United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects

Since the attempt to unite two parts of a country divided for four decades yielded contradictory results, this volume provides a balance sheet of the successes and failures of German unification during the first quarter century after the fall of the Wall. Five themes, ranging from the transfer of political institutions to the economic crisis, from the social upheaval for women’s movements to the cultural efforts at interpretation and the changes in foreign policy have been chosen to illustrate the complexity of the process. The contributors represent a broad interdisciplinary mix of political scientists, historians, and literary scholars. Because personal experiences tend to color scholarly judgments, they are drawn from West Germany, East Germany, and the United States. This collection is the most up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the political, social, and intellectual consequences of the efforts to regain German unity.

Konrad H. Jarausch is the Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Senior Fellow of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam. He has written or edited about forty books, spanning topics such as the First and Second World War, German students and professionals, the development of the GDR, post-war German history, and debates about historical methods and historiography. Some of the recent titles include After Hitler (2005), Reluctant Accomplice (2011), volume 3 of the Geschichte der Humboldt Universität 1945-2000 (2012) and Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the 20th Century (2015).