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A review by heathward
The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century by Helmut Walser Smith
5.0
Smith's work is an important call for historians not to throw out continuities found in German history, countering the historiographical trend towards the idea of a "shattered" and disjointed German past held by many since the sonderweg debates.
Smith does not intend to resuscitate the idea of a German sonderweg, and rejects the crass eliminationism of Goldhagen. Nevertheless, he presents exhaustive evidence to suggest the interaction between the changing nature of the German nation in the c.19th and the increasingly scientific-racial treatment of Jews during the same period. Changing trends in nationalism and racism culminated in the "vanishing point" of German history circa 1941 and a complete collapse of "fellow feeling" between ordinary 'German' and 'Jew'. The trend was long term, and cannot be treated as a merely c.21st phenomenon.
Interesting Quotes:
1. “A central reference point of German history, a vanishing point in the painterly sense of the term, has shifted from 1933, when Hitler seized power, to 1941, when the genocidal killing of the holocaust commenced… this shift has considerable implications for the writing of German history.” (6)
2. “Memory of the [Jewish] expulsion had a vital place in German culture, especially in local communities, the German hometowns. When debate about Jewish inclusion began, the reaction against it drew on this memory, which had become codified in ritual and in exclusionary practices.” (8)
3. “The new vanishing point suggests wider themes to foreground: how humanity came to think of itself as divided, and some parts less human than others; how the institution of slavery and the prejudice of race gave these human predispositions a long pedigree; how race and nation came in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be seen as permanent markers, emblems of unalterable difference; and how these markers justified the enslavement and the cultural and physical extermination of peoples. These are the events of the nineteenth and preceding centuries.” (37)
4.There were three changes over time in the history of anti-Jewish violence:
1- “From anti-Jewish violence centred on the community defending its perceived rights to exclude Jews to anti-Jewish violence whose rationale was nationalistic, culminating in the accusation that Jews were traitors to the nation.”
2- “The transition from the threat of murder to actual murder, from word to dead, speech to act.”
3- “The murderous turn was enabled, and then furthered, by the state.” (117)
5. “Where then does continuity lie? Not in genocide, but in the imagination of expulsion, in the severing of ties to others, and in the violent ideologies, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racism, that make these things possible to think, support, and enact.” (233)
Smith does not intend to resuscitate the idea of a German sonderweg, and rejects the crass eliminationism of Goldhagen. Nevertheless, he presents exhaustive evidence to suggest the interaction between the changing nature of the German nation in the c.19th and the increasingly scientific-racial treatment of Jews during the same period. Changing trends in nationalism and racism culminated in the "vanishing point" of German history circa 1941 and a complete collapse of "fellow feeling" between ordinary 'German' and 'Jew'. The trend was long term, and cannot be treated as a merely c.21st phenomenon.
Interesting Quotes:
1. “A central reference point of German history, a vanishing point in the painterly sense of the term, has shifted from 1933, when Hitler seized power, to 1941, when the genocidal killing of the holocaust commenced… this shift has considerable implications for the writing of German history.” (6)
2. “Memory of the [Jewish] expulsion had a vital place in German culture, especially in local communities, the German hometowns. When debate about Jewish inclusion began, the reaction against it drew on this memory, which had become codified in ritual and in exclusionary practices.” (8)
3. “The new vanishing point suggests wider themes to foreground: how humanity came to think of itself as divided, and some parts less human than others; how the institution of slavery and the prejudice of race gave these human predispositions a long pedigree; how race and nation came in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be seen as permanent markers, emblems of unalterable difference; and how these markers justified the enslavement and the cultural and physical extermination of peoples. These are the events of the nineteenth and preceding centuries.” (37)
4.There were three changes over time in the history of anti-Jewish violence:
1- “From anti-Jewish violence centred on the community defending its perceived rights to exclude Jews to anti-Jewish violence whose rationale was nationalistic, culminating in the accusation that Jews were traitors to the nation.”
2- “The transition from the threat of murder to actual murder, from word to dead, speech to act.”
3- “The murderous turn was enabled, and then furthered, by the state.” (117)
5. “Where then does continuity lie? Not in genocide, but in the imagination of expulsion, in the severing of ties to others, and in the violent ideologies, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racism, that make these things possible to think, support, and enact.” (233)