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Thomas August Kohut
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A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century Paperback – March 29, 2013

by Thomas A. Kohut (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

Germans of the generation born just before the outbreak of World War I lived through a tumultuous and dramatic century. This book tells the story of their lives and, in so doing, offers a new history of twentieth-century Germany, as experienced and made by ordinary human beings.

On the basis of sixty-two oral-history interviews, this book shows how this generation was shaped psychologically by a series of historically engendered losses over the course of the century. In response, this generation turned to the collective to repair the losses it had suffered, most fatefully to the community of the “Volk” during the Third Reich, a racial collective to which this generation was passionately committed and which was at the heart of National Socialism and its popular appeal.

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  1. Part of series
    New Directions in Narrative History
  2. Print length
    335 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  5. Publication date
    March 29, 2013
  6. Dimensions
    9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0300192452
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0300192452
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lucid and revealing.”—The Wall Street Journal ― The Wall Street Journal

"A provocative, poignant, and at times painful meditation on what Thomas Kohut calls 'the grace' of historical experience, in which Germany’s war-torn twentieth-century generation looks remarkably like, but also differs substantially from the 'greatest generation' in the United States. A German Generation reveals the staggering losses of German history, but also the abiding desire for community and belonging, the allure of the Third Reich, and the misplacement of guilt and introspection after 1945. A remarkable portrait of a generation in the century of genocide."—Peter Fritzsche, author of Life and Death in the Third Reich -- Peter Fritzsche

“Handled with imagination, skill, and sophistication, Kohut’s work of oral history meets the challenge that all history writing should master but seldom does: to think history not from its outcome but as experienced by those who lived it.”—Ute Daniel, author of Kompendium Kulturgeschichte -- Ute Daniel

“Kohut has written a fascinating collective biography of the so-called ‘Jahrhundertgeneration,’ those middle-class Germans who in adolescence were powerfully influenced by the youth movement and whose lives spanned the course of the twentieth century. Kohut’s reconstruction and psycho-historical analysis of their life history and historical influence from the last years of the Weimar Republic, over the National-Socialist period, to the Federal Republic of Germany is extraordinarily innovative and will stimulate future research.”—Jürgen Reulecke, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies -- Jürgen Reulecke

“An original and illuminating contribution to the thickly congested field of scholarship on Nazism and popular experience in Germany’s twentieth century.”—Geoff Eley, author of A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society

-- Geoff Eley

“Thomas Kohut is a truly fine historian, a reigning master of the craft. His historical perspective is informed by a rich understanding of both psychoanalytic theory and clinical experience, and he has a finely tuned sociological sensibility as well. He brings a very special brilliance to this remarkable work.”—Kai Erikson, Yale University -- Kai Erikson

“A book that is both innovative and revealing.”—Gerhard Weinberg, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

-- Gerhard Weinberg ― Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“Kohut comes up with a brilliant and unconventional structure to deal with this collective story . . .These are short and concise texts which also serve as an introduction to the central questions of twentieth-century German history and to the influential positions of scholarly writing on this history. Using this structure, Kohut has written a book that offers much more than the experiential history of a small group of Germans who lived through the twentieth century. Although he repeatedly reminds us of the limited number and the specificities of the interviewees, he has derived from them insights and perspectives with a much broader scope.”—Dorothee Wierling, German History -- Dorothee Wierling ― German History Published On: 2013-09-01

Book Description

Germans of the generation born just before the outbreak of World War I lived through a tumultuous and dramatic century. This book tells the story of their lives and, in so doing, offers a new history of twentieth-century Germany, as experienced and made by ordinary human beings.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (March 29, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 335 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300192452
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300192452
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

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Thomas August Kohut

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Flossie
    5.0 out of 5 stars A German Generation
    Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    I read this book in a very short time for the narrative style and contents were so very interesting. Frankly I could not find much sympathy for the characters since they seem to forget that Germany initiated the war and what happened to them was less than they deserved. A teacher in my school was relating her hardships under the Russian occupation until I could not listen any longer and politely reminded her that her country (Germany) started the war. She got out alive. The Jews were not so fortunate. It was enlightening to read about the "other side".
    One person found this helpful
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  • Christian Schlect
    2.0 out of 5 stars Germs
    Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    An academic's take, from a small sample, on a whole, woeful generation of Germans: from World War I to the Wiemar Republic to the Third Reich to the alienation of their 1968-era offspring.

    The structure of this book was not to my personal liking. For example, I did not enjoy Dr. Thomas A. Kohut's technique of combining similar stories by the various elderly oral interviewees; a technique that both devalues, if not distorts, an individual person's actual words and requires intensive footnoting (which in turn, mars the reading experience).

    I also thought Dr. Kohut's summary was odd: here he brings in Tom Brokaw, the former NBC television anchor, and comments on his popularization of America's "Greatest Generation." I am then told by Dr. Kohut that, "What separates us from those who carried out the worst horror in the history of modern Europe is nothing intrinsic to them or us. What separates us from them is 'the grace' of historical experience."

    Finally, if you enjoy prose such as the following, you may wish to read this book: "For those who experienced it, this greatest loss, then, rendered their break with childhood traumatically premature and precipitous. It encouraged the interviewees to suppress feelings, to escape painful reality in idealized fantasy, to substitute activity for introspection, and to value emotional hardness over vulnerability--and this in a culture suffused with Prussian and Lutheran traditions of stoicism that discouraged the working through of painful feelings and encouraged the denial of loss, disappointment, anger, and conflict."
    4 people found this helpful
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  • k
    5.0 out of 5 stars Seldom told tales
    Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2015
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    I was keen to read about another perspective during the volatile years that preceded WWII, and how it shaped a presence during the war and after. The less known story of idealistic middle-class youth and their shaping experiences during the youth movements was integral to my understanding of history. Too often we have a picture of the times painted by German propaganda, which inflated the pre-eminence of Nazi ideology and understated the extent to which Nazi programs simply absorbed other popular ideas and themes, remaking them as their own.
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  • Rickyb
    3.0 out of 5 stars Not for Kindle
    Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    This book does not read well on Kindle. There are too many important footnotes that are hard to acess and you loose continuity and structure. Other than that specific problem, the book reads well and allows the reader to live the lives of young people in Weimar Germany before the great war. The interviews round off collective thought and recollections of early childhood through adolesence. These young Germans lived in a time of poverty but were able to escape their lives thru refreshing hiking,singing and wandering thru the countryside. They did not know it at the time, but they were part of a mentality that lived in the surreal world. Their escape was to be in groups that were not only young in heart, but also young in mind. Their mental attitudes were way above positive and the author's interviews stress this idealology.These young people were the original clean heart,clean mind, clean body. It is best to buy the hard cover.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • rh
    5.0 out of 5 stars How the Hitler generation began.
    Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2014
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    Too young to fight in ww1 but never really accepted WEIMAR AND THE DIKTAT of Versailles and war guilt.EASILY MOBILIZED.
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  • What & Why
    4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and persuasive
    Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2012
    This book is based on interviews of 62 Germans born from 1900 to 1926. Those interviewed were not a cross-section of their generation. They had grown up in the middle class and had been enthusiastic members of nationalistic branches of the youth movement in the 1920s or 1930s. Even when interviewed around 1990, they generally thought that Hitler had done great things for Germany in the 1930s, though they became disillusioned with him after the war. I did not mind this limited focus of the book. It provided fascinating insights into how and why this generally idealistic group could have overlook many of the injustices and crimes of the Third Reich while they were being committed.

    Kohut decided to conflate the interviews into male/female pairs of composite oral histories. The six composites present memories of three periods: World War I and the Weimar Republic; the Third Reich including World War II; and 45 postwar years. Each pair of oral histories is followed by an analysis and by several essays. I found these clear, interesting, and persuasive. Kohut points out agreements and disagreements with his interpretations by other scholars of 20th-century Germany. His balance in the analyses and essays gives me confidence that the composites also represent fairly the original interviews. So does his admission that he did not particularly like the interviewees, whom he knew only through transcripts of the interviews.

    This psychohistory is essentially free of the annoying jargon and convoluted prose of some psychological and sociological writing. I found the oral histories and Kohut's interpretations of them engaging and highly readable.
    5 people found this helpful
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