The pride expressed in John F. Kennedy's confession “Ich bin ein Berliner!” (I am a Berliner!) could have colored Erich Angermann's own admission “Ich bin ein Sachse!” (I am a Saxon!). Yet everyone who knew him would have noted the thick irony, whereas all others would have classified this as a blatant and shameless lie. For who could have been more Bavarian, who was in a greater hurry to get out of Cologne and back to Munich after the end of the term, who had his dentist in Munich, who bought all his clothes and most of his shoes there, and who refused to admit that Kölsch, the local Cologne brew, was drinkable - Erich Angermann. But who was Erich Angermann?

There are various approaches to this question. We could turn to his wife, and she would probably answer, with a pensive smile: “Well, he was many things, but first of all he was a very lovable person.” His students would admit to the first part of the sentence but would then add: He was a fine academic teacher, easily accessible, but as a supervisor of doctoral dissertations something of a “precisionist.” Had Angermann been listening in, he would have agreed with this description but added that the term precisionist in its historical meaning carried connotations - a word he was rather fond of - that probably fit him less well. And soon he would have engaged us in a discussion about the meaning of the term in early modern religious history in England, North America, and Germany.

This book presents the revised results of a conference convened to discuss the work of the late Erich Angermann (1927-92). The symposium took place at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D.C., from June 8 to 10, 1995. We remember Angermann, the senior historian of America in Germany, as the principal figure behind the foundation of the GHI in 1987. He also served as the first chairman of its academic advisory council. During his tenure as professor for American and European history at the University of Cologne, Angermann more than anyone else worked for a revitalization of what he called “Atlantic history.” That conceptual approach, derived from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tradition of humanistic historiography, viewed American history as part of an integrated history of North America and Europe. Thus, the concept of Atlantic history comprises the common links between European and American history since the beginning of the European settlement of North America as well as comparative social, cultural, and economic developments on both continents.

Angermann's integrated vision of a common Atlantic history of Europe and America remains important for American as well as European historians. During the last decade the historical communities on both sides of the Atlantic have vigorously debated the notion of complementary and comparable historical developments - or of Atlantic history.

“In the manners and conversation of these persons, upon the whole, we found a frankness, a cordiality, and good nature truly republican, or which at least I love to consider as such,” wrote John Quincy Adams upon encountering the inhabitants of Saxony during a tour of Germany in 1800. Eighteen years later George Bancroft thought that the people and professors of Göttingen were friendly, too. The first professor he met, “Mr. Benecke,” struck him as “a friendly man,” and he also reported that “Professor Blumenbach and his family . . . are kind to me indeed.” Well over a decade later, the poet and frustrated Bowdoin College professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow confided to his diary that “Counsellor Bottiger,” the first person he visited upon the recommendation of his friend Washington Irving, had “received me very cordially.”

How does one interpret these three American reactions to Germans? Do they tell us that Germans in the early part of the nineteenth century were invariably friendly to American travelers, to Americans in general, or even to all foreigners? Longfellow's friend Washington Irving thought that such a conclusion would be rash. Upon arriving in Aachen, admittedly out of humor and feeling ill, he wrote to his sister, Sarah Van Wart: “The Germans are full of old customs and usages, which are obsolete in other parts of the world. . . . The people have an antiquated look, particularly the lower orders. The women dress in peculiar costumes.”