Place and Politics
Subtitle: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany (Studies in Central European Histories, 36) (Studies in Central European Histories, 36)
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
Published: September 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 398
ISBN-13: 9780391042285
Subjects: European history: c 1500 to c 1750; Social history; History; History - General History; History: World; General; 19th century; Germany; Group identity; Hamburg; Nationalism; Political culture
Description: "This study examines North Germany during the transformative era of the French Revolution, Napoleonic occupation, and Wars of Liberation; it reveals international exploitation, military occupation, and economic destruction of the city-state Hamburg as well as the republic's liberation and post-Napoleonic autonomy. Examining shifts within local culture and the role of public opinion on civic morality, this book underscores the relationship between civic ethics, public language, and collective memory in the construction of political identity and concludes that the transformation in values at the local level ultimately provides the crucial direction in the process of modern nation-building.

Throughout the 1800s, the public commemoration and memory of occupation and liberation, rather than the actual Napoleonic experience, shaped the development of German nationalism."--Jacket.