Introduction

Abstract

These essays constitute a sample of current work by engaged scholars of German history using cities and towns as settings for important historical inquiries. Together, they might indicate where Central European urban history is headed now. On one hand, these articles fit into a long tradition of German urban histories: they use defined urban settings to illustrate larger historical developments; they offer explicit comparisons between urban experiences; and they explicate a changing urban experience across time and space. On the other hand, these essays have clearly moved on from discussing many of the venerable themes that preoccupied urban historians in previous decades, such as population growth, urban administration, quantifying description and the search for local liberalisms. Instead, these essays exhibit new impulses in urban history by highlighting materiality, agency, network linkages and cities as centres of cultural production. Municipal autonomy and city-state tensions within the evolving federal structure of the German lands remain central concerns and stand out as distinctive subjects that connect the newer research presented here with important established work in German urban history.