3 Review(s)

This three-volume history represents the first modern attempt to understand social and economic change in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present. Despite a distinguished tradition of scholarship, it has taken a considerable time for new historical and interdisciplinary approaches to German economies, societies, and cultures to take root. This series shows the fruitfulness of applying such approaches across a broad spectrum of major topics. With original contributions from an international team of scholars, the volumes represent some of the best work in the field. The third volume focuses on Germany's late but explosive economic transformation after 1800, the cycles of war, defeat, and dictatorship from 1914 to 1950, and the 'German miracle' after 1950. The picture is one of rapid change, but within a framework of recognizable long-term continuities. Agricultural and industrial productivity increased, living-standards rose, and people flocked into cities. Fertility and mortality fell, migration flows were reversed, and women began to enjoy greater opportunities.Yet at the same time, long-term tensions endured between regional diversity and political unification, between welfare provision and social exclusion, between tradition and technology and between rural allegiances and urban diversity. This book shows vividly how Germany participated in the rapid transformation, since 1800, of all western societies and economies while retaining distinctive features that had long characterized this central region of Europe.