The jewel of the German past: Historical preservation, tourism, and national identity in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany

This dissertation charts how one town in northern Bavaria. Rothenburg ob der Tauber, rose to become an idealized symbol of German culture and history, and how this image has been preserved, altered, rebuilt, contested, and communicated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the preservation of its medieval architectural heritage and the growth of modern tourism, Rothenburg came to occupy a special place in the memory landscape of Germany as a symbol of rootedness, community, and continuity with a bygone era. Indeed. Rothenburg is now a prominent, perhaps even the preeminent, symbol of medieval German history. Although Rothenburg clearly represents a ‘place of memory’ of the German past, this memory has proven to be more than a simple nostalgia for pre-modern times. Rothenburg and representations of it have been and continue to be driven by contemporary debates about German national identity. Despite its ability to project an image of stable traditional community, Rothenburg has proven to be anything but stable in the last two centuries. Rothenburg's physical structures and their symbolic interpretation have remained in constant flux. Although tourist guidebooks normally take Rothenburg's status as a given, this glosses over a very complex, highly-contingent, and in many respects extraordinary historical trajectory. Rothenburg has actually experienced repeated dramatic and sometimes traumatic turns in its history. Even a cursory examination of the town raises several intriguing questions. What factors account for the transformation of Rothenburg into a symbol of German national identity during the nineteenth century and the town's continued evolution during the twentieth century? How does a specific place or landscape influence our understanding of the past? How can a particular place or panorama come to represent an idealized national landscape or heritage, and how has this image been communicated to others? How has the desire to preserve and present an ‘authentic’ medieval German townscape affected or been affected by the economic demands of a growing tourist industry?...