Comparing Ancient History Textbooks of

To establish how the depiction of ancient Greek and Roman history is influenced by the political constellation of the Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic, five history books used in secondary schools of each period are compared to determine how much they emphasized democracy and use ancient social values to support ideals of the monarchy and later the republic. In addition it was investigated how much the different authors compared past historical events to more recent ones, how they evaluated the influence of socioeconomic developments on historical events, and how they met the educational policy of the two periods. These finding served to establish how these textbooks appropriated ancient history for the presentist purposes of the age in which they were written: how they served not only as political and cultural symptoms of their age, but perhaps even causes of political and cultural transformation in the German youth who read them. It was found the humanistic education¿s selective interpretation of ancient history underpins and mirrors the contemporary political ideology in Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic.