Germany and 'The West'

The History of a Modern Concept

Riccardo Bavaj, Martina Steber

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781785335044, 9781782385974
• eBook ISBN: 9781782385981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

"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.

Table of contents

• Germany and ‘the West’
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction Germany and ‘the West’
• Part 1. Rises and Silences of ‘the West’
• Chapter 1. In Search of ‘the West’
• Chapter 2. The Kaiserreich and the Kulturländer
• Chapter 3. The First World War and the Invention of ‘Western Democracy’
• Chapter 4. Perceptions of the West in Twentieth-Century Germany
• Part 2. East–West Entanglements
• Chapter 5. Russian and German Ideas of the West in the Long Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 6. ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’, ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the Discourse of German Orientalists, 1790–1930
• Chapter 7. German Jews and the West
• Part 3. Liberal Ambiguities and Strategies of ‘Westernization’
• Chapter 8. Between East and West?
• Chapter 9. Before ‘the West’
• Chapter 10. Weimar and ‘the West’
• Chapter 11. Germany and ‘Western Democracies’
• Part 4. Nationalist Self-Centredness and Conservative Adaptations
• Chapter 12. ‘The West’ in German Cultural Criticism during the Long Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 13. No Place for ‘the West’
• Chapter 14. ‘The West’, Tocqueville and West German Conservatism from the 1950s to the 1970s
• Part 5. Socialists between ‘East’ and ‘West’
• Chapter 15. ‘The West’ as a Paradox in German Social Democratic Thought
• Chapter 16. Bridge over Troubled Water
• Chapter 17. Antipathy and Attraction to the West and Western Consumerism in the German Democratic Republic
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index