Emma Todd

Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

McCarthy, Thomas

Area of Concentration

History and German Studies

Abstract

This thesis discusses the influence of German nationalism and Nazism on historical writing, looking specifically at the interpretations of the Investiture Contest of the eleventh- and twelfth-centuries. In the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries German historians, such as Leopold von Ranke (17951886), were preoccupied with the search for German origins, and they often looked back to the Middle Ages for their answers. In Chapter 1, I introduce the Investiture Contesta conflict of empire and papacyparticularly the relationship between King Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII. In Chapter 2, I discuss the influence that romanticism and nationalism had on, not only historians but German dramatists as well. I also analyze plays written about Henry IV and Gregory VII from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries, where Henry IV was often portrayed as a German hero and in contrast Gregory VII was portrayed as a foreign enemy. These plays served as the basis for the PhD of a German student, Reinhold Kolarczyk at the University of Breslau in 1933, which is an example of the effects of nationalism and Nazism on historical writing. In Chapter 3, I examine four case studies: the career of German historian Fritz Fischer (19081999), a letter from Joseph Goebbels to the Monumenta Germania Historica archie in Mnich, Tacits Germania, and an article by German historian Gerhard Kallen (18841973), entitled Der Inesttrstreit als Kampf zwischen germanischem und romanischem Denken. All these case stdies show the influence of the Nazi regime had on historians and how they interpreted German history. This thesis seeks to examine the effects of nationalism and Nazism on German historians and how they interpreted the German past. This thesis explores the impact of external factors, such as nationalism and Nazism, on historical writing and highlights the importance of historiography. This thesis seeks to show the importance of correcting the previous mistakes of historians, in order to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of history.

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