The Historiography of German Reunification

The Historiography of German Reunification presents a critical paradigm for both the deconstructing and constructing processes of catching events in the past by a representation of those events in the form of a scholarly, sustained story. The supporting argument is this: all historiography constructs as an endeavour that builds upon already existing and equally constructed documentation concerning the original events. The authors of such documentation are the first historians to steer all subsequent historiographies.

This earliest phase of historiography has hardly been dealt with. The reason for it has commonly been an insufficient amount of, and hence study of, documentary material. This book precisely fills this gap in taking the international process leading to the reunification of Germany as an issue of historiography, meaning the "construction" of its "history". It does so by handling the chosen task through (a) analysing a collection of ample material from French, British, American, German, and Russian archives, and (b) conducting numerous interviews with historical actors. Through these methods, the author examines the "black boxes" of several governments to reconstruct decisive political decisions, presenting historiography, empirically and theoretically, in a new light.

Written in an accessible style, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of historiography, political history, and European history.