Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era

Download or read book Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era written by Katherine Aaslestad and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines North Germany during the transformative era of the French Revolution, Napoleonic occupation, and Wars of Liberation; it reveals international exploitation, military occupation, economic destruction of the city-state Hamburg as well as the republic’s liberation and post-Napoleonic autonomy. Examining shifts within local culture and the role of public opinion on civic morality, this book underscores the relationship between the civic ethics, public language, and collective memory in the construction of political identity and concludes that the transformation in values at the local level ultimately provides the crucial direction in the process of modern nation-building. Throughout the 1800s, the public commemoration and memory of occupation and liberation, rather than the actual Napoleonic experience, shaped the development of German nationalism.