Emotions make history and have their own history. Exploring the emotional worlds of the German people, this book tells a very different story of the twentieth century. Ute Frevert reveals how emotions have shaped and influenced not only individuals but entire societies. Politicians use emotions, and institutions frame them, while social movements work with and through them. Ute Frevert's engaging analysis of twenty essential and powerful emotions – including anger, grief, hate, love, pride, shame and trust – explores how emotions coloured major events and developments from the German Empire to the Federal Republic until this very day. Emotions also have a history, illustrated by the changing forms, meanings and atmosphere of various emotions in twentieth-century Germany: for example, hate was a driving force behind National Socialism but is out of place in a democracy. Around 1900, people associated practices with love or nostalgia that do not resonate with us today. Showcasing why Germans were enthusiastic about the war in 1914 and proud of their national football team in 2006, this book highlights the historical power of emotions as much as their own historicity.

‘Ute Frevert’s new book is an encyclopaedic history of the social and cultural framing of emotions. It is an entrancing and lively account of the power of emotions to change worlds. A ‘must read’ for anyone curious about lived, felt experiences in the twentieth century.’

Joanna Bourke - Birkbeck, University of London

‘Written by one of the world’s leading historians of Germany at the top of her game, Ute Frevert’s The Power of Emotions is an unusually marvellous and a marvellously unusual book. This book looks at German history from about 1900 onwards through the prism of 20 emotions. Every chapter on an emotion is a kind of tour down 120 years of German memory lane, furnishing highly original re-readings through a history of emotions lens.’

Jan Plamper - University of Limerick

‘In this elegantly written book, Ute Frevert demonstrates how emotions make history and are also made by history. She analyses twenty different emotions from anger to nostalgia and from disgust to pride and uses them to shine a light on the five political regimes of twentieth-century Germany.’

Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly - University of Oxford