Making Prussians, Raising Germans

A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866–1935

Jasper Heinzen

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781107198791
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108196055
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Reframing the German War of 1866 as a civil war, Making Prussians, Raising Germans offers a new understanding of critical aspects of Prussian state-building and German nation-building in the nineteenth century, and investigates the long-term ramifications of civil war in emerging nations. Drawing transnational comparisons with Switzerland, Italy and the United States, it asks why compatriots were driven to take up arms against each other and what the underlying conflicts reveal about the course of German state-building. By addressing key areas of patriotic activity such as the military, cultural memory, the media, the mass education system, female charity and political culture, this book elucidates the ways in which political violence was either contained in or expressed through centre-periphery interactions. Although the culmination of Prusso-German state-building in the Nazi dictatorship represented an exceptionally destructive outcome, the solutions developed previously established Prussian-led Germany as one of the most successful states in recovering from civil war.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Acronyms
• Note on Spelling
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Military State-Building in War and Peace
• Chapter 2 Rites of Purification, Rites of Memory
• Chapter 3 Managing the Public Sphere
• Chapter 4 The Pedagogy of Patriotism
• Chapter 5 State-Building in Gendered Perspective
• Chapter 6 The Prussian State Recast in 1918
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index