The portrait of Hitler: biography as historiographical writing
Adolf Hitler; Ian Kershaw, Historiography; Biography.
This thesis aims to analyze the means and circumstances by which the image of Adolf
Hitler was produced in the writing of the biography Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris and
Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis by British historian Ian Kershaw. This means identifying
which portrait was formulated through the narrative elements of the biography, as well
as investigating how the scientific operation - the broader context of the work's
production, such as: the social place, practices and writings of the biographer, who this
biographer was and his intellectual environment; how was the process of construction
(gestation) of Hitler's image in other works of the author; the context of writing the
biography; the dialogues that existed between the constructed character and the
already institutionalized profil of Hitler, what were the prevailing models of the leader
of the Third Reich in the period of writing the work, and, therefore, how the author
fitted into and departed from these writing patterns, etc. -which provided to constitute
the portrait of Adolf Hitler.