The National Turn and Unification: Diverging Paths in German Historiography Before 1990

Just as West German historians were critically examining the national paradigm, a parallel shift occurred in the GDR during the 1980s "heritage and tradition debate". This marked a significant rediscovery of national history, following a brief internationalist phase in the 1960s-70s that positioned the GDR as a "socialist nation" in direct response to West German Ostpolitik. By the mid-1970s, the SED re-emphasized the GDR as a socialist German nation, spurring exploration of historical traditions to underpin this sovereign identity. The ensuing debate rehabilitated previously taboo areas of the national past, extending responsibility beyond the progressive revolutionary lineage to include other classes, eras, and personalities, as well as the historical "German East".

In West Germany, this national turn was observed by conservative historians like Michael Stürmer, who used it to advocate for reviving national history in the FRG. Stürmer, an advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, warned of a "country without history" and argued for a positively accentuated historical consciousness. This push for a new patriotism, part of Kohl's promised "spiritual-moral renewal", faced fierce opposition from left-liberal historians who saw it as an attempt to relativize National Socialism and the Holocaust. This clash ignited the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute) of the mid-1980s, which solidified the central, negative place of the Nazi past in German identity and stimulated major new research on Holocaust perpetrators.

Paradoxically, a growing acceptance of German division fostered initial scholarly dialogue between East and West in the 1970s and 1980s. Moving past mutual hostility—where GDR historians accused the West of complicity and Westerners dismissed GDR work as propaganda—a limited recognition emerged. West German social historians saw the GDR as a productive challenge, while noting its increasing professionalism and constrained pluralism. Landmarks like the GDR's integration into the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1970) and the 1987 SPD-sponsored conference where historians debated the national past signaled a cautious normalization of relations.

Within the GDR, some historians engaged constructively with Western trends like history from below, women's history, and cultural history. Scholars such as Hartmut Zwahr (on the Leipzig proletariat) and Dietrich Mühlberg (on working-class life) reflected these influences, as did GDR historians' engagement with Fritz Fischer's theses on World War I. However, women's history remained largely confined to the proletarian women's movement until a dedicated commission was formed in 1988.

The unexpected German reunification in 1990 abruptly made the nation-state agenda central again. While a New Right briefly attempted to renationalize historical consciousness and marginalize the Nazi past, their influence faded after 1995. Instead, the dominant post-1990 trend became a "search for national normality", criticizing post-nationalism as another Sonderweg. A new consensus began to form, exemplified by Heinrich August Winkler's synthesis, uniting the national principle with the liberal-democratic values of the FRG. Research expanded to historize the FRG itself, examining 1968, left-wing terrorism, and Ostpolitik, while intense debates on National Socialism continued via the Goldhagen debate, the Wehrmacht exhibition, and discussions about a Holocaust memorial.

For East German historiography, reunification brought institutional extinction. The West German university system was imposed, and most GDR historians were dismissed after evaluations by Western peers or due to Stasi collaborations. By the mid-1990s, history departments in the east were dominated by Westerners. Surviving GDR historiography was relegated to a diminishing niche culture, unable to reproduce itself institutionally, destined to fade with its last trained generation. Thus, the brief convergence in the 1980s did not lead to a unified historical consciousness but was overtaken by the Western paradigm's comprehensive victory after 1990.