Brent O. Peterson, associate professor of German, describes his teaching specialties as “ranging from the 18th to the 21st centuries and consisting of literature, history, and culture all mixed into some sort of mutually informative stew.” He is particularly proud of Reading Texts and Contexts, a course that bridges the curricular space between intermediate and upper-level German courses, and this year he is introducing a new course, Berlin, Experiencing a Great City, which will culminate with a short visit to the German capital.
And, as its title suggests, his new book, History, Fiction, and Germany: Writing the 19th-Century Nation (Wayne State University Press, 2005) serves up a similar stew. Its theme is that the German-speaking inhabitants of Central Europe did not automatically think of themselves as “Germans,” spoke mutually incomprehensible dialects, owed allegiance to different leaders, worshiped in different churches, and would not have recognized each other’s customs. If asked about their identity, Peterson says, these prospective Germans might have answered Austrian, Bavarian, or Prussian, or they could as easily have used local labels or resorted to occupational markers. For such a disparate population to think of itself as “German,” people had to learn a set of stories they could tell themselves and others in answer to the question of identity, just as Americans all know that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree — even if he didn’t. In his book, Peterson looks at what 19th-century Germans believed about German history as part of their emerging national narrative.
In 2004-05, he also presented a paper, “Adapting 19th-Century Heroes to 20th-Century Needs,” at a conference of the German Studies Association.
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