Introduction

Summary

How can we judiciously tell the many continuous, discontinuous, overlapping, persistent, and simultaneous, tales that constitute German history?Taking as an example James J. Sheehan’s engagement with the question: “what is German history?”, the introduction argues that the conceit inherent in the question is the belief that a unitary history must exist, even when the decades of scholarship Sheehan inspired indicated that it does not.In actuality, German history can only ever be regarded as an aggregate of Germans’ histories, and it is critical that we begin by recognizing that a great many of the people who lived those histories did so without regarding difference and unity as antinomies or hybridities as problems. Adopting that position has a number of advantages.It not only allows us to better understand the actions of the great variety of people who thought of themselves and were regarded by others as German during the modern era, it also helps us to gain a better understanding of the roles Germans and German things have played in the history of the modern world.