Ai bivi della storia tedesca. Meinecke e il centenario del 1848.

Aim of this article is to introduce the first Italian translation of Friedrich Meinecke’s 1848. Eine Säkularbetrachtung (1948). Meinecke wrote the essay for the planned celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution of 1848/49. After a century, the failed revolution appears to the historian as one of «crossroads» of German history. Along with 1819, the year of von Humboldt’s and von Boyen’s failed reform attempt, and the year 1866, the triumphal year of Prussian Army, 1848 marks a moment in time in which Germany could have become something else, instead of a militaristic, authoritarian State. Our article shows how Meinecke’s essay needs to be read in its context: postwar Germany, both politically and culturally at loss. And, looking closer, in the biographical context of Meinecke’s last scientific production, which shows a deep, renewed, understanding of his country’s tragic fate.