Technology in Modern German History: 1800 to the Present

People often associate postwar Germany with technology and its products of mass consumption, such as luxury cars. Technology in Modern German History explores various forms of technology in 200 years of German history and explains how technology has been fundamental to the shaping of modern Germany. It investigates the role technology played in transforming Germanys culture, society, and politics during the 19th and 20th centuries, including the different stages of industrialization, the growth of networked cities, and the triumph of a teleological narrative of technology as progress.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 24 February 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

People frequently link postwar Germany with technology and its mass-consumption products, such as luxury automobiles. Even pop music, most notably Kraftwerk (literally 'power station'), with songs like Autobahn, Radioactivity, or We are the Robots, perpetuates the stereotype of a close link between German culture and technology.

Technology in Modern German History delves into various forms of technology across 200 years of German history, exploring how technology has played a fundamental role in shaping modern Germany. The book investigates the role technology played in transforming German culture, society, and politics during the 19th and 20th centuries. Key topics covered include the different stages of industrialization, the growth of networked cities, and the triumph of a teleological narrative of technology as progress. Moreover, it provides a critical revision of the history of high technology, revealing how high-tech euphoria determined certain paths in history, regardless of whether the respective technology proved to be successful.

In its second part, the volume introduces new avenues in scholarship. Karsten Uhl examines neglected areas, such as rural technologies or the often-overlooked importance of everyday technologies: How did consumers or workers use new technologies? How did they appropriate and modify them? Lastly, the book considers the final decades of the 20th century and asks if they provided a significant new quality of technological change: To what degree and effects did computerization transform professional and private life in Germany? In culture and politics, reinforced by the German variety of environmentalism, the idea of progress was challenged, as the once prevailing vision of progress gave way
way to new apprehensions of uncertainty evident.

Weight: 598g
Dimension: 164 x 257 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350053205