Hagemann - Revisiting Prussias Wars against Napoleon: History, Culture, and Memory

In 2013, Germany celebrated the bicentennial of the so-called Wars of Liberation of 181315. These wars were the culmination of the Prussian and German struggle against Napoleon between 1806 and 1815, which occupied a key position in both German national historiography and memory. Although these conflicts have been analyzed in thousands of books and articles, much of the focus has been on the military campaigns and alliances, emerging sovereign states and reform movements and early articulations of modern nationalism. Karen Hagemann argues that we cannot achieve a comprehensive understanding of these wars and their importance in collective memory without recognizing how the interaction of politics, culture and gender influenced these historical events and continues to shape later recollections of them. She thus explores the highly contested discourses and symbolic practices by which individuals and groups interpreted these wars and made political claims, starting in the period itself and ending with the centenary in 1913.

KAREN HAGEMANN is the James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has published widely in Modern German and European history and gender history. Her recent co-edited books include Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (2007); Representing Masculinity: Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture (2007); Gender, War, and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 17751830 (2010); and War Memories: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Modern European Culture (2012).