Biography Between Structure and Agency: Central European Lives in International Historiography

Published by Berghahn Books 2008

Biography Between Structure and Agency

Central European Lives in International Historiography

Edited by: Volker Berghahn and Simone Lässig

Volume 9 in the series Studies in German History

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857450494

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University where he moved in 1998 from Brown University, after a longer spell of teaching at the University of Warwick in England. The author of more than a dozen books, he has long been interested in the challenges of modern biography. In 1993, he published a study of the industrialist Otto A. Friedrich and his role in the reconstruction of West German industry after 1945. His America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe uses Shepard Stone—renowned journalist, Ford Foundation officer in charge of its European and international programs, and the first director of the Berlin Aspen Institute—as a window to the trans-Atlantic world of American and European intellectuals and scholars, many of whom were associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom during the Cold War.

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.

Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University where he moved in 1998 from Brown University, after a longer spell of teaching at the University of Warwick in England. The author of more than a dozen books, he has long been interested in the challenges of modern biography. In 1993, he published a study of the industrialist Otto A. Friedrich and his role in the reconstruction of West German industry after 1945. His America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe uses Shepard Stone—renowned journalist, Ford Foundation officer in charge of its European and international programs, and the first director of the Berlin Aspen Institute—as a window to the trans-Atlantic world of American and European intellectuals and scholars, many of whom were associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom during the Cold War.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Biography in Modern History— Modern Historiography in Biography Simone Lässig Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2 BIOGRAPHY AND THE HISTORIAN Opportunities and Constraints Ian Kershaw Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Chapter 3 DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES Writing the Biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II John C.G. Röhl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
Chapter 4 GUSTAV STRESEMANN: A GERMAN BÜRGER? Karl Heinrich Pohl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Chapter 5 WOMEN’S BIOGRAPHIES—MEN’S HISTORY? Angelika Schaser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
Chapter 6 HISTORIOGRAPHY, BIOGRAPHY, AND EXPERIENCE The Case of Hans Rothfels Jan Eckel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Chapter 7 A HISTORIAN’S LIFE IN BIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE: JOHAN HUIZINGA Christoph Strupp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
Chapter 8 THE HEROIC ECSTASY OF DRUNKEN ELEPHANTS Th e Substrate of Nature in Max Weber— A Missing Link between His Life and Work Joachim Radkau Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
Chapter 9 GENERATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND GENOCIDE A Biographical Approach to Nazi Perpetrators Michael Wildt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
Chapter 11 FROM HIMMLER’S CIRCLE OF FRIENDS TO THE LIONS CLUB Th e Career of a Provincial Nazi Leader Hartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh-Kühne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
Chapter 12 CONTEXTS AND CONTRADICTIONS Writing the Biography of a Holocaust Survivor Mark Roseman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Chapter 13 THE IMPROBABLE BIOGRAPHY Uncommon Sources, a Moving Identity, a Plural Story? Willem Frijhoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Chapter 14 STRUCTURALISM AND BIOGRAPHY Some Concluding Thoughts on the Uncertainties of a Historiographical Genre Volker R. Berghahn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	234
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	262
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Keywords: History (General); Cultural Studies (General)

eBook

Published: September 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780857450494