Approaches to the history of class relations in Germany as elsewhere have changed dramatically over the past two decades or so. Historical class analysis, which once pointed to the clear significance of class as a social marker, a cultural and political identity, in short, as a force of history, has became dulled in the wake of the collapse of socialism, the decline of organized labor, and the intellectual challenges associated with postmodernism, feminism, and race theory. As one student remarked in a recent seminar on the history and historiography of class relations in Europe, class has become the unexamined third pillar of the race, class, gender triad. Historians do not deny the significance of class relations; it has just that figuring out how to theorize and document the history of class is much more complicated than it used to be.