Becoming Historical

Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which selfhood and cultural solidarity came to be understood and lived as historical identities during the first half of the nineteenth century. It's focus is on the Prussian capital- Berlin- and on the remarkable groups of artists and thinkers- Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Felix Mendelssohn, Jacob Grimm, Friedrich Karl von Savigny and Leopold von Ranke-who became associated in 1840 with the cultural agenda of a regime that hoped to forge solidarity among its subjects by encouraging identification with a constructed public memory. The book emphasizes both the developmental phases and the inner tensions of the program for "becoming historical" that was publicly articulated in 1840.