Reader Review: The German Myth of the East

Here is our latest reader review of Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius’ The German Myth of the East.


By Eric Limbach,

The title of this work is something of a misnomer. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius is very clear that the past two centuries have seen no single overarching or monolithic 'German Myth of the East.' Rather, he argues, there were many such myths, some barely more than faint perceptions, others thoroughly engrained through generations of contact. Furthermore, the myths that the author considers are, more often than not, deeply contradictory. Readers with even a passing familiarity with European history will undoubtedly expect a book focused on ideas of violent conquest and German domination. On this account, Liulevicius does not disappoint, but he also presents a much broader picture.

For example, stories of the medieval Teutonic Order and its crusades against the native Prussians and other groups provided the justification for many German actions in Eastern Europe during both world wars (and many smaller wars as well). Yet for every Marienburg, Tannenberg or Barbarossa, there were many other approaches, less violent if no less prejudiced. A recurring theme is the perennial German criticism of ‘Polish management’: the perceived contrast between German skills for clearing forests, draining swamps and creating arable land and the Polish inability to make or maintain such improvements by themselves. These ideas have deep roots in German self-perceptions, and were used as a justification for German colonisation and improvement of unoccupied (and, quite often, Pole-occupied) land well into the 20th century, as well as to criticise Polish control over former German territory after the Second World War.

This contrast between an imposed Germanic order displacing Slavic disorder is thus one persistent and recurring image of the German East. However, Liulevicius notes that even such widespread sentiments were occasionally forgotten or overlooked. Many German liberals and academics supported the Polish uprising of November 1830, adopting the Poles' cause as a surrogate for their own nationalism. Others, like the Hanover-born linguist Georg Sauerwein, sought an active role among the non-German inhabitants of Eastern Europe. In Sauerwein's case, his zeal to prevent the Lithuanian language from dying out in East Prussia led him to criticise Germanisation policies enacted by Bismarck's government. In his support for Lithuanian nationalism, Sauerwein spent two decades living in the area and eventually adopted the Lithuanian name Jurgis Sauerveinas.

While the work's primary focus is on Germany and northern Europe, from the Elbe to the Baltic coast and beyond, Liulevicius does not overlook the Austrians, whose own East stretched down the Danube to Romania and south through the Balkans. In particular, it was the Imperial Austrian notion of internal conflicts along a ‘language frontier' that had a significant impact on both German-speaking states at the turn of the 20th century. This helped to shape later Austrian attitudes towards both their larger German-speaking neighbour and their former Slavic imperial subjects.

Cataloguing this wide spectrum of myths, ideas and perceptions is an ambitious task and one that several generations of German scholars have taken on, with varying degrees of success. However, as the author argues, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, such attempts were themselves bound up with these myths, and often sought to perpetuate one or another set of views. Proponents of this 'East Research' or Ostforschung prospered under both dictatorships and democratic regimes, even as they adapted their research to the political climate of the time. Only in the past two or three decades have German-language scholars begun to come to terms with this part of their academic past.

Although he may not make such an explicit claim, Liulevicius' focus on one of the most problematic aspects of German identity has resulted in nothing less than his own brief history of Germany. While that history may be, as some scholars have argued, a 'long march west', his work shows that the occasional 'glance over the shoulder' has not been missed.


The German Myth of the East, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius (Oxford University Press)

Eric Limbach is a PhD student at Michigan State University where he is completing a thesis on East German refugees.

New November Books

Uranium Wars: The scientific rivalry that created the nuclear age, Amir D. Aczel (Palgrave Macmillan)
A history of uranium and of the competition amongst a generation of scientists to discover its properties and harness its potential, which draws on newly opened archives to reassess the role of the physicist Heisenberg in the German nuclear programme during the Second World War.

Portugal in European and World History, Malyn Newitt (Reaktion Books)

An account of Portuguese history from initial contacts with the Moors, to the development of trade with western Africa, the Salazar regime and the country’s liberal revolution of 1974.

Voices Against War: A Century of Protest, Lyn Smith (Mainstream Publishing)
Based on nearly 200 personal testimonies from the Imperial War Museum Collections, the stories of those who participated in anti-war protests over the course of the 20th century, from the First World War, to the Second World War, the Falkland Islands invasion, the Gulf War and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury)
Based on the life stories of nine different people who each take a different religious path, this travel book explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the vortex of the region’s rapid change.

