From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990

“In this elegant and provocative study, Rudy Koshar describes the myriad ways in which Germans, over the past 150 years, have sought to memorialize various parts of their history--or to forget them. Koshar's treatment is comprehensive, offering detailed discussions of imperial-era attempts to craft a national history, Weimar's attempts to 'remember' the Great War, the grandiose aspirations of the Nazi era, the East/West memory divide after 1945, and the difficulty of commemorating the intertwined histories of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders in the years after 1970. . . . A synthetic, yet subtle and original, account of the continuities in breaks in German cultural history since 1871.”—Suzanne Marchand, Louisiana State University

“This book marks a turning point in the emerging subfield of studies of memory--not only because of its chronological and geographical range, and the breadth of the primary and secondary source material upon which it draws, but especially because of its analytical incisiveness. With its balance between detailed example and overarching interpretation, this engaging and smoothly written account will appeal to general readers interested in the cultural history of Modern Europe, as well as specialists in German and European history.”—Harold Marcuse, University of California, Santa Barbara