From Kaiser Wilhelm to Chancellor Merkel. The German Question on the European Stage

Speaker(s): Professor Andreas Rödder
Recorded on 7 November 2012 in New Theatre, East Building.

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The German Question has kept Europe in suspense for more than a century. It appeared to have eventually been solved by German unification and through the integration of the D-Mark - the German "atomic bomb" - into the European Monetary Union. However, after losing two world wars and a third of its territory, having committed the holocaust and expelled huge numbers of its elites, after Europeanising central elements of its power and yet being strained by the economical impact of reunification, Germany is once more suspected of aspiring to supremacy. The lecture will follow the twisted story of Germany in Europe since the late 19th century. In particular it will analyse the connection between German reunification and the decision to introduce the Euro in order to highlight the current "German question" from a historical perspective.

Andreas Rödder holds the chair for Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz (Germany). He has published books on the mid 19th-century English Conservatives, in German foreign politics in the interwar period as well as on Germany in the 1970s and 80s and at last on German reunification.

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