Describing the Holocaust

An interdisciplinary dialogue on the boundaries between literary and historical narrative.

Historiography is narrative, and narrative is a linguistic art product. So if someone writes history, he is creating. With this incredibly simple argument, Hayden White challenges the science of history over a period of around four centuries. His classic »Metahistory« caused a great stir, but was seldom discussed regarding historiographical practice. The authors continue this discussion on the boundaries of historiography, which began over two decades ago in Los Angeles. They refer to the works of Saul Friedländer and Christopher Browning, who have both contributed to the interdisciplinary dialogue.

With contributions and commentaries by:
Christopher Browning, Dan Diner, Norbert Frei, Saul Friedländer, Daniel Fulda, Raphael Gross, Wulf Kansteiner, Birthe Kundrus, Chris Lorenz, Matías Martínez, Birgit Neumann, Gabriele Rosenthal, Jörn Rüsen, Wolf Schmid, Sybille Steinbacher, Bernd Weisbrod, Harald Welzer and Hayden White.


The Editors
Norbert Frei, born in 1955, teaches Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Jena and is the Head of the »Jena Center of History of the 20th Century«.


Publications include: »The Foreign Office and the Past. German Diplomats in the Third Reich and the Federal Republic (with E. Conze, P. Hayes, M. Zimmermann, 2010)«.

Wulf Kansteiner, born in 1964, is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
Publications include:
In Pursuit of German Memory. History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (2006); The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (ed. with C. Fogu and N. Lebow, 2006).

Last published in this series
Shimon Stein: Israel, Germany and the Near East. Beziehungen zwischen Einzigartigkeit und Normalität (2011); Atina Grossmann: Wege in der Fremde. Deutsch-jüdische Begegnungsgeschichte zwischen Feldafing, New York and Teheran (2012).