of the National Humanities Center SPRING 2002 NEWS From the Black Death Director’s Column 2 to the Thirty Years War 2002–03 Fellows Named 3 Thomas Brady Reexamines How Germany Became Germany Like Robert Richardson and Thomas development. A recent conversation with First Lyman Award Given 4 Laqueur, the first two John P. Birkelund Brady touched on everything from why Senior Fellows at the National women’s college basketball has eclipsed Alan Tuttle Honored 6 Humanities Center, Thomas Brady is a men’s in terms of strategy and interest to senior scholar with a youthful enthusi- the comparative merits of the National asm for his own work and an effortless Humanities Center over other institutes An Eventful Spring Semester 8 ability to hold forth on a wide range of for advanced study (chiefly the barbeque topics. A much-decorated scholar of the and the library services). The excerpt Deborah Cohen: Protestant Reformation who holds the below focuses on the task Brady has set Thinking About Things 10 Peder Sather Chair of History at the for himself in German Histories. University of California, Berkeley, Brady Summer Reading List 11 has spent his fellowship year working on Why don’t we start with “The German Question”? a new book, German Histories in the Age The Germans themselves call it Education Programs Update 12 of Reformations. Focusing on the period between the Black Death and the Thirty “the German Question”; I call it “the Years War but looking ahead to the German Problem”: Why does the course Kudos 14 “German Problem” of the mid-20th cen- of Germany as a nation-state seem to tury, the book will shed new light on the diverge so greatly from a norm based, In Memoriam 14 political and religious experiences of a implicitly or explicitly, on the histories collection of peoples whose identities of Britain and France? The norm speci- Recent Books by Fellows 15 were too strong to be forced into the fies a strongly centralized state and a Western European model of national more or less comfortable sense of nation- continued on page 2 Summer Events Calendar 16 1 In the first few years hood. “The German Problem” is thus a historians to look on this era in terms after I came to the question of exception to a norm, compa- of, I won’t say liberation, but release rable to what we call “American excep- from traditional, constricting ways of National Humanities tionalism.” The German case, granted, thinking and of doing things. Center, I often thought has a more ominous ring, because of the of the Center as an aggressive imperial nationalism that How did the German-speaking people respond to this opportunity? adolescent. It was experiencing the usual awakened after the First World War and led to the Second World War and Local people were thrown on their symptoms of adolescence—growing pains, the Holocaust. own resources for what I call “gover- uncertainty about what it wanted to be, and a nance,” which is my term for govern- dependency on allowances. Also, like an ado- Let’s back up to where your book begins, ment: law and order, justice, and which is with a great epidemic. lescent, the Center was exciting, fun, and defense. What fascinated me about the German-speaking world—Germany, if growing by leaps and bounds. Before the 1920s, we knew almost nothing about the impact of the Black not taken in a strict ethno-linguistic or Now, in what seems almost the twinkling Death or, in fact, the whole population national sense—was that the small polit- of an eye, the Center is 25 years old. As you and economic history between 1250 and ical units took on more authority and will see in this issue of News of the National 1500. Before that we knew about the that they held it for so long. This politi- Humanities Center, we recently celebrated the Black Death, to be sure, but only from cal dispersal forms the classic question literary texts—most famous is the intro- about Germany at the eve of the modern 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking for duction to Boccaccio’s Decameron—but era. It is expressed by a soused student the building that George Hartman so skillfully the depth and the length of the depres- portrayed by Goethe in a famous tavern designed for the Center. Next fall we will wel- sion of the population and the economy at Leipzig, who asks, “The dear old come the 25th class of Fellows. They will join that followed the Black Death around Holy Roman Empire, how does it hold together?” One of the things I set out 850 predecessors, a group that I like to think 1350 was not known. For this era the historians discovered the same pattern to understand was something the 18th of as the largest humanities faculty in the all over Christendom—plunging popu- century no longer understood: how world. No less effective for being dispersed lations, output, and prices, followed by these people ever lived with these con- throughout hundreds of colleges and