Submitted by:   Thomas Schmitz
                a2816ce@sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de



Unfortunately, all the recent debates on postmodern and post-structural
historiographical methods have had hardly any impact in Germany. There
is, however, a recently published reader that assembles samples of the
writings of postmodern authors such as Lynn Hunt, Stephen Greenblatt,
K.M. Baker, J. W. Scott as well as some older approaches (Chartier,
Ginzburg, H. White):

Geschichte schreiben in der Postmoderne. Beitraege zur aktuellen
Diskussion, ed. by Christoph Conrad and Martina Kessel, Stuttgart
(Reclam) 1994, 372 p.

The good thing about the book is that all essays have been translated
into German - quite an effort, if one knows how difficult most postmodern
theories are. The bad things are the agenda, which somewhat mixes up
postmodernism with posthistoire, and the foreword, that ends with the
following telling sentence:

"Ob die postmodernen Provokationen allerdings den harten Kern der
historischen Normalwissenschaft erreichen, ob sie
dazu zwingen werden, die Idee von der Einheit der Geschichte aufzugeben,
ist offen."(p. 29)

I don't know what exactly these authors have in mind when referring to
the "harten Kern der historischen Normalwissenschaft", however, this
passage is very typical for all responses to postmodernism I have
encountered in Germany so far. I have long since stopped trying to
discuss postmodern methodology in Germany, because people first smile and
then start hissing, whenever I mention Foucault or dare to relativize the
concept of the 'historical reality'.

I think the subject to be so important that we should postpone its
discussion to the fall, i.e. when people have returned to campus and when
temperature has calmed down so as to allow for a foreseeable heated
debate. In the meantime there is enough time to do our homework by reading
the recent controversial exchanges on this issue, e.g. in CEH 22(1989),
AHR 96 (1991), Past & Present 131 and 133 (1991) and 135 (1992), German
History (1991) p. 200ff., Storia della Storiographia 17 (1990),
Oesterreichische Zeitschrift fuer Geschichtswissenschaft 4 (1993), Neue
Rundschau 105 (1994), J of Contemporary History 30 (1995), and, of
course, in History & Theory (passim).

German language readers scared away from reading such seemingly
difficult theories in foreign language may consult directly the
translated works of Stephen Greenblatt or read the anti-postmodern
essays by

Gerald Feldman: Trends und 'Trendiness' in der amerikanischen
Geschichtswissenschaft, in: Die Kaulbach-Villa als Haus des Historischen
Kollegs. Reden...zur Eroeffnung, ed. by Horst Fuhrmann, Muenchen 1989,
pp. 135-143 [iconoclastic!]

Marco Montani Adams: Theorie und Methode der Geschichte, Archiv fuer
Sozialgeschichte 33 (1993), PP. 612ff.

Hannelore Schlaffer: Ethnographie der Literatur. Ueber Stephen Greenblatt
und den New Historicism, Freibeuter 62 (Dec. 1994), pp. 11ff.

Juergen Kocka: Perspektiven fuer die Sozialgeschichte der neunziger
Jahre, in: Winfried Schulze (ed.): Sozialgeschichte, Alltagsgeschichte,
Mikro-Historie. Eine Diskussion, Goettingen 1994, pp. 33ff. [p. 38: "Es
ist gut, dass diese Postmodernismen hierzulande noch nicht richtig
gelandet sind, jedenfalls noch kaum in den historischen Wissenschaften"]


Recently 'Geschichte und Gesellschaft' has come to address postmodern
methodology; there is to be an essay by Jelavich coming soon.

As far as I am informed, Kocka is right in his assessment that
postmodernism has not yet landed in German historiography; but there is a
group of linguists around Prof. Anton Kaes in Tuebingen who practise the
'New Historicism'. In addition, I have recently tracked down two or three
essay titles in remote journals, which I have not yet been able to get
hold of and read, that seem to deal with postmodern issues.

Thomas Schmitz
(Munich/Duesseldorf)

.