Introduction: understanding nationalism through biographies

Abstract

Christian Wicke examines the ways that the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl used his own biography to enable him to personify the project of normalising German national identity in the wake of World War II and the tragedies of Nazism, and in the context of the Cold War. By using this teleological relation between two biographies, between Alfred Bowker and Alfred the Great, Bishop highlighted complex interconnections of nationalism, medievalism and imperialism in Britain before World War I. Paul James's reflections on the preceding contributions provide a bookend to Hearn's opening suggestions for conceptual framing. Show more