In the span of ten years, what started as a minor commercial enterprise in a faraway African territory grew into an important extension of the German state. This article reorients our understanding of the relationship between the Kaiserreich and its overseas empire, specifically with a focus on Captain Hendrik Witbooi and on how the Witbooi Namaqua he led influenced the evolution of German imperial rule in Southwest Africa between 1884 and 1894. Witbooi's refusal to accept imperial authority compelled colonial officials to confront their administrative limitations in the colony. When the façade of imperial fantasy gave way to colonial reality, German administrators expanded the size and scope of the imperial government to subdue the Namaqua. The article emphasizes the appointments of Landeshauptmann Curt von François and Governor Theodor Leutwein as critical examples of Witbooi's impact on imperial policy, as well as the colonial administration's embrace of military violence to attain German supremacy in Southwest Africa. An emphasis on the Witbooi Namaqua illustrates the prominent role of Africans in German colonial history and exposes how peoples in distant places like Windhoek and Otjimbingwe manipulated official efforts to control and exploit the colony.

In January 1919, the Bürgertum of the Bavarian town of Hof voted overwhelmingly for the left-liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP). But the following summer, in the Reichstag elections of June 1920, the Democrats sustained significant losses against the right-wing nationalist Bavarian Middle Party (Bayerische Mittelpartei, BMP). This article explores the rise and fall of the DDP in Hof by showing that a pro-republican politics initially proved popular among the local Bürgertum, until its credibility was undermined and ultimately destroyed by a series of devastating crises: the Bavarian Räterepublik of April 1919, the publication of the Versailles Treaty a month later, and the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary convulsions triggered by the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. This article concludes that political violence and a burgeoning confrontation between bürgerliche and socialist milieus were the key factors in explaining the eclipse of left-liberalism in Hof during the first years of the Weimar Republic.

A variety of external forces led to the division of Germany after 1945, and, almost three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, division continues to persist as a social, economic, and political factor in united Germany. This article contributes to scholarly efforts aimed at delineating the ways in which division became a component in the self-perception of many Germans. Focusing on farmers, it shows that their attachment to the land was one such path. At the same time, it argues that farmers were among the first to contend with division in 1945 and, as the most numerous participants in the so-called Little Border Traffic (Kleine Grenzverkehr) between the two postwar states, were keenly aware of the growing division of Germany from its earliest days. The article highlights the choice that farmers made between living in East or in West Germany, arguing that because crossing the border was optional until the mid-1960s, and because land was much less available in the West than in the East, many East German farmers came to associate life in West Germany with the loss of land—and life in East Germany with an ability to keep it. When deciding to stay put, flee westward, or move from West to East, farmers prioritized the degree to which they were attached to their land and property. By making that choice, they cemented their self-perception as belonging to one of the opposing sides. This was not an ideological declaration per se, but rather one rooted in eminently practical considerations.

This article traces the rise of new ideas about energy and growth in West Germany between 1973 and 1986. It shows how new economic expertise emerged in response to the oil shocks, and looks at how West Germany could, paradoxically, sustain growth in a world of seemingly exhausted and insecure energy sources. These experts reconceptualized the economy to imagine a future where “decoupling”—reducing energy consumption while expanding Gross Domestic Production—was possible. They found support in the Social Democratic Party, which, in using their ideas to overcome an internal rift precipitated by the rise of the Green movement in the 1970s, helped make these new ideas mainstream. Investigating this new energy paradigm helps us understand why Germany began to diverge from other large, industrialized states in the 1980s, as it increasingly focused on energy conservation rather than on expanding its energy supply.

In the two centuries since its dissolution in 1806, the Holy Roman Empire has usually been viewed as an antiquated relic of the medieval past, a dysfunctional polity that hindered Germany's development into a modern, liberal nation-state. In the wake of its demise, a chorus of famous intellectuals and statesmen—including Voltaire, James Madison, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leopold von Ranke, and Heinrich von Treitschke—derided the Empire as a “monstrosity” hampered by outmoded institutions and backward policies. More recently, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, advocates of the so-called Sonderweg thesis blamed the Empire for Germany's belated unification and for the Germans’ supposedly “authoritarian” bent. In Heart of Europe [the American title of the study—Ed.], a bold and sweeping account of the Holy Roman Empire's thousand-year history, Peter Wilson sets out to supplant these anachronistic interpretations by explaining “what it was, how it worked, why it mattered, and its legacy for today” (5). With this important book, the best single-volume history of the Holy Roman Empire currently available, Wilson succeeds in answering these fundamental questions and provides fascinating insights into European politics from the early Middle Ages to the present. I would like to focus first on what I see as Wilson's most significant contributions to the existing scholarship on the Empire, and then examine how he treats the Protestant Reformation as a case study of the merits (and drawbacks) of his approach.