An Uphill Battle: The American Civil War in German Historiography

Abstract

An Uphill Battle: The American Civil War in German Historiography Mischa Honeck (bio) In twenty-first-century Germany, the US Civil War rarely makes headlines. This changed somewhat in the wake of the Charlottesville riots in August 2017. Stunned by the show of force by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, which resulted in the death of thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer, the German media scrambled for answers. It was the usual routine: talk shows and op-eds about the sad state of US race relations, the country’s hyper-partisanship, and the lack of moral leadership coming out of the White House. Occasional expert interviews tended to provide thicker descriptions; these often pointed to the emotionally charged memory landscapes that have continued to divide the nation since Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Many fine and dear colleagues spoke out. They did a tremendous job. What was striking though: most considered themselves Americanists, but only a handful had written on the Civil War. Not one could look back on a career singularly devoted to studying that conflict and its afterlife. There are two main reasons for the relative invisibility of the US Civil War in recent German historiography: the first is systemic, the second one more methodological. Although there is nothing uniquely German about placing higher value on generalization in certain segments of our profession, the historical profession in the Federal Republic neither encourages nor rewards specialization if one focuses on non-European history. The “Civil War historian” is a foreign species in German academia. Usually German Americanists, if they do so at all, author one book on the subject before moving on to another topic or century altogether. This is what I did. People trying to secure a permanent professorship in this system are supposed to be generalists on “America.” Trying to be a James McPherson as a young scholar in German academia is the surest ticket to unemployment of which I am aware. The second reason has to do with recent developments in the field. Since at least the beginning of the new millennium, the historical profession in Germany and elsewhere has experienced seismic shifts, including the tendency to privilege transnational and global approaches. This has involved paying greater, and renewed, attention to the study of race, minorities, immigration, and colonization. My argument is that this widened lens has had ambivalent effects on non-Americans laboring in the field of US history in general and the history of the US Civil War in particular—effects that I will spell out in greater detail over the following pages. [End Page 161] Suffice it to say that new Civil War–related publications from German historians are rare and few. The last five biannual meetings of the Historikerverband—the German equivalent of the American Historical Association—did not feature a single paper on the war. Now that is something to ponder. I am far from suggesting, of course, that there is not a veritable tradition of German-language scholarship on the war that deserves mentioning. Therefore, I will devote the next couple paragraphs to recapitulating major themes and questions in Civil War histories authored by German scholars since the mid-nineteenth century. Although such an attempt can only be cursory, it will hopefully reveal that new interpretations have seldom emerged outside larger ideological shifts and political transformations. In closing, then, I will address whether the global history paradigm that is currently gaining more disciples (not just in German-speaking academia) will further sideline US-centered accounts of the Civil War or whether it might lead to an unlikely renaissance within surprising constellations and novel contexts. The earliest German-language works on the history of the Civil War came from people who saw it—immigrant soldiers, veterans, and commentators. The sheer scale of German American involvement in the conflict justified an intense public interest in the war on both sides of the Atlantic. An estimated two hundred thousand German Americans served in the armies of the North, which made them the largest ethnic minority to fight for the Union. Like their nationalist counterparts back home, these immigrant historians had an unabashedly ethnocentrist agenda. In highlighting...