| This dissertation investigates the kinds of stories told about ancient objects found on and in German soil. Before the mid-eighteenth century, royalty collected buried objects as curiosities and showpieces. Enlightenment thinking, however, brought a new attention to local objects. Pastors, teachers, and administrators began to see burial mounds, bones, urns, pottery, and jewelry as the material evidence of a German history that was much older than the medieval period. This engagement with archaeology significantly altered the definition of German history.;After the Napoleonic wars, archaeology helped territories that were combined into larger states to look beyond recent political turbulence. Liberal nationalists wrote about the unity among the Germanic peoples as a percursuor to the political unification they longed for. After Prussia's military successes in 1866 and 1870, there were attempts to smooth out regional differences and create centralized institutions for archaeology.;Prehistory gained the attention of university scholars in the 1860s, when scientific discourses about the origins of humankind began to rely on archaeological material. Rudolf Virchow attempted to keep narratives "scientific" by removing them from the Romantic historical contexts that local associations had popularized.;After 1900 the separation between Romantic history and science broke down. The popularization of prehistory in schools, literature, and local museums told a proud history of Germanic culture. Nationalist archaeologists used their field to foster loyalty to Germany. This sentiment increased under the National Socialists. Most prehistorians enthusiastically welcomed the politics of the national community.;The connection between the popularization of prehistory and nationalist politics tarnished archaeology's reputation. This was not a natural outgrowth of earlier practices, however. The nationalist connotations attached to historical interpretation first emerged in the early twentieth century. After the Second World War, archaeology slowly recovered as a respectable science. It has once again become a multifaceted practice that offers hobbyists and professionals a set of material sources for the construction of the prehistoric past of Europe. |
