Germany in a global context

A major research partnership which aims to deepen understanding of some of the most serious problems affecting modern Germany, by viewing them through the lens of the latest historical research, is being launched. The project, "Germany And The World In The Age Of Globalization", is being run jointly by the University of Cambridge, the Universities of Freiburg and Konstanz, and the Free University of Berlin. It will begin this week, with a seminar focusing on migration that promises to offer some timely context for a country whose Chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently announced the "death" of multiculturalism. Infamously her comments were then echoed by both David Cameron and French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. As well as offering a new perspective on modern predicaments, however, the programme has been designed to help nurture a new strand of scholarship that is changing the way we understand some of the most significant moments in its history, not least the rise and fall of the Nazis. "Until relatively recently, debates about Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries focused on a concept called Sonderweg - the idea that Germany's past stood apart from the history of all other European countries," Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge and one of the project's leaders, explained. "Thanks to the work of a number of British and German historians, it is now generally accepted that Germany's development has to be seen in a wider, European context.