Germany: From Modernization Model to Comparative Research

Although there is not a single professorial chair at a Historical Institute of a German University concentrating explicitly with Victorian Studies, there exist a number of German institutions that have come to foster German research on British history in general and the Victorian epoch in particular. The reason for this significant development is to be seen both in institutional changes in post-1945 German historiography and in certain methodological trends since the 1980s.

One of the most important factors, leading to a growing interest in British and Commonwealth History and to an intensified exchange between historians in both countries, was the foundation of the German Historical Institute in London in 1976, following the foun-dation of a similar Institute in Paris in 1964. Both stood in the tradition of the oldest German Historical Institute abroad, which was founded in Rome in 1888 as the Royal Prussian Historical Institute. Since 1976 the GHI in London has served as a mediator between British and German scientific communities. Numerous conferences, special publication series and periodicals, many of them bi-lingual, an annual Lectureand a well established Research Prize as well as a growing number of German doctoral students, postdoctoral and senior researchers who have profited from the Institute in terms of funding and the publication of research results underline the fundamental role of the Institute. The GHI has also become crucial in training scholars who had come to work in London for a longer period and had joined the scientific staff of the institute, normally working on their German habilitation, and later returned to Germany to continue their academic careers. That institutional background helps to explain why, from the early 1980s onwards, a growing number of professional university historians in Germany focused on British history topics both in their research and in teaching.¹

In addition and often in close co-operation with the GHI, twoother research institutions with a particular profile in research on modern British history and Victorian studies deserve attention. The 'Arbeitskreis Deutsche England Forschung', founded in 1981, organizes annual conferences and focuses on Anglo-German relations, on the history of Britain and the Commonwealth and has developed a special forum for young researchers.² Since 2004 an annual Prize is awarded to the best doctoral thesis in the field of British History and the history of Anglo-German relations. Numerous publications have concentrated on Victorian Britain since the foundation of this research cluster. In addition there is an 'Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society', established in 1973, concentrating mainly on the interaction between and exchange of economic, political and social knowledge between Britain and Germany.³ More important with regard to Victorian studies is the 'Prince Albert Association'.⁴ Focusing on the research of Anglo-German relations with particular reference to Coburg in the nineteenth century, the Association has published many bilingual conference volumes in a special series.

The other major factor is, to a certain degree at least, inseparablefrom this institutional infrastructure. Under its Director WolfgangJ. Mommsen, the GHI became, from the 1980s onwards, a majorforum to test and discuss comparative analyses, mainly concentrating on comparisons between Britain and Germany in the long nineteenth century. The controversial discussion of the German 'Sonderweg' [peculiar path], which gained new momentum with the publication of Geoff Eley's and David Blackbourn's book on 'Peculiarities in German History', from the early 1980s onwards underlined the necessity to overcome a mere German view of modern German history. Only by systematic comparisons between two or more cases would it be possible to identity, if not the German special path to modernity, then at leastthe political, socio-economic and cultural peculiarities in post-1800 German history.⁵ These controversial discussions clearly intensified German historians' interest in a closer analysis of Victorian society and a critical deconstruction of some of its myths that had coined so many historiographic stereotypes of Anglo-German perceptions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Thus a solid infrastructure and innovative methodological trends combined. The result was a whole range of works which looked at Victorian Britain...