Recommended Graduate Readings by Era: The Kaiserreich, 1871-1918

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General and Historiographical

• Berghahn, Volker. Imperial Germany, 1871-1914 : Economy, Society, Culture, and Politics. Providence, Rhode Island: Berghahn Books, 1994.
• Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. Mythen deutscher Geschichtsschreibung: Die gescheitere bürgerliche Revolution von 1848. Frankfurt and Berlin: Ullstein, 1980. (English: The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.)
• Chickering, Roger, ed. Imperial Germany: A Historiographical Companion. Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood Press, 1996. (Read H-German Review)
• Eley, Geoff. From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the Nazi Past. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
• Kehr, Eckart. Economic Interest, Militarism, and Foreign Policy. Ed. Gordon A. Craig. Translated by Grete Heinz. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1977.
• Kocka, Jürgen. "German History Before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg." Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988):3-16.
• Mommsen, Wolfgang J. Der autoritäre Nationalstaat: Verfassung, Gesellschaft und Kultur im deutschen Kaiserreich. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990 (English: Imperial Germany 1867-1918: Politics, Culture, and Society in an A uthoritarian State. London: Arnold; New York: St Martin's, 1995).
• Nipperdey, Thomas. Deutsche Geschichte 1866-1918. 2 vols. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1991-1992.
• Retallack, James. Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan; New York: St. Martins, 1996. (Read H-German Review)
• Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. Das deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871-1918. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. (English: The German Empire, 1871-1918. Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, UK, and Dover, New Hampshire: Berg Publishers, 1985.)

Social

• Abrams, Lynn. Workers' Culture in Imperial Germany: Leisure and Recreation in the Rhineland and Westphalia. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
• Allen, Ann Taylor. Satire and Society in Wilhelmine Germany: Kladderadatsch and Simplicissmus 1890-1914. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.
• Augustine, Dolores. Patricians and Parvenus: Wealth and High Society in Wilhelmine Germany. Providence, Rhode Island: Berg, 1994. Read H-German Review.
• Evans, Richard J. Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Kaplan, Marion A. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Kocka, Jürgen, and Frevert, Ute. Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich. 3 vols. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988.
• Lidtke, Vernon. The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Bismarck

• Engelberg, Ernst. Bismarck. 2 vols. Vol. 1: Urpreusse und Reichsgründer. Berlin: Siedler, 1985; Vol. 2: Das Reich in der Mitte Europas. Berlin: Siedler, 1990.
• Gall, Lothar. Bismarck: Der weisse Revolutionär. Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1980. (English: Bismarck, The White Revolutionary. London and Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986).
• Kent, George O. Bismarck and His Times. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.
• Pflanze, Otto. Bismarck and the Development of Germany. 3 vols. 2nd ed. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• Stern, Fritz. Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire. New York: Knopf, 1977.

Wilhelm II

• Cecil, Lamar. Wilhelm II. 2 vols. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1989 and 1996.
• Kohut, Thomas A. Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Mommsen, Wolfgang J. "Kaiser Wilhelm II and German Politics." Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990):289-316.
• Röhl, John C.G. and Sombart, Nicolaus, eds. Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Foreign Policy and the Origins of World War I

• Berghahn, Volker. Germany and the Approach of War in 1914. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1993.
• Fischer, Fritz. Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland, 1914/18. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1967. (English:Germany's Aims in the First World War. New York: Norton, 1967).
• Fischer, Fritz. Krieg der Illusionen: Die deutsche Politik von 1911 bis 1914. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1969 (English: War of Illusions: German Policies, 1911-1914. New York: Norton, 1975).
• Geiss, Imanuel. German Foreign Policy, 1871-1914. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976.
• Geisss, Imanuel. Julikrise und Kriegsausbruch 1914: Eine Dokumentensammlung. Hanover: Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1963-64. (English:July 1914: The Outbreak of the First World War -- Selected Documents. Translated by H .M. Hughes and Imanuel Geiss. London, 1967).
• Herwig, Holger. The Outbreak of World War I: Causes and Responsibilities. 5th ed. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1991.
• Jarausch, Konrad. The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1973.
• Kennedy, Paul. The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914. London and Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1980.
• Mommsen, Wolfgang J. "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy in Wilhelmian Germany, 1897-1914." Central European History 24 (1991):381-401.
• Schöllgen, Gregor, ed. Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany. Oxford and New York, 1990.

World War I

• Kitchen, Martin. The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916-1918. London, 1976.

Women

• Allen, Ann Taylor. Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
• Fout, John C., ed. German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984.
• Frevert, Ute, ed. Bürgerinnen und Bürger: Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert: Zwölf Beiträge. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988.
• Frevert, Ute. Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1988.
• Quataert, Jean H. Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Economics and Science

• Johnson, Jeffrey A. The Kaiser's Chemists: Science and Modernization in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Political

• Anderson, Margaret L. Windhorst: A Political Biography. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Chickering, Roger. We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886-1914. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984.
• Eley, Geoff. Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Poltical Change after Bismarck. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1991.
• Lerman, Katherine Anne. The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Bülow and the Governance of Germany, 1900-1909. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Pulzer, Peter G.J. Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority, 1848-1933. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
• Pulzer, Peter G.J. The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988.
• Röhl, John C.G. Germany Without Bismarck: The Crisis of Government in the Second Reich. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1967.
• Ross, Ronald J. Beleagured Tower: The Dilemma of Political Catholicism in Imperial Germany. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976.
• Schorske, Carl. German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983.
• Sheehan, James J. German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
• Stern, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1961.

Cultural

• Jelavich, Peter. Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting, and Performance, 1890-1914. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Sources

• Fenske, Hans, ed. Quellen zur deutschen Innenpolitik 1890-1914. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991.
• Kelly, Alfred, ed. and trans. The German Worker: Working-Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1987.
• Porter, Ian, and Armour, Ian D. Imperial Germany, 1890-1918. London and New York: Longman, 1991.
• Ritter, Gerhard A. Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1914: Ein historisches Lesebuch. 2nd ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975.
• Saul, Klaus, et al., eds. Arbeiterfamilien im Kaiserreich: Materialien zur Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland 1871-1914. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1982.

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