New reader review: Popular Culture in Ancient Rome

We published two reader reviews in September, for the first time. Here is the first of our latest selection of October reviews, a review of Jerry Toner’s Popular Culture in Ancient Rome.


by Meghan Burton,

Roman history often focuses on the elite, the movers and shakers of the Roman world. However, they represented in reality only a small proportion of the population. Rather than adding to the imbalance, in Popular Culture in Ancient Rome, Jerry Toner chooses to focus on the non-elites of the Roman world, both free men and slaves, and to examine how they may have felt and reacted to events through their own popular culture. He includes chapters exploring such unusual topics as the public mental health, their ability to solve problems, and their reaction to sensory stimuli. He considers the relations of the non-elite, and their reactions not only to the elite, but also to each other and to the circumstances that they may have encountered on a daily basis.

Jerry Toner's book is carefully constructed to appeal to both academics and non-academics. He provides great detail, theory, and many examples and endnotes, as well as humour and modern-day references in order to appeal also to those who may be less familiar with Roman history. For example, he combines the two in his chapter on popular resistance:

‘It is important to realize that resistance does not always have to be of the
heroic 'I'm Spartacus' kind. There is a sliding scale of resistance, ranging
from the occasional drama of open rebellion to the oblique and passive
opposition of everyday life.’

Similarly, in his chapter on mental health, Toner first includes a relevant and interesting example, literary records of the first Christian monk evaluated by a modern psychiatrist. He then provides a modern-day evaluation of what constitutes mental illness, and finally delves into the historical detail of non-elite Romans and their own mental health. Although these first sections may be of less interest to the professional, for the casual reader, they provide essential background information and an opportunity to understand a foreign culture through contemporary life.

The author later flips mentally instable and rude behaviour on its head to help explain non-elite Roman subversion, for example, and even writes about how Christianity in its early stages served as a peaceful point of rebellion to challenge the norms of Roman society. Acting differently - which is often all it takes to be considered insane - non-elites could take some control. Without his initial exploration of mental illness, this would not make much sense, and, more importantly, would not shed the essential light it does on how very different
Roman society was from modern society. Overall, Toner's style enables the reader to fully understand and learn throughout his intriguing book.

It is in demonstrating how vastly different, and yet eerily similar, Roman popular culture was to our own that Toner shines. In somewhat broad and impersonal terms, he highlights how incredibly difficult Roman life was by considering incomes, food shortages, and life expectancies; but the data is thereafter humanised though the inclusion of excerpts about familiar and heart-wrenching subjects such as mother's grief over losing her very young children. Throughout his history, Toner states the cold, hard facts neatly juxtaposed with these familiar examples to enable his readers to truly picture popular Roman society. He achieves his stated goal and then goes a little bit further to provide an informative and engaging history that should appeal to all readers with any interest in imperial Rome.


Meghan Burton is studying for an MA in Medieval Studies at the University of York.
Here is the link to her blog http://www.chikune.com/blog

A new selection of books in now available for reader reviews. For further information, visit the History Today Books Blog.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present, Ellis Wasson (Wiley-Blackwell)
This introduction to the history of the modern British Isles, from the Hanoverian succession to the present day, explores the period’s major events, the relationships between Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland and the development of their unique national identities.

The House of Lords in the Age of George III (1760-1811), M.W. McCahill (Wiley-Blackwell)
This assessment of the place of 18th-century peerage and House of Lords creates a variegated portrait of the nobility and challenges the assumption that the Lords remained a creature of the crown.

Penguin Dictionary of British Surnames, John Titford (Penguin)
This new edition contains over 10,000 surnames and provides an insight into how our names reflect Britain’s past.

Chaucer’s London: Everyday Life in London 1342-1400, A.R. Myers (Amberley)
This study considers various aspects of London life in the 14th century, including working in the city, housing, entertainment, marriage and sex, religion and popular beliefs.

This week's new books

Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology, Mark V. Barrow Jr. (University of Chicago Press)
This historical narrative combines stories of endangered animals and of the individuals who have studied and struggled to protect them to reveal how the problem of human-caused extinction has haunted Americans since the early days of the republic.

Charles Dickens, Michael Slater (Yale University Press)
This biography of Charles Dickens is published 20 years after the last major account. It presents Dickens’ novels in the context of his personal and professional life and also considers his many other writings including letters, shorter fiction, essays and journalism.

A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction, Mark Wahlgren Summers (University of North Carolina Press)
This study of the events of the Reconstruction in the aftermath of the American Civil War reveals that policy was not shaped simply by politics and thoughts about the meanings of federalism, freedom and the Constitution, but also by fears, paranoia and conspiracy theories.

Captain Cook’s War and Peace, John Robson (Seaforth Publishing)
An account of Cook’s early naval career, which explains how and why he was chosen to lead the expedition to the Pacific in 1768.

New selection of books for reader reviews

Every month, we offer our readers the opportunity to review some of the latest history publications and to have their review published on the History Today Books Blog. Here is this month's selection.

To submit a review, please send an email to Kathryn Hadley (k.hadley[at]historytoday.com) specifying your choice of book. We will then send you the book with a one-month deadline to send us your review. Books will be sent on a first come first served basis. (Unfortunately, we are unable to send out books to the USA).

The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton)
The story of the Hemings family, whose blood ties to the third president of America had long been expunged from American history, from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826.

The Human Footprint, Anthony N. Penna (Wiley Blackwell)
This study of transnational environmental history, from the Palaeolithic to the present era, explores various themes ranging form the global impact of agriculture and urbanisation, to manufacturing, consumption and industrialising.

I Never Knew That About The Scottish, Christopher Winn (Ebury Press)
This journey of discovery around Scotland, from Edinburgh, home of Alexander Gordon Laing who was the first European to see Timbuktu, to Tain, home of the inventor of the automatic cash machine, John Shepherd-Barron, explores how every county contributes to the distinct Scottish personality.

Michelangelo: A Tormented Life, Antonio Forcellino (Polity Press)
A biography of Michelangelo which draws on the artist’s memoirs and personal correspondence to explore his life and character, times and works, as well as his changing religious views and the politics of patronage in Renaissance Italy.

Papa Spy: Love, Faith and Betrayal in Wartime Spain, Jimmy Burns (Bloomsbury)
Written by his son, the story of Tom Burns’ propaganda war against the Nazis and fight to keep Spain neutral and to protect Gibraltar and access to the western Mediterranean during the Second World War as a press attaché at the British Embassy in Madrid.

Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element, Jeremy Bernstein (Cornell University Press)
This history of plutonium charts the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty, when it was first manufactured in 1941, into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki, explaining both the science and the people involved.

Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer, Robin Lane Fox (Penguin)
This account of the formation of classical mythology in the eighth century charts how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering new sights and weaving them into the myths of the gods, monsters and heroes that would become the cornerstone of Western civilization.

William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, introduction by J.H. Elliott (Continuum)
This book contains a substantial extract from Prescott’s major work A History of the Conquest of Mexico, which is set against the background of the growth of historical research in the introduction by J.H. Elliott.

Win copies of Robert Service's Trotsky and The Crusades DVDs

Do you know where Trotsky and Lenin first met?

Which Pope, in 1095, first launched an appeal to the knights of France to travel to the Holy Land and liberate Jerusalem?

Yesterday, we launced two new competitions to win copies of Trotsky by Robert Service and The Crusades, the latest DVD released by the History Channel.

To enter, visit our competitions page.

New Wednesday Paperbacks

The Human Footprint, Anthony N. Penna (Wiley Blackwell)
This study of transnational environmental history, from the Palaeolithic to the present era, explores various themes ranging from the global impact of agriculture and urbanisation, to manufacturing, consumption and industrialising.

William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, introduction by J.H. Elliot (Continuum)

This book contains a substantial extract from Prescott’s major work A History of the Conquest of Mexico, which is set against the background of the growth of historical research in the introduction by J.H. Elliott.

Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element, Jeremy Bernstein (Cornell University Press)
This history of plutonium charts the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty, when it was first manufactured in 1941, into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki, explaining both the science and the people involved.

Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin, Nicolaas Rupke (University of Chicago Press)
This biography of Richard Owen resuscitates the reputation of a scientist who, despite his prominence in the mid-1850s, became largely obscured by the shadow of Charles Darwin and publicly marginalised for his critique of natural selection.