Germany: History

Five Germanies I Have Known, by Fritz Stern

For a history about Germany, I started by looking for a book that fit my predilection - the biography of a great leader. When I teach American government, I always ask the students to consider America without George Washington. Take that one person out of the equation in the country and its history is quite different. For Russia, Lenin was the obvious choice and for Germany? We all know the obvious choice. Hitler. So why not read a biography of Hitler? Well first I already have. In grad school we had a course in totalitarianism and the reading was biographies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, among others. I think I know as much as I care to about the Führer. So if not him, who else?  Having thought about German history I considered the options (Bismark, Adenauer, Brandt) I was still unsatisfied and searched Amazon for books on German history. Immediately one jumped out at me: Five Germanies I Have Known. The idea was spot on.  There have been at least five distinct Germany's and the author seemed to have a great vantage point from which to consider them.

The book was written by Fritz Stern, an eminent historian from Columbia University. It is a blend of autobiography and history written by a person who not only became renowned for his study of German history but who had the ability to enhance his scholarly treatment of the subject with his intimate experience of events and personalities. Spanning from unification (1870) through disaster and division (1933-1945) and finally to reconstruction and reunification (1990+) He really had seen it all.

GDR's Free German Youth

So what are the five Germany's?  Actually, there are six. Stern writes about them all but, the first disappears before he is born and is introduced through the stories of his grandparents, converted Jews living in Breslau under the Kaiserreich. World War I and German defeat wash that away and in its place comes the ill-fated Weimar Replublic. Hitler's Germany is Sterns second from personal experience and the last that he experiences directly as a citizen. For the Nazis baptism was meaningless. Jewishness is a racial quality that a dab of water could not erase. Hence Stern was Jewish and his family subject to Nazi oppression. His family was lucky. They had foresight and means and escaped. Stern finished growing up and was educated in war time in America. After the war Stern became a leading historian of the early 20th century Germany. As such, he addressed the burning question of the day: how could this (Nazism) happen? Because of the centrality of this question, and Stern’s prestigious position (Columbia University) he was thrust into the center of making sense of the 30s as a prelude to reconstruction and then developing the Germany's of the postwar era. Those would be Germany's #3 and #4, The Federal Republic (West) and its communist twin the GDR (German Democratic Republic, East).

Stern was there, commenting and at times getting sucked into the trials and tribulations of those times. His perspective as an “expellee” - oddly drawn to the task of restoring Germany to the community of Nations - presents a fascinating narrative, both personal and historical, which leads us directly to the present moment – Stern’s Fifth Germany, the one we know today – unified, strong, confident and at the center of European life. In 1940, that might have been a terrifying prospect.  Today it seems normal. A story with a happy ending.