German Home Towns by Mack Walker, James J. Sheehan - 9780801485084

German Home TownsCommunity, State, and General Estate, 16481871\nAuthor(s): Mack Walker, James J. Sheehan\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cornell University Press, United States\nImprint: Cornell University Press\nISBN-13: 9780801485084, 978-0801485084\nSynopsis\nGerman Home Towns is a social biography of the hometown Brger from the end of the seventeenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries. After his opening chapters on the political, social, and economic basis of town life, Mack Walker traces a painful process of decline that, while occasionally slowed or diverted, leads inexorably toward death and, in the twentieth century, transfiguration. Along the way, he addresses such topics as local government, corporate economies, and communal society. Equally important, he illuminates familiar aspects of German history in compelling ways, including the workings of the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic reforms, and the revolution of 1848.\n Finally, Walker examines German liberalism'.