Germanic

The Germanic tradition, as we use the term, covers the Continental German-speaking world — Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Low Countries — and the long arc from the Migration Period through the Holy Roman Empire, the Reformation, the philosophical revolution of the eighteenth century, and the present-day cultural life of the German-speaking countries. It overlaps with Anglo-Saxon at the linguistic root and with Frankish at the early-medieval edge, but its centre of gravity is Mitteleuropa.

What the tradition produced is, in fairness, a great deal of the modern intellectual furniture of the West. The Lutheran Bible. The Bach cantatas and the Beethoven symphonies. Kant’s first critique. The German university model — research-led, seminar-based — that nineteenth-century reformers exported worldwide. The chemistry and physics that built the periodic table and quantum mechanics. The Hanseatic mercantile system and the eventual German Federal Republic.

We cover medieval and early-modern German-speaking Europe, the Reformation, the philosophical and musical inheritance, the scientific revolution that ran through Berlin and Göttingen, and the cultural and political life of the modern German-speaking countries.