paradigma einer (bundes-)republikanischen Geschichtswissenschaft,” which was published in Alexander Nützenadel and Wolfgang Schieder (eds), Zeitgeschichte als Problem: Nationale Traditionen und Perspektiven der Forschung in Europa, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, pp. 25–53. The translation of it opens a Soudobé dějiny series of discussions on the study of contemporary history, its current state, and the changes that the fi eld has undergone in several countries. The author charts out the establishment and development of the fi eld of contemporary history (Zeitgeschichte) in the Federal Republic of Germany as a process that was not only historiographical, but also, indeed mainly, political-historical and culturalhistorical. His basic thesis is that the special nature of German contemporary history results from its having developed in the shadow of coming to terms with the legacy of the Nazi period and that with its “lessons from the past” it profoundly influenced the culture of the Federal Republic. Moreover, in this changing milieu a new, republican historiography was established as a whole, which further prepared the change of historical consciousness, the assessments, and the periodization of German history.

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