The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life

by William Templer (Translator), Alf Lüdtke (Editor)

Alltagsgeschichte, or the history of everyday life, emerged during the 1980s as the most interesting new field among West German historians and, more recently, their East German colleagues. Partly in reaction to the modernization theory pervading West German social history in the 1970s, practitioners of alltagsgeschichte stressed the complexities of popular experience, paying particular attention, for instance, to the relationship of the German working class to Nazism. Now the first English translation of a key volume of essays ( Alltagsgeschichte: Zur Rekonstruktion historischer Erfahrungen und Lebensweisen ) presents this approach and shows how it cuts across the boundaries of established disciplines. The result is a work of great methodological, theoretical, and historiographical significance as well as a substantive contribution to German studies.

Introduced by Alf Lüdtke, the volume includes two empirical essays, one by Lutz Niethammer on life courses of East Germans after 1945 and one by Lüdtke on modes of accepting fascism among German workers. The remaining five essays are theoretical: Hans Medick writes on ethnological ways of knowledge as a challenge to social history; Peter Schöttler, on mentalities, ideologies, and discourses and alltagsgeschichte; Dorothee Wierling, on gender relations and alltagsgeschichte; Wolfgang Kaschuba, on popular culture and workers' culture as symbolic orders; and Harald Dehne on the challenge alltagsgeschichte posed for Marxist-Leninist historiography in East Germany.

Genres: History

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995

Reviews

[Raymond Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays on the history of everyday life, a branch of microhistory in Germany. It is notable for its study of the connection between German Nazism and workers' culture in the first half of the twentieth century.

[Benemint]

Just looked at the introduction by Alf Ludtke (before attending his seminar). He gives a good theoretical background of why we are studying "everyday life." It does make sense if you have already done some research of everyday life but it might be too much of confusing abstract thoughts if you are generally interested in how to do it. Gotta go back to the rest of the book some day.