These essays by nine distinguished historians deal with prominent personalities in German history over the last two centuries; and they are dominated by two themes. First, they trace the growth and flowering of German culture in areas like print and architecture and painting and how this transformed relationships and procedures in everyday life. Second, they follow the rise of a political consciousness on the part of the Germans, and the consequences this consciousness had for nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In throwing light on the art of Schinkel and Liebermann, on the undertakings of Lichtwark, on the policies of Bismarck, and on the ordeals of Rathenau and Hitler and Beck and Faulhaber and Brandt, these nine essays offer a salutary guidepost to a past that is as rich as it is terrifying.