Imperial Germany, 1871-1918: Economy, Society, Culture, and Politics

Volker Rolf Berghahn

Berghahn Books, 2005 - History - 388 pages

A comprehensive history of German society in this period, providing a broad survey of its development. The volume is thematically organized and designed to give easy access to the major topics and issues of the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine eras. The statistical appendix contains a wide range of social, economic and political data. Written with the English-speaking student in mind, this book is likely to become a widely used text for this period, incorporating as it does twenty years of further research on the German Empire since the appearance of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's classic work.

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User Review  - AlexTheHunn - LibraryThing

Berghahn squeezes an amazing amount of information and analysis into the relatively few pages that constitute this book. The period of late nineteenth century through World War I is one of the best ...

Contents

• Economy: 1
• National and Regional Economic Developments: 10
• The Organization of Industry: 19
• Society: 38
• Basic Patterns of Social Inequality and their Milieus: 113
• Culture: 121
• The Press Its Readerships and the Role of Intellectuals: 171
• Structure and Functional Changes in the Executive Branch: 225
• The Evolution of Domestic Politics 18711914: 244
• Foreign Policy: 254
• World War I: 264
• Conclusion: 296
• Notes: 347
• Bibliography: 367
• Index: 381

About the author

Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University where he moved in 1998 from Brown University, after a longer spell of teaching at the University of Warwick in England. The author of more than a dozen books, he has long been interested in the challenges of modern biography. In 1993, he published a study of the industrialist Otto A. Friedrich and his role in the reconstruction of West German industry after 1945. His America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe uses Shepard Stone-renowned journalist, Ford Foundation officer in charge of its European and international programs, and the first director of the Berlin Aspen Institute-as a window to the trans-Atlantic world of American and European intellectuals and scholars, many of whom were associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom during the Cold War.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Imperial Germany, 1871-1918: Economy, Society, Culture, and Politics; Berghahn Series
• Author: Volker Rolf Berghahn
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Berghahn Books, 2005
• ISBN: 1845450116, 9781845450113
• Length: 388 pages
• Subjects: History / Europe / Germany