Germany: The Long Road West: Volume 1: 1789-1933

Der lange Weg nach Westen #1

by Heinrich August Winkler

Vivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbors.
This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the "Reich," which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their own self-perception.
With a second volume that takes the story up to reunification in 1990, Germany: The Long Road West will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of countries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Germany

610 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Heinrich August Winkler is a German historian. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen. In 1970 he became professor at the Free University of Berlin.

Reviews

[Hendrik Strauss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review pending but there is a lot to write about and it demands a detailed examination.
Briefly the main points: Well researched, quite bureaucratic though readable prose. Seems to be a bit indebted to Sonderweg historians in its focus on nationalism, antisemitism and imperial ambitions. Political and legal history with little to no economic or social history at most places, hence limiting its explanatory power. Most strong in the early Weimar years, but sometimes causing vertigo when years are skipped in two sentences, just to introduce a completely changed political landscape and 10 new names at the same instance. The sense of contingency history has gets a bit loss due to his framework of a 'journey towards the west', events are interpreted as to how they fall into where Germany ought to end up, rather to where they have been situated in. Still a great reference work and particularly useful when it comes to Weimar history. Really liked his brief overview of prenapoleonic German history as well. Kaiserreich political analysis had its moments but seemed comparably weak and insufficiently fleshed out, as well as almost completely without any situating in global or cultural, economical or societal context.

[Günter Wahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

In one volume the jubilee Edition has Milestones in history in softcover Heinrich August Winkler came from Kaliningrad teaching history at the free University in Berlin, Emeritus he often is a guest in talkshows the conservative polemic Berlin does not have more on the political history of Germany.
His west was next stop of the nighttrain Ostbahnhof. Central Train Station after the ordnance was cleared,the book is in store at Nonnenhaus, next to the Pizzeria.
Material history is there is only one Publisher and one printing house in Munich and Ulm, files taken from emeriti in Berlin too.

[Luca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winkler erläutert die historischen Ereignisse mit den nötigen Prioritäten und der wichtigen Präzisierung. Dabei schafft der Autor es immer wieder Interesse und Spaß daran zu wecken kleine Wendungen der Geschichte genauer zu erkunden. Das Gefühl des Überblicks über das Gesamtgeschehen geht jedoch nie verloren. Geschichte ist spannend.