Germany and ’The West’

Riccardo Bavaj is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. His publications include Der Nationalsozialismus: Entstehung, Aufstieg und Herrschaft (2016) and "'The West': A Conceptual Exploration" in European History Online (2011).

Martina Steber is a Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin. Her publications include Ethnische Gewissheiten: Die Ordnung des Regionalen im bayerischen Schwaben vom Kaiserreich bis zum NS-Regime (2010) and Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives, edited with Bernhard Gotto (2014).

"The West" is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, "the West" became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as "Russia" and "the East," and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of "the West" sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.

Preface

Introduction: Germany and 'the West': The Vagaries of a Modern Relationship
Riccardo Bavaj & Martina Steber

PART I: RISES AND SILENCES OF 'THE WEST'

Chapter 1. In Search of 'the West': The Language of Political, Social and Cultural Spaces in the Sattelzeit, from about 1770 to the 1830s
Bernhard Struck

Chapter 2. The Kaiserreich and the Kulturländer: Conceptions of the West in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890-1914
Mark Hewitson

Chapter 3. World War I and the Invention of 'Western Democracy'
Marcus Llanque

Chapter 4. Perceptions of 'the West' in Twentieth-Century Germany
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel

PART II: EAST-WEST ENTANGLEMENTS

Chapter 5. Russian and German Ideas of the West in the Long Nineteenth Century: Entanglements of Spatial Identities
Denis Sdvizkov

Chapter 6. 'Orient' and 'Occident', 'East' and 'West' in the Discourse of German Orientalists, 1790-1930
Douglas T. McGetchin

Chapter 7. German Jews and the West: Identification, Dissimilation and Marginalization around the Turn of the Century
Stefan Vogt

PART III: LIBERAL AMBIGUITIES AND STRATEGIES OF 'WESTERNIZATION'

Chapter 8. Between 'East' and 'West'? A Liberal Dilemma, 1830-48/49
Benjamin Schröder

Chapter 9. Before 'the West': Rudolf von Gneist's English Utopia
Frank Lorenz Müller

Chapter 10. Weimar and 'the West': Liberal Social Thought in Germany, 1914-1933
Austin Harrington

Chapter 11. Germany and 'Western Democracies': The Spatialization of Ernst Fraenkel's Political Thought
Riccardo Bavaj

PART IV: NATIONALIST SELF-CENTEREDNESS AND CONSERVATIVE ADAPTATIONS

Chapter 12. 'The West' in German Cultural Criticism during the Long Nineteenth Century
Thomas Rohkrämer

Chapter 13. No Place for 'the West': National Socialism and the 'Defence of Europe'
Philipp Gassert

Chapter 14. 'The West', Tocqueville, and West German Conservatism from the 1950s to the 1970s
Martina Steber

PART V: SOCIALISTS BETWEEN 'EAST' AND 'WEST'

Chapter 15. 'The West' as a Paradox in German Social Democratic Thought: Britain as Counterfoil and Model, 1871-1945
Stefan Berger

Chapter 16. Bridge over Troubled Waters: German Left-Wing Intellectuals between 'East' and 'West', 1945-49
Dominik Geppert

Chapter 17. Antipathy and Attraction to the West and Western Consumerism in the German Democratic Republic
Katherine Pence

Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index