Place and politics : : local identity, civic culture, and German nationalism in North Germany during the revolutionary era / / by Katherine Aaslestad.

• Superior document: Studies in Central European histories ; 36
• VerfasserIn: Aaslestad, Katherine,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, The Netherlands ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2005]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2005
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Central European histories ; 36.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

This study examines North Germany during the transformative era of the French Revolution, Napoleonic occupation, and Wars of Liberation; it reveals international exploitation, military occupation, economic destruction of the city-state Hamburg as well as the republic's liberation and post-Napoleonic autonomy. Examining shifts within local culture and the role of public opinion on civic morality, this book underscores the relationship between the civic ethics, public language, and collective memory in the construction of political identity and concludes that the transformation in values at the local level ultimately provides the crucial direction in the process of modern nation-building. Throughout the 1800s, the public commemoration and memory of occupation and liberation, rather than the actual Napoleonic experience, shaped the development of German nationalism.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Republican Ideal: Commerce and Civic Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Hamburg -- 2. Print and the Public in Hamburg -- 3. Hamburg and the French Revolution: Republican Morality Examined and Celebrated -- 4. Luxus and Egoismus: The Threat to Hamburg's Civic Identity -- 5. Hamburg's Quest for Neutrality and the Emergence of Hanseatic Solidarity -- 6. Hambourg, bonne ville de l'Empire française: Annexation into the Napoleonic Empire -- 7. The Liberation of Hamburg and Changing Notions of Patriotism -- 8. Epilogue: Remembering the Wars of Liberation in Nineteenth-Century Hamburg -- Bibliography -- Index.