11 - Transatlantic History as National History?: Thoughts on German Post-World War II Historiography

Summary

When I considered the problems of writing about the subject of this chapter, I hesitated because they turned out to be comprehensive enough for more than one essay. It fascinated and puzzled me, and provoked, at first, a kind of forestalling reaction: Is there a question? Is there an answer? Subsequently, I decided to put this challenging subject to the test - at the risk of finding a host of answers that would leave me in a still worse predicament. Nevertheless, at least some of the questions seem worth discussing here, all of them considering the tension between “transatlantic” and “national.”

First, “transatlantic” is usually limited to the North Atlantic and signifies a particular relationship, a dynamic interrelation of Europe and North America kept apart by an ocean that became a challenge to all those who were determined to make it a link and a symbol of a common space and history in spite of a sometimes strong propensity to make it a huge natural boundary allowing a retreat into oneself on both sides. The linkage function has proven particularly important to West Germany since 1945, thus providing an extraordinary test case for the compatibility of transatlantic and national history and historiography.

Second, transatlantic history might be an effort to trace back into the past a real or imagined European-American intertwining, a transatlantic world of shared values and continuous contacts in different ways and on different levels irrespective of national contrasts, rivalries, and conflicts.