The author offers a critical examination of the term “body” as an ambiguous and elusive historical concept, analyzing the explosion of the interest in the body during the 1990s. The often unspecific yet seductive invocation of the body in many recent historical studies is reviewed, and the methodological implications of placing bodies at the heart of historical investigation is considered. A particular moment of rupture in 20th-century German history is analyzed, when bodies became more powerful markers of the dichotomy between male and female citizens at the end of World War one, during the November Revolution, and amidst the founding of Weimar democracy.