universi- stagnation. Obviously, some areas were ditions of very dispersed authority and power. I don’t mean to romanticize ties all over the world, they are a powerful not hit so badly, and in general the rule holds: the higher the level of develop- them. The institutions of that era are force for the invigoration of humanistic ment, the greater the dying off. At first all dead except for the churches, which teaching and learning. this doesn’t seem to make sense, but on were and are the only structures saved At 25 the National Humanities Center is no reflection we can see that a highly articu- from the wreck of the Holy Roman longer an adolescent. With the help and guid- lated economy, which requires a great Empire. Napoleon destroyed it, rather easily, and in doing so made political ance of many friends it has achieved greater many special skills and extensive trade, is much more vulnerable to population space for its successor, Prussia, the an- maturity, focus, and steadiness of purpose. disaster because it depends more on sus- cestor of what we know as Germany. Although it still depends on the generosity of tained demand than does a society that So you are looking back and forward a its Fellows, Trustees, and other supporters, lives mainly from subsistence agriculture. few hundred years either way from the it is proudly independent. Still, the excitement It has also been known for a long time Reformation? that the Black Death had a particularly continues, measured not by years but by the I didn’t want to. I set out to write destructive effect on all large institu- the history of an event, the Protestant achievements of the teachers and scholars tions—the kingdoms and the church, Reformation in Germany, which was whose growth the Center has helped to at least at its upper levels. Essentially, all one of the two most consequential sustain. of the paths of communication and the things that have happened among the mobility of resources that had allowed Germans. I wanted to write about it in the construction of very large institu- a modern way, as we historians look at it tions in the Middle Ages were constrict- now. Instead of drawing a sharp break ed or weakened. In the beginning, the historians spoke only of catastrophe, but W. Robert Connor now it is becoming more common for continued on page 13 2 2002–03 Fellows Named The National Humanities Center has seminars, lectures, and conferences. Ball duPont Fund, the Florence Gould announced the appointment of 39 Among the prospective Fellows will be Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, Fellows for the academic year 2002–03. several scholars engaged in the study of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Representing history, literature, philoso- religion and American culture and sever- the John D. and Catherine T. phy, and half a dozen other humanistic al others whose research concerns envi- MacArthur Foundation, and the fields of study, these scholars will come ronmental history. National Endowment for the to the Center from the faculties of col- In support of these resident scholars Humanities. Twenty-two fellowships leges and universities across the United the Center has awarded a total of will be supported by the Center’s endow- States and also from Canada, Israel, and $1.4 million in research fellowships. ment, and one fellowship will be sup- the United Kingdom. They will work Sources of funding for individual fellow- ported by the contributions of alumni individually on research projects in the ships include grants from the Gladys Fellows of the Center. humanities, and will exchange ideas in Kriebel Delmas Foundation, the Jessie Tom Beghin Musicology, University Paul Douglas Griffiths History, Iowa Jo Burr Margadant History, Santa Clara of California, Los Angeles, Performing State University, Petty Crime, Policing, University, Monarchy at Risk: The Last Rhetoric: Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard and Punishment in London, 1545–1660 French Royal Family, 1830–1848 Sonatas as Musical Orations Grace Elizabeth Hale History, University Ted W. Margadant History, University Kalman P. Bland Religion, Duke of Virginia, Rebel, Rebel: Outsiders in of California, Davis, Criminal Justice University, Animals, Technology, and America, 1945–2000 and Revolutionary Politics in 1789 Souls: Human Identity in Medieval Jewish James A. Henretta History, University of Teresita Martinez-Vergne History, Thought Maryland, College Park, The Liberal State Macalester College, The Construction Kathryn Jane Burns History, University in America: New York, 1820–1950 of Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Truth Dominican National Discourse Susan Fern Hirsch Anthropology, and Consequences: Scribes and the Wesleyan University, The Embassy David Lewis Porter English, University Colonization of Latin America Bombings Reframed: Constructing of Michigan, China and the Invention Charles H.