Presents, in an immensely readable yet profoundly scholarly account, the history of German literature from the Reformation and Renaissance to the late twentieth century, in the wider context of Germanic culture, over the whole German-speaking area of Europe.

Presents, in an immensely readable yet profoundly scholarly account, the history of German literature from the Reformation and Renaissance to the late twentieth century, in the wider context of Germanic culture, over the whole German-speaking area of Europe.

When it first appeared in 1977, A Social History of Germany 1648-1914 was one of very few studies in English that spanned the years from Germany's religious wars to the fall of her Second Empire. It was also the fi rst to attempt to integrate in a systematic manner the autobiographical records of contemporaries in assessing the work of modern German social historians. In a manner new to German historiography, Eda Sagarra used imaginative literature as a key record of contemporaries' perceptions of social history. Thus, by integrating concrete, individual experience with larger historical...

Chancellor Otto Bismarck's "greatness" lay in what he created, the German Reich of 1871. Th is Reich was the product of his genius, and in it his genius took complete shape. In less than a decade German chaos was brought to an end and in its place a homogeneous state began to arise. Th e structure of this state left no room for opposing political forces, but rather made ready a roof under which these forces might rally, support each other, and gain strength. Bismarck and the Creation of the Second Reich begins as a biography but continues as a description of his political life and the ideas...