To establish how the depiction of ancient Greek and Roman history is influenced by the political constellation of the Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic, five history books used in secondary schools of each period are compared to determine how much they emphasized democracy and use ancient social values to support ideals of the monarchy and later the republic. In addition it was investigated how much the different authors compared past historical events to more recent ones, how they evaluated the influence of socioeconomic developments on historical events, and how they met the...