ELIE KEDOURIE MEMORIAL LECTURE

Special Paths or Main Roads?
Making Sense of German History

Professor Peter Pulzer, All Souls College, Oxford

22 May 2002

The catastrophes of twentieth-century German history have raised the question whether these arose out of contingent causes or indicate deeper flaws in the political and intellectual development of modern Germany. As a result, much of the historiography of Germany has been implicitly or explicitly polemical, designed to legitimate or undermine particular regimes - whether the Bismarckian Empire, the Weimar Republic or the post-1949 Federal Republic. Central to these controversies is the thesis of a German 'special path' (Sonderweg), which states that there is a distinctive German way, derived - according to choice - from the Lutheran Reformation, German territorial fragmentation, the Romantic movement or the domination of Prussia, that contrasts with the political culture of the West.

Peter Pulzer will examine the origins and impact of this thesis and the effect that it has had not only on constitutional debates within Germany, but in foreign perceptions of that country, particularly since the Second World War and even more since German unification. He will also ask whether newer ways of looking at national histories have undermined the terms in which this controversy has been conducted. He will conclude with suggestions for the most fruitful ways of making sense of the German past at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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