Abseits der Geschichte

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Ortschroniken and Heimatbücher are omnipresent in the memory culture of rural Germany. Although they address rather small audiences, together they represent a mass phenomenon of historiography. However, academic historians have mostly overlooked the importance of these books. Dirk Thomaschke's study is the first to undertake a country-wide survey of Ortschroniken and Heimatbücher from the post-war years to the present. The author unveils the unique patterns along which they write history and conceptualizes this as a genre of its own. Moreover, the book investigates comparable phenomena in the local history of the German Democratic Republic.