Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930. Edited by David Blackbourn and James Retallack. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2007. Pp. vi þ 278.

摘要

The authors in this volume have come together to echo the frustrations ofGoethenmore than two hundred years ago: “Germany? But where is it? I don’t know hownto find such a country.” The German-speaking political entities of central Europenin the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centurieswent throughmore formsnof state than one can shake a stick at: Holy Roman Empire, German Confedera-ntion, North German Confederation, Second Empire, Weimar Republic, ThirdnReich, Democratic Republic, and Federal Republic. Austria meanwhile slidnfrom empire to republic to Anschluss with the Third Reich to republic again.nThe essays wrestle with the ambiguities of identity, home, language, and placenfrom the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s. They amount to a set of fascinat-ning reflections on theways inhabitants came to identify and to identify themselvesnwith “this work-in-progress called Germany” (p. 6).