The German National Imagination from the Early Modern Period to the Present

The German cultural and historical imagination has played a central role in shaping narratives of national belonging. This historically situated engagement with cultural narratives in a changing landscape reveals many different versions of national identity. The essays in this volume address how a variety of German voices, from early modern travellers, to musicians, intellectuals and literary writers, have thought and fought about narratives associated with the German national idea, from the early modern period to the present. The essays analyse different understandings of the relationship between past and present, the individual and the collective, aesthetic forms and political imaginaries. They cast light on the specific social and political formations that have given rise to different versions of German collective identity since the seventeenth century, and on the self-understanding in the twenty-first century of the Federal Republic.

The volume is dedicated to Joachim Whaley, Emeritus Pro-fessor of German History and Thought at the University of Cambridge, in celebration of his distinguished scholarship, across the disciplines of History and of German Studies, and his inspiring teaching which has ranged from the Holy Roman Empire to the twenty-first century.