What does it mean for a society to be so closely identified with both inflicting and withstanding enormous suffering? This work reconsiders Germany's past according to the themes of pain and prosperity, focusing on such topics as welfare policy and urban history.

"This highly important work uses the leitmotiv of pain and prosperity to illuminate German history, with excellent essays that explore how these notions shaped each other, and how they framed German conceptions of identity, memory, selfhood, nationhood, and the past." --Alon Confino, University of Virginia