Short courses

Summary

Germany has been called a nation ‘uniquely problematic, tormented, peculiar, with its own strange, distorted pattern of history.’ A nation with a distinct creative culture, which produced the genius of Durer, Beethoven and Goethe, but also a uniquely destructive political history which gave rise to the genocidal tyranny of Adolf Hitler. This course traces the German speaking people’s tortuous path to belated nationhood from their first contacts with the Roman Empire through to the rise and fall of the Second and Third Reichs, ending with the second reunification of Germany in 1990 and its status as the leading political and economic power in Europe. 

Over a series of talks our expert tutor will explain: 

• key political, religious, social, economic and cultural events in the history of Germany from the Roman empire to the present day 
• Germany’s belated emergence as a nation in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars 
• The story of the German Reichs both of which ended in destructive war and division 
• key evidence from these events and later historical perspectives and debates 

You will also have the chance to reflect and debate various historical perspectives with other students and the tutor in seminars 

Choose this course if you want to learn: 

• why the German people were so fragmented for so long and how true national unity remains elusive and provisional 
• Germany’s unique historical experience at the heart of Europe 
• Consider the ambitions and failings of the Second and Third Reichs in relation both to the development of Germany and to world history in general