Migration, Memory, and Diversity: Germany from 1945 to the Present

Within Germany, policies and cultural attitudes toward migrants have been profoundly shaped by the difficult legacies of the Second World War and its aftermath. This wide-ranging volume explores the complex history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 to today, showing how conceptions of “otherness” developed while memories of the Nazi era were still fresh, and identifying the continuities and transformations they exhibited through the Cold War and reunification. It provides invaluable context for understanding contemporary Germany’s unique role within regional politics at a time when an unprecedented influx of immigrants and refugees present the European community with a significant challenge.

Cornelia Wilhelm is currently professor of modern history at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. From 2010 to 2016 she has been DAAD Visiting Professor in the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program at Emory University in Atlanta and had also held visiting positions at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck, Austria. She is author of Bewegung oder Verein? Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspokitik in den USA (1998); and Deutsche Juden in America: Bürgerliches Selbstbewusstsein und Jüdische Identität in den Orden B’nai B’rith und True Sisters (2007), also published in English translation (2011). She is currently working on an in-depth study on German refugee rabbis in the United States after 1933.