Germany

Fully revised and updated, the new edition of "Inventing the Nation: Germany" explains the diverse ways in which national identity has been constructed over more than three centuries and with eight different territorial states all claiming to be German. It highlights the plurality of contested definitions of 'Germanness'. The themes covered include the struggles between democratic and non-democratic inventions of the nation, the construction of the racial nation under Nazism, economic definitions of the nation, foreigners and 'Germanness', the gendering of the national discourse, and the impact of war on the construction of German national identity.
Not only does the book use history and historiography, but also literature, art, architecture, music and a range of other disciplines to provide answers to the question which has haunted Germans ever since it was first asked by Ernst Moritz Arndt: 'What is a German's fatherland?'