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WiSe 22/23: Reading Hitler: (auto-)biography as history

Daniel Louis Nethery

Comments

Subject: Biographer Ian Kershaw argued that the legacy of Adolf Hitler ‘belongs to us all’, and that ‘part of that legacy is the continuing duty to seek understanding of how Hitler was possible.’ For that purpose Kershaw saw a biographical approach to Hitler as indispensable. But he also warned that biography ‘runs the natural risk of over-personalizing complex historical developments, [and] over-emphasizing the role of the individual in shaping and determining events’. Biography, then, poses dilemmas which we face whenever we seek to understand human affairs, past or present. Program: We will draw on several biographies of Hitler and of those close to him to study important episodes in his personal and political career. We will read about his childhood, his experience of war and peace, and his accumulation of power, first in the Nazi party, then in the German parliament and government. We will consider his role in the sequences of events which culminated in the anschluss or annexation of Austria and in the Munich agreement. We will discuss the ways biographers have answered the question of his responsibility for the war and for the holocaust. And we will see that even the circumstances surrounding his death gave rise to a debate over the role of government in the dissemination of information, and which reappeared in a different aspect when historians came to edit his autobiography, Mein Kampf, seventy years later. Is this course for me? This course is open to all students. There are no prerequisites. Workload and assessment: You will qualify for 5 ECTS points if you engage with the course materials, your attendance is satisfactory, and you pass the written examination at the end of the semester. close

16 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Fri, 16:00 - 18:00 16 Class schedule

Fri, 2022-10-21 16:00 - 18:00

Lecturers:
Daniel Louis Nethery