Alltagsgeschichte, Social Science History, and the Study of Migration in Nineteenth-Century Germany

In the past several decades, the scope of European social history has been widened considerably attention given to the historical experience of inarticulate, common folk. By imaginatievly exploring neglected sources and through the use of quantitative techniques, social science historians on both sides of the Atlantic have attempted to systematically weigh hypothesis and evidence in order to recover the texture of past lives. In recent years, however, social science historians who specialize in German history have been confronted by the challenges of Alltagsgeschichte—the history of ordinary events. Using a methodology influenced by anthropology, practitioners of “every-day history” have utilized memoirs, letters, old photos, and interviews with participant observers in order to evoke the past social life of select groups. These scholars have often reported their findings in vivid, detailed narratives in order to avoid forcing the multifaceted experience of ordinary folk into what they consider arid statistical tables and reified constructs, dangers that particularly beset the consumers of computer-generated cross-tabulations and regression equations. In addition, advocates of “peoples' history” have attempted to make historical scholarship unambiguously relevant to contemporary issues by setting their research against a backdrop of current social and political controversy and by espousing “populist” social views.