Alltagsgeschichte

Alltagsgeschichte

Alltagsgeschichte developed from the social and political upheavals of the 1960s when new social movements began to mobilize with political and academic voices. Its intention was to show the links between the ordinary "everyday" experiences of ordinary people in a society, and the broad social and political changes which occur in that society. Alltagsgeschichte becomes a form of microhistory because this massively broad endeavor to undertake can only feasibly be practiced on the most minute of scales. With the political shift in Germany during the 1990s, many historians deemed Alltagsgeschichte a casualty of the move from social history towards cultural history. It can also be linked to the Italian historical doctrine of microhistory (microstoria).

Alltagsgeschichte's leading proponents include Paul Veyne (born 1930) and Michel Rouche in France, and Peter Carr in the United Kingdom. Martin Broszat (1926–1989) was also strongly influenced by the method in his six-volume co-edited work on Bavaria under National Socialism entitled Bayern in der NS-Zeit (1977–1983).