German encounters with modernity : novels of Imperial Berlin

The novels of Imperial Berlin constitute a body of material of immense historical richness. Their importance as an historical source lies in the intricate connections their authors make between the individual lives of characters, a modernising city and a newly unified nation. Taken together, they comprise a significant piece in the complicated puzzle of how the society of Imperial Germany, as it underwent the social and economic upheavals of modernisation, transformed the rule of traditional elites into new authoritarian forms. Using individual works to analyse fictional treatment of a spectrum of problems of nationhood and modernity, Katherine Roper argues that Berlin novelists used their works to envision a particularly German revolution that would bring genuine national greatness and shows how they were impeded by distinct historical and cultural obstacles. This book documents what Berlin novelists conceived as a struggle for Germany's soul and traces the stages of its defeat.