The separation of labor and gender continues in German historiography. Major new studies in labor history still manage to ignore the category of gender. Partly this is a result of a well-entrenched academic culture. But this trend is also related to the collapse of the German Democratic Republic. The issue of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past), while certainly of great importance, has so dominated German intellectual life that it has become inordinately difficult to raise new perspectives or to develop innovative approaches to German history. In this confining context, not only gender but all sorts of other categories and approaches disappear from the intellectual and political horizon. Yet there is some innovative work, both in Germany and the United States, that combines a variety of perspectives, including gender, rejects the totalitarian model, and takes seriously daily life as a key site of the making of history.