Oliver Zimmer is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oxford and a Sanderson Fellow at University College.

"In his imaginative, rich, and thought-provoking study, Oliver Zimmer turns his three cities' supposed weaknesses into methodological strengths. He argues that it is exactly their in-betweenness--neither big cities nor hometowns, neither fully 'advanced' nor wholly 'backward'--that makes Augsburg, Ludwigshafen, and Ulm representative of urban life and culture in late-nineteenth-century Germany. Considering the fact that in 1914 about 40 percent of the German population lived in such middle-sized cities, historians should take this argument very seriously. [A] highly thought-provoking addition to the rich literature on Imperial Germany."--Yair Mintzker, American Historical Review

"This rich study, based on an innovative analysis of archival documents, presents an important new framework to explain the experience of dynamic economic, political, and social transformations and the ensuing tensions within the Kaiserreich. His attention to the coexistence of new visions and rhythms of life with concerns for stability, status, and localism is unique...Most important, Zimmer's work invites scholars to join the dialogue about the Kaiserreich by raising new ways to address long-standing questions on the nature of the German state with his innovative terms and case studies. He makes clear German nationalism was far from linear or a tool of elite manipulation, and links the local and the national to yield important insights on social, political, and economic life."--Katherine B. Aalestad, Central European History