People often associate postwar Germany with technology and with its
products of mass consumption, such as luxury cars. Even pop music,
most notably Kraftwerk (literally 'power station') with songs such
as Autobahn, Radioactivity or We are the Robots, disseminates the
stereotype of a close link between German culture and technology.
Technology in Modern German History explores various forms of
technology in 200 years of German history and explains how
technology has been fundamental to the shaping of modern Germany.
The book investigates the role technology played in transforming
Germany's culture, society and politics during the 19th and 20th
centuries. Key topics covered include the different stages of
industrialization, the growth of networked cities, and the triumph
of a teleological narrative of technology as progress. Moreover, it
provides a critical revision of the history of high technology
which reveals how high-tech euphoria determined certain paths in
history regardless of whether the respective technology proved to
be successful. In its second part, the volume introduces new
avenues in scholarship. Karsten Uhl examines neglected areas, such
as rural technologies or the often-overlooked importance of
everyday technologies: How did consumers or workers use new
technologies? How did they appropriate and modify them? Lastly, the
book considers the final decades of the 20th century and asks if
they provided a significant new quality of technological change: To
what degree and effects did computerization transform professional
and private life in Germany? In culture and politics, reinforced by
the German variety of environmentalism, the idea of progress was
challenged, as the once prevailing vision of progress gave way to
new apprehensions of uncertainty evident to this day. Technology in
Modern German History brings fascinating insight into a much
neglected area of German history for students and scholars alike.
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