The German Underworld Routledge Revivals

1. Introduction : the 'dangerous classes' in Germany from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century / Richard J. Evans -- 2. The Mordbrenner fear in sixteenth-century Germany : political paranoia or the revenge of the outcast? / Bob Scribner -- 3. The equation of women and witches : a case study of witchcraft trials in Lucerne and Lausanne in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries / Susanna Burghartz -- 4. Bandits and the state : robbers and the authorities in the Holy Roman Empire in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries / Uwe Danker -- 5. Infanticide in eighteenth-century Germany / Otto Ulbricht -- 6. Poachers in Upper Bavaria in 1848 : crime or conflict? / Regina Schulte -- 7. The crime rate : longitudinal and periodic trends in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German criminality, from Vorm©Þrz to Late Weimar / Eric A. Johnson -- 8. Prostitutes in Imperial Germany, 1870-1918 : working girls or social outcasts? / Lynn Abrams -- 9. Vagrants and beggars in Hitler's Reich / Wolfgang Ayass -- 10. 'Law-abiding Germans'? Social disintegration, crime and the reimposition of order in post-war Western Germany, 1945-9 / Alan Kramer.

This book, which was first published in 1988, deals with the neglected history of the lowest layers of German society, of marginal, outcast and deviant groups such as arsonists, witches, bandits, infanticides, poachers, murderers, prostitutes, vagrants and thieves, from the end of the thirteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. This book is ideal for students of history, particularly the German history.

First published in 1991, this collection of original studies by British, German and American historians examines the whole range of modern German bourgeoisie groups, including professional, mercantile, industrial and financial bourgeoisie, and the bourgeois family. Drawing on original research, the book focuses on the historical evidence as counterpoint to the well-known literary accounts of the German bourgeoisie. It also discusses bourgeois values as manifested in the cult of local roots and in the widespread practice of duelling. Edited by two of the most respected scholars in the field, this important reissue will be of value to any students of modern German and European history.

In Rethinking German History, first published in 1987, Richard J. Evans argues for a social-historical approach to the German past that pays equal attention to objective social structures and subjective values and experiences. If German history has been seen as an exception to the ‘normal’ development of Western society, this is not least because historians have until recently largely failed to look beyond the world of high politics, institutions, organizations and ideologies to broader historical problems of German society and German mentalities. By applying and adapting approaches learned from French and British social history as they have been developed over the last quarter of a century, it is possible to achieve a rethinking of German history which does away with many of the textbook myths that have encrusted the historiogrpahy of Germany for so long. This book will be valuable for students of German history and politics, and brings together essays widely used in teaching. Its broad coverage of social history will also be useful to all those interested in contemporary historiography or the comparative study of European history.

The first German women's movement embraced the belief in a demographic surplus of unwed women, known as the Frauenberschu, as a central leitmotif in the campaign for reform. Proponents of the female surplus held that the advances of industry and urbanization had upset traditional marriage patterns and left too many bourgeois women without a husband. This book explores the ways in which the realms of literature, sexology, demography, socialism, and female activism addressed the perceived plight of unwed women. Case studies of reformers, including Lily Braun, Ruth Br, Elisabeth Gnauck-Khne, Helene Lange, Alice Salomon, Helene Stcker, and Clara Zetkin, demonstrate the expansive influence of the discourse surrounding a female surfeit. By combining the approaches of cultural, social, and gender history, The Surplus Woman provides the first sustained analysis of the ways in which imperial Germans conceptualized anxiety about female marital status as both a product and a reflection of changing times.