Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main

Since the publication of Blackbourn and Eley’s groundbreaking The Peculiarities of German History it has become difficult to assert that Germany took a ‘special path’ to modernity vis-à-vis Britain and France in the nineteenth century. That being the case, Germany’s regional diversity and intense local attachments to regional identities even after unification set it apart from many other European countries and complicated its national project. The growing historiography on Heimat has complicated and enriched the old narrative of a top-down, Prussia-centric view of nineteenth-century Germany. Ayako Sakurai’s Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main is ostensibly a work of history of science, but like the Heimat literature, it actually does its most meaningful scholarly work in showing the relevance of local institutions for regional identity in nineteenth-century Germany. Sakurai focuses on Frankfurt and its many scientific institutions from 1815 to around 1900. She argues that the various museums and zoos initially served to give Frankfurt status and to reinforce its identity as an independent republic, but that later in the nineteenth century they reflected the ascendancy of liberalism and Frankfurt’s integration into a united Germany.

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Diversity (politics) · Economic history · German · Historiography · Identity (music) · Liberalism · Literature · Long nineteenth century · Modernity · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Unification · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies · European history and politics · German Social Sciences and History · History · Law

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  Open Access•Nils Güttler•NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte…•2022

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