Ruptures in the Everyday

As either an alternative or a complement to the typical survey of major figures, institutions, and groups, this book tells stories of modern Germany from the perspective of ordinary Germans "on the ground," making the material more accessible and relevant to the reader. Broadly interdisciplinary, this book addresses themes in a problem-centered approach based on a wide array of examples from different times and places. (Groups of chapters may also be readily excerpted for more specialized courses: e.g., 1,2,3 on self and society; 1, 4, 5, 10 on the GDR; 6, 7, 8 on the Holocaust; 9, 10 on authority.) The collaborative writing process allowed for different insights into everyday life because of way its authors changed the way they interacted as scholars to correspond more closely to the way ordinary people interacted in everyday life. Many scholars have raised the problem of how to tell coherent stories of human experience in a century of rupture. This book develops a way of a theoretical framework for understanding those ruptures and applies it to a narrative structure that preserves the inherent multivocality and contentiousness of everyday life.