On Hitler: The changing fortunes of the biography as a genre in recent historical research

Although the biographical approach has been considered as out of date by ma ny historians, one had to notice a new wave of such publications on Hitler in the eighties and nineties. Some took the shape of essays on his personal ity and action, others, while denying to be biographies in the old sense, s till used a narrative method "from the cradle to the grave". In the best ca ses, however, relations between the Fuhrer and the people were brought into full light by having recourse to the Weberian theory of charismatic power. "Parallel lives", e.g. of Hitler and Stalin, are also to be mentioned.