Hutted Histories Special: Blood & Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire, 1871-1918 with Katja Hoyer

We are thrilled that the wonderful German-British historian and writer, Katja Hoyer, will be joining us here at Brook Farm Camp for an afternoon Hutted Histories Special, raising funds for Great War Huts. 

In this vivid fifty-year history of Germany from 1871-1918, which inspired events that forever changed the European continent, Katja tells the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War.

Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea.

Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France; all without destroying itself in the process?

This is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval, and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.

About Katja:

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian, journalist and the author of the widely acclaimed Blood and Iron and Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990. A visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she is a columnist for the Washington Post and hosts the podcast The New Germany together with Oliver Moody. She was born in East Germany and now lives in Norfolk. You can subscribe to Katja's website: https://www.katjahoyer.uk/