The Continuities of German History : Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century

This book opens the debate about German history in the long term – about how ideas and political forms are traceable across what historians have taken to be the sharp breaks of German history. Smith argues that current historiography has become ever more focused on the twentieth century, and on twentieth-century explanations for the catastrophes at the center of German history. Against conventional wisdom, he considers continuities - nation and nationalism, religion and religious exclusion, racism and violence - that are the center of the German historical experience and that have long histories. Smith explores these deep continuities in novel ways, emphasizing their importance, while arguing that Germany was not on a special path to destruction. The result is a series of innovative reflections on the crystallization of nationalist ideology, on patterns of anti-Semitism, and on how the nineteenth-century vocabulary of race structured the twentieth-century genocidal imagination. This book addresses the long term of German history, tracing ideas and politics across what have become sharp chronological breaks. Smith argues that current historiography has become ever more focused on the twentieth century, and on twentieth-century explanations for the German catastrophe. Against conventional wisdom, he considers continuities in the concept of nation and the ideology of nationalism, in religion and religious exclusion, and in racism and violence that are the center of the German historical experience and that have long histories. Smith explores these deep continuities in novel ways, emphasizing their importance, while arguing that Germany was not on a special path to destruction. The result is a series of innovative reflections on the crystallization of nationalist ideology, on patterns of anti-Semitism, and on how the nineteenth-century vocabulary of race structured the twentieth-century genocidal imagination. In this controversial work of German history, Smith argues that German historians have become ever more focused on the twentieth century and on twentieth-century explanations for the catastrophe at the heart of it: the Holocaust. Against conventional wisdom, he considers long-term continuities - in the concept of nation and the ideology of nationalism, in religious exclusion and violence, and in race and racism. Exploring these topics in novel ways, he argues for deep continuities in German history, even as he insists that Germany was not on a special path to destruction. The result is a series of challenging reflections on nationalism, anti-Semitism, and race, as well as a novel interpretation of modern German history. 1. The vanishing point of German history 2. The mirror turn lamp: senses of the nation before nationalism 3. On catastrophic religious violence and the national belonging: the Thirty Years' War and the massacre of Jews in social memory 4. From play to act: anti-Semitic violence in German and European history during the long nineteenth century 5. Eliminationist racism 6. Afterword: where the Sonderweg debate left us. This work opens up the debate about German history in the long term - about how ideas and political forms are traceable across what historians have taken to be the sharp breaks of German history. Smith argues against current historiography's focus on the 20th century, looking instead at the continuities of Germany's history

Smith reexamines German continuities and sheds new light on nationalism, anti-Semitism and genocide.