Die »Annales«-Historiker und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft

That historians nowadays have a different idea of their profession than they did a hundred years ago is not least thanks to a paradigm shift in scholarship which can be attributed to »Annales,« a journal founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. After the Second World War, this publication became the epitome of a non-conformist, interdisciplinary historiography. Its contents no longer told of great men, wars and diplomacy, but rather of economic interests and social classes, of technological developments and mentalities. But success also saw a myth emerge around »Annales,« something which has to be historicized. In this context the relationship between »Annales,« Germany and German historiography is particularly important. For one thing, Germany was foremost in this field at the beginning of the 20th century, and for another, Bloch, Febvre and the other »Annales« historians grappled with no other historiography more intensively, emphasizing in light of the world wars and Pan-Germanism, that historians should not only »learn« but »unlearn from Germany.« This difficult, conflictual relationship and interweaving between French and German historians, especially between the wars and during the Nazi years, are traced by the German-French historian Peter Schöttler in this volume.