My writing has focused on the social history of modern Germany. In my book on
the German peasantry in the First World War and the 1920s, I was primarily
interested in the political behavior of groups in the middle-- between capital
and labor-- in a period of sustained crisis. This study also allowed me to
pursue my longstanding concern with the reasons for the triumph of the Nazis and
the collapse of the Weimar Republic. The politics of the agrarian sector in the
nineteenth- and twentieth- centuries were also at the focus of a collection of
essays that I compiled and edited.
More recently, I completed a book that explores the social, economic, and
political status of women in West Germany in the period of post-World War II
recovery by focusing on the reformulation of state policies affecting women's
lives. By examining the extensive discussion and implementation of specific
measures, the book illuminates how established conceptions of gender difference
influenced public policy, and how social policy in turn shaped the objective
conditions of women's social and economic status. I am continuing work on the
history of the Federal Republic of Germany in the fifties, focusing in
particular on how West Germans defined the basis for social solidarity and
legitimate political identities in the aftermath of Nazism and defeat in
war.
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ROBERT MOELLER
Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley, 1980
Department Chair
Professor of History and
Faculty Advisor, UCI California History/Social Science Project
Department of History
452 Murray Krieger Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-3275
tel: 949.824.8716
fax: 949.824.2865
email: rgmoelle@uci.edu
Fields of Interest:
Modern Germany; European women; social
Publications: (complete list of publications)
"The Kaiserreich Recast? Continuity and Change in Modern German
Historiography," Journal of Social History (1984).
German Peasants and Agrarian Politics, 1914-1924: The Rhineland and
Westphalia (1986)
Editor, Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany: Recent Contributions to
Agricultural History (1986)
"Reconstructing the Family in Reconstruction Germany: Women and Social Policy
in the Federal Republic, 1949-1955," Feminist Studies (1989)
Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar
West Germany (1993)
"The Homosexual Man is a 'Man,' the Homosexual Woman is a 'Woman': Sex,
Society, and the Law in Postwar West Germany," Journal of the History of
Sexuality (1994)
"War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of
Germany," American Historical Review (1996)
Editor, West Germany Under Construction: Politics, Society and Culture in
the Adenauer Era
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (1997)
"The Last Soldiers of the Great War' and Tales of Family Reunions in the Federal
Republic of Germany," Signs 24, no. 1 (Autumn 1998): 126-46.
War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany
(University of California Press, 2001).
" Germans as Victims? Thoughts on a Post-Cold War History of the Second World Wars" Legacies, History and Memory 17:1/2 (2005): 147-94.
"
On the History of Man-made Destruction: Loss, Death, Memory, and Germany in the Bombing War", History Workshop Journal, Issue 61 (2006): 103-34.
"Kmpfen fr den Frieden: 08/15 und westdeutsche Erinnerungen an den Zweiten Weltkrieg," Militrgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 64:2 (2005): 359-389.