ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the range of sources and methods that can be used to investigate identity formation in a historical perspective. The discussion is based on research on the formation and changes of ‘Saxon identity’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Saxony (with its changing borders) was a middle-sized state in the eastern part of the Holy Roman Empire, an independent kingdom from 1806 to 1918, and a German Federal state from 1918 to 1952 and again after 1990. While the following discussion is specifi c to this case study, I try to identify a broad range of sources that should be available for any area, just as the approach and methods outlined would be relevant for the study of other kinds of social identity constructions and can be applied to different regions.
