Time and Power: Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich

281 Pages·2019·6.21 MB·English

by  Christopher Clark

TIME AND POWER
The Lawrence Stone Lectures
Sponsored by:
The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies and Princeton University
Press

A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.
Time and Power
VISIONS OF HISTORY IN
GERMAN POLITICS, FROM
THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR
TO THE THIRD REICH
Christopher Clark
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON & OXFORD
Copyright © 2019 by Christopher Clark
Published by Princeton University Press
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
LCCN 2018960827
ISBN 978-0-691-18165-3
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Editorial: Brigitta van Rheinberg, Amanda Peery, and Eric Crahan
Production Editorial: Brigitte Pelner
Jacket Design: C. Alvarez-Gaffin
Jacket/Cover Credit: Jacket Images (left to right): 1) Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, 2)
Frederick II, 3) Otto von Bismarck, 4) Adolf Hitler
Production: Erin Suydam
Publicity: James Schneider
Copyeditor: Joseph Dahm
This book has been composed in Miller
Printed on acid-free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Kate and Justin Clark, siblings for all seasons
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements . ix
Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1 The History Machine 19
CHAPTER 2 The Historian King 72
CHAPTER 3 Boatman on the River of Time 118
CHAPTER 4 Time of the Nazis 171
Conclusion and Epilogue 211
Notes • 227
Index • 281
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
IN THEORY, the pool of intellectual debt ought to shrink with each new book, as
one grows older and more independent. In my experience, the opposite has been
the case. As you get older, you get less shy about asking for help and you
venture further into terrain where you depend on the guidance of others. This
book could not have been written without the encouragement, conversation, and
advice of many friends and colleagues. Special thanks go to the following, who
read all or part of the manuscript and offered detailed comments and stimulating
suggestions: Deborah Baker, David Barclay, Peter Burke, Marcus Colla, Amitav
Ghosh, Oliver Haardt, Charlotte Johann, Duncan Kelly, Jürgen Luh, Annika
Seemann, John Thompson, Adam Tooze, Alexandra Walsham, and Waseem
Yaqoob. As then-anonymous reviewers for Princeton University Press, François
Hartog, Jürgen Osterhammel, and Andy Rabinbach made enormously helpful
comments on the manuscript. Nora Berend, Francisco de Bethencourt, Tim
Blanning, Annabel Brett, Matthew Champion, Kate Clark, Allegra Fryxell,
Alexander Geppert, Beatrice de Graaf, Paul Hartle, Ulrich Herbert, Shruti
Kapila, Hans-Christof Kraus, Jonathan Lamb, Rose Melikan, Bridget Orr, Anna
Ross, Kevin Rudd, Magnus Ryan, Martin Sabrow, and Quentin Skinner all
offered precious advice on specific issues or passages of text. Nina Lübbren’s
writing and thinking about time and narrative in art have shaped the book in
many ways. Josef and Alexander, once happy distractions from the work of
writing, have grown into thoughtful conversation partners whose insights nudged
me through various bottlenecks. Kristina Spohr read and commented on the text
at many stages in its evolution and sustained its author with criticism, advice,
and companionship.
The History Department of Princeton University gave me the opportunity to
develop the ideas explored in this book by inviting me to present the Lawrence
Stone Lectures in April 2015, and my thanks go to Brigitta van Rheinberg of
Princeton University Press for her encouragement of this project from its
inception and Brigitte Pelner, Amanda Peery, and Joseph Dahm for help with the
preparation of the text for publication. I am grateful to my colleagues at the
History Faculty of the University of Cambridge and at St Catharine’s College,
and to one in particular, Sir Christopher Bayly, who died in April 2015. Even
now, whenever I walk into the main court of St Catharine’s of an afternoon, I
look across to the window of C3, on the off chance that Chris might be leaning
in his shirt sleeves on the window sill and invite me up for a drink. The
conversations that followed always led to unexpected places.
Time is an elusive but also an inescapable subject matter, especially now
that the relationship between past, present, and future has become such a central
preoccupation of politics and public discourse. In times of flux, the most lasting
things acquire heightened value, which is why I dedicate this book to my sister
Kate and my brother Justin, who were there (almost) from the start.
TIME AND POWER