German History

Matteucci and du Bois-Reymond: A Bitter Rivalry

by Gabriel Finkelstein

This essay considers a long-standing controversy between two nineteenth century pioneers in electrophysiology: the... more This essay considers a long-standing controversy between two nineteenth century pioneers in electrophysiology: the German scientist Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896), and his Italian rival Carlo Matteucci (1811-1868). Historians have generally described their disagreement in du Bois-Reymond’s terms: the product of a contrast in scientific outlook. While not discounting this interpretation, I want to suggest that the controversy was driven as much by the rivals’ similarity as it was by their difference.

The Construction of an Alpine Landscape: Building, Representing and Affecting the Eastern Alps, c. 1885-1914

by Ben Anderson

Forthcoming in Cultural Geography.

Between 1885 and the First World War, German and Austrian alpinists talked of ‘opening up’ the Alps in Germany and the... more Between 1885 and the First World War, German and Austrian alpinists talked of ‘opening up’ the Alps in Germany and the Austrian Empire with a vast network of huts and paths. This article argues that this effort to develop the Alps arose from a series of relationships between people, objects, representations and affects which linked urban spaces of middle-class conduct to the alpine environment. Alpinists utilised media such as landscape reliefs and panoramas not merely to represent the Alps, but to inculcate a particular affective response amongst Germany’s urban middle-class, or Bürgertum. Instead of a Romantic ideal of mountains as unknowable symbols of nature’s power, these alpinists promoted a modern gaze which would see all, from the safety of a controlled, governable landscape. In doing so, alpinists legitimised their intervention in the Eastern Alps, developing these once unknown landscapes as a bürgerlich [bourgeois, or middle-class] cultural resource.

Whither Germany? The "German Problem" and its Implications for Today

by Bernhard Blumenau

published in: Papiers d'actualité / Current Affairs in Perspective, no. 6 (2011)

This paper looks at new trends and developments in German foreign policy and in how far this represents a re-opening... more This paper looks at new trends and developments in German foreign policy and in how far this represents a re-opening of the German Problem.

It can be found here: http://www.fondation-pierredubois.ch/Papiers-d-actualite/germanproblem.html

Sulayman b. Nasir al-Lamki and German colonial policies towards Muslim communities in German East Africa

by Michael Pesek

published in n Islam in Africa, edited by Thomas Bierschenk and Georg Stauth. 211-229. Münster: LIT, 2002

Review of Frolich P. (2010) Rosa Luxemburg: Ideas in Action (2012)

by Christian Garland

Unedited version of shorter review published in Anarchist Studies 21.1 pps.119-121
http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/current.html

Der "Bromberger Blutsonntag" 1939. Kontroversen und Forschungsergebnisse

by Markus Krzoska

Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012), H. 2, S. 237-247

To this day, the so-called “Bloody Sunday at Bromberg” (3./4.9.1939) and its consequences are among the most... more To this day, the so-called “Bloody Sunday at Bromberg” (3./4.9.1939) and its consequences are among the most contentious subjects in the history of the Second World War. Despite extensive efforts by German and Polish researchers it has not been possible to clear up the events at the time. In view of the lack of central sources on the German side this is probably no longer possible. In contrast the investigation of the number and names of the Polish victims has advanced noticeably during the last few years. The present article adds to existing Polish material published in 2008/2009 on the basis of unpublished German sources of the Historisch-Landeskundliche Kommission für die Deutschen in Polen [Historical Commission on the Germans in Poland], among them the papers of the former teacher August Müller, kept at the Herder Institute in Marburg. The comparative analysis of the names of the dead exhibits surprising differences, while the estimate of the overall number of casualties (over 400) is astonishingly similar both on the German and Polish side. In any case, final clarification seems impossible on the basis of the sources known to date.


Read More: http://www.oldenbourg-link.com/doi/abs/10.1524/vfzg.2012.0012

V Workshop LBS, 14 maggio 2012

by La Bottega dello Storico LBS

La Bottega dello Storico è lieta di presentarvi un nuovo workshop dal titolo "Il cinema tedesco durante le due... more La Bottega dello Storico è lieta di presentarvi un nuovo workshop dal titolo "Il cinema tedesco durante le due guerre mondiali". A discutere come relatrice sarà presente la Prof.ssa Chiara Tognolotti (Università di Firenze), coadiuvata dal Prof. Andrea D'Onofrio (Università di Napoli Federico II) e dal Prof. Pasquale Iaccio (Università di Salerno) come discussant. Moderatore dell'incontro sarà il Dott. Fabrizio Novellino, dottorando presso l'Università di Trento. Appuntamento presso il Goethe Institut Neapel, Riviera di Chiaia 202, il 14/05/2012 alle ore 16.00.

Von der Fahnenverbrennung zum "Fahnenerlass". Politische Unruhen in Neuhaldensleben im Spätsommer 1921

by Ulf Scharrer

in: Jahreschrift der Museen des Landkreises Börde 49, 2009, p. 75-130

Die Linsen der Täter. Fotografien als Quelle zum Holocaust

by Ulf Scharrer

in: Geschichte lernen  12 (H. 69), 1999, p. 52-55

Spaziergang durch Lauenburg. Eine Beschreibung der Orte lauenburgischer Industrieentwicklung

by Ulf Scharrer

Co-authored with Norbert Grube and Marcus Jürgensen, in: Lauenburgische Heimat 139, 1994, p. 40-67

„Il Führer è stato ancora una volta troppo umano“

by Paolo Fonzi

http://www.siscalt.it/ita/http:/www.siscalt.it/ita/sezione-ricerche-e-dibattiti/

Thomas Kühne & Benjamin Ziemann,.„La renovacion de la Histora Militar. Conynuturas, interpretaciones, conceptos,“ in Semata. Ciencias Sociais e Humanidades 19 (2008): 304-347, Spanish translation of „Militärgeschichte in der Erweiterung. Konjunkturen, Interpretationen, Konzepte,“ in idem, eds., Was ist Militärgeschichte? (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000): 9-46.

by Thomas Kühne

Thomas Kühne, “Professionalization or 'Amateurization', Homogenization or Segmentation? The Parliamentary Elite in Germany 1815-1918’, in Les familles politiques en Europe occidentale au XIXe siècle (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1997): 391-408.

by Thomas Kühne

Colonial Conquest and the Struggle for the Presence of the Colonial State in German East Africa, 1885-1903

by Michael Pesek

Die Auferstehung des Kriegshelden aus dem Bett des Offiziers. Die Konstruktion kolonialer Maskulinität im Ersten Weltkrieg

by Michael Pesek

Cued Speeches: The Emergence of Shauri as Colonial Praxis in German East Africa, 1850-1903

by Michael Pesek

Exploring the GDR’s Foundations - An investigation of the GDR’s national Identity as seen through two “National Foundation” films: "Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt" and "Ich war neunzehn"

by Richard McKenzie

This dissertation examines two DEFA films produced in the 1960’s by Joachim Kunert and Konrad Wolf,who became part of... more This dissertation examines two DEFA films produced in the 1960’s by Joachim Kunert and Konrad Wolf,who became part of East Germany’s 2nd generation of filmmakers and who explored the causes of National Socialism and the remedies for the dreadful catastrophe that overcame Germany between 1933 and 1945. The collapse of the Reich in 1945 saw the end of the 12 year National Socialist reign of terror over Germany. The Nazi’s had ensured that they had control of cultural life in Germany and had invested heavily in a film industry that created a national myth in order to support Nazi Party aims and which manipulated the public. The defeat of Germany saw the discrediting and failure of fascist, national identity, myth making, artistic stereotypes and the foundational films produced in Germany during the period 1933-45. By the 1960’s DEFA, the GDR’s state film production company had been exploring the origins of National Socialism for twenty years, starting with Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns, 1946, DEFA. The GDR’s state film company, DEFA, was given the task of” […]restor[ing] democracy in Germany and remove all traces of fascist and militaristic ideology from the minds of every German[…] (Allen, 1999,3). These films were produced to enable the Germans to have an “honest confrontation with the military and moral catastrophe that […]the Germans had brought on themselves[…]” (Barnouw,2008,48) and sought to “develop a cinematic language[…]to confront the recent German past (Pinkert,2008,20). The “grammar” of DEFA anti- fascist films was established by such films as Staudte, Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns orIrgendwo in Berlin, 1946, Gerhard Lamprecht, DEFA and Die Buntkarierten,1949, Kurt Maetzig, DEFA or Rotation,1949, Wolfgang Staudte,DEFA. These films were made by a generation that had grown up in the Weimar period and who had experienced the slide from Weimar chaos to National Socialist Dictatorship at first hand. The film makers were born in the late 19th or early 20th Centuries, Staudte in 1906, Lamprecht in 1897 and Maetzig in 1911. Their early films are an almost emotional expression of the moment of defeat containing heartfelt investigations of the causes of the catastrophe from within the Soviet Occupation Zone and later in the GDR. The 1950’s saw DEFA turn its attention to films which explored the everyday concerns of GDR citizens struggling to build a new state centring on the Berlin films of the middle of that decade.

The Misogyny of Trümmer A New Reading of the Trümmerfilm

by Richard McKenzie

Presented at theThe 51st National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies 29th March

The post war Trümmerfilm forms a key part of German foundational iconography in relation to the immediate effects of... more The post war Trümmerfilm forms a key part of German foundational iconography in relation to the immediate effects of Germany’s defeat and capitulation in 1945.

Whether created in the Western or Soviet occupation zones this genre has been have been read as texts which begin the rehabilitation of the defeated Landser, begin the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung and make the first tentative steps at attributing guilt for the catastrophe that befell Germany between 1933 and 1945. Key commentators, such as Pinkert and Silbermann, concentrate on the male experience, where female characters exist principally to rehabilitate and redeem their men folk.

Concentrating on Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns this presentation will provide a new reading of the Trümmerfilm genre. This reading sees the role of the female characters less in a redemptive and more in a controlling negative role in which their independence and sexuality are employed to reduce and defeat the male characters essential masculinity. In this final battle of the German catastrophe the female characters are criticised for attempting to “civilise” the returning Landser in their own image and constraining his essential self.

Contrasting images of resistance and resisters in East and West German warfilms of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

by Richard McKenzie

Konrad Wolf, the East German film director, described himself as a “Vaterlandsverrätter” because of his experience of... more Konrad Wolf, the East German film director, described himself as a “Vaterlandsverrätter” because of his experience of resisting the Nazis by fighting as a Red Army soldier against his native land. His film Ich war 19 and other German war films of the 1950’s and 1960’s grapple with the dilemma of presenting those that resisted fascism in a positive light despite a majority of adults believing, even in the 1950’s that resistance to Hitler was treason . The German war film genre bloomed in the 1950’s and 1960’s on both sides of the Wall as it was co-opted in to efforts to support re armament, nation building and the portray resistors as suitable heroes in the hunt for “usable” heroes in Germany’s catastrophic recent past.

Building on work undertaken for my Phd this paper will present the efforts of East and West German film makers to present resistance and resistors as positive heroes. It will contrast the positions taken by the film makers on both sides of the ideological divide and examine the extent to which these “foundational” films have laid down some of the national myths of German military resistance to fascism and the Wehrmacht’s culpability in the Second World War that persist in to German war film making in to the 21st Century.

Chronicle of a