Germany: Memories of a Nation

As with A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor, director of the British Museum, here constructs a materialist history, spinning a collection of historical vignettes from objects both ordinary and extraordinary. MacGregor’s survey of German history moves erratically in its journey from the German victory over the Romans in 9 C.E. to the 21st century, but he maintains a theme in the innate fragmentation of German identity—a fragmentation based as much on ideology as geography. Through artifacts as varied as a sausage, Gutenberg Bibles, and a porcelain rhinoceros, MacGregor illustrates how a composite German identity was forged and the country came to be. He argues that Germany alone among European countries is as obsessed with its future as with its past, repeatedly returning to the pull of memory and ambition among the German people; he notes the humiliations of Napoleon’s conquest that once unified Germany, as well as the Nazi atrocities that haunted the divided nation generations later. MacGregor addresses the great paradox of Germany’s rich humanist tradition and its fall into fascism and authoritarianism, which historians can gesture at but never resolve. His concise lessons in German history form a cogent and fluent account that gets as close to the core of German identity as any book by a non-German could. [em](Oct.) [/em]