Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 10:22:55 -0500 From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Reply to: H-NET List on German History To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN Subject: Post-1945 Culture Submitted by: Pat Inman I'm surprised at Michael Kater's comment that little scholarship exists on postwar German culture. I'm away from my library at the moment, so I can't cite authors (write me back if you want), but there are studies of specific genres to fill many, many shelves: studies of fiction, poetry, drama, film. These aren't considered "history" though -- they are termed "criticism". But they fill much of the void. What there isn't, that I know of, is cultural history about Germany since 1945 of the sort Lynn Hunt writes about Revolutionary France or Vernon Litdke wrote about the SPD before WWI. This actually has something to do with points brought up in the current postmodernism discussion. Cultural history has as its object most often France, Great Britain, or the United States, and much of it (not Litdke!) was inspired by French historians as far back as Michelet and as recent as Foucault. There's an Italian strain as well (Ginsberg, Ruggiero) but no German one that I know of. Ranke's Swiss counterpart, Burckhardt, treated high culture and civilization as his objects of inquiry, not the more ephemeral subjects that often attract attention from today's cultural historians. - Pat Inman [Patrick Inman, History, UNC-CH, CB# 3195, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195 USA] [pat_inman@unc.edu | (919)489-1158 | "Wir sind VIELE Volker, nicht wahr?"] .