(Nationalist Literature) Date Thu, 12 May 1994 17 57 32 -0500 Reply-To: German History list Sender: German History list From: H-GERMAN MODERATOR Dan Rogers Subject: Re: Nationalist Literature Submitted by: Jonathan Zatlin I would tend to agree with David Meier that looking at German nationalism only from the perspective of the Holocaust risks reducing the complexities of German nationalism, including its liberal and democratic incarnations, to a series of "protofascisms." It seems that the genealogy is far less straightforward than this. For undergrads, Mosse's book on the voelkisch movement is quite good. Harold James' _A German Identity_ is excellent on the extent to which economic prosperity has been used to create identity, but he ends up rehearsing quite a few cliches on 19th and 20th century German culture (esp. nationalism). Finally, Hans Kohn's book is really rather outdated; I don't think approaching the subject of nationalism via philosophers and poets will help you or undergraduates understand how these attitudes were disseminated or how they fit into debates about national identity or social issues, much less why nationalism gained the authority it enjoyed in public discourse after the first World War. Jonathan Zatlin, UC Berkeley Information provider: Unit: H-Net program at UIC History Department Email: H-Net@uicvm.uic.edu Posted: 20 Jul 1994 .