Robert S. Terrell, assistant professor of history, has written A Nation Fermented: Beer, Bavaria, and the Making of Modern Germany (Oxford University Press, 2024).

In the book, Terrell traces how brewing practices in Germany’s southern region of Bavaria became associated with the nation as a whole from the late 19th to the end of the 20th century. Drawing from over a dozen archives, he explores how a provincial brewing standard–the Reinheitsgebot, or Beer Purity Law–became a national icon based on Bavaria’s staunch commitment to regional traditions and local values. Across topics including tax law, advertising, public health, agriculture and global stereotypes, the history of German brewing shows the importance of provincial influences and certain commodities on the national whole, he argues.

Terrell has published journal articles and public scholarship on German history, particularly through the movement of food, commodities, capital and people. He is currently working on a book that uses restaurants to index social changes related to urbanization, consumer culture and labor exploitation. He is also pursuing research on the connections between the Weimar Republic and the post-Ottoman Middle East. He is co-organizer of the Central New York Humanities Corridor working group Research and Narrative in Modern European History, a group of faculty, graduate students and staff from institutions in New York that produce academic research and narratives for a broad audience.

Terrell is a senior research associate at the Center for European Studies. His areas of expertise are modern Germany and Europe, commodity and food history, global and transnational history, and the history of Islam and Muslims in Europe. He teaches courses on German history, theories, and philosophies of history and food and foodways.

From the publisher:

“How did beer become one of the central commodities associated with the German nation? How did a little-known provincial production standard—the Reinheitsgebot, or Beer Purity Law—become a pillar of national consumer sentiments? How did the jovial, beer-drinking German become a fixture in the global imagination?

While the connection between beer and Germany seems self-evident, A Nation Fermented reveals how it was produced through a strange brew of regional commercial and political pressures. Spanning from the late nineteenth century to the last decades of the twentieth, A Nation Fermented argues that the economic, regulatory, and cultural weight of Bavaria shaped the German nation in profound ways. Drawing on sources from over a dozen archives and repositories, Terrell weaves together subjects ranging from tax law to advertising, public health to European integration, and agriculture to global stereotypes.

Offering a history of the Germany that Bavaria made over the twentieth century, A Nation Fermented eschews both sharp temporal divisions and a conventional focus on northern and industrial Germany. In so doing, Terrell offers a fresh take on the importance of provincial influences and the role of commodities and commerce in shaping the nation.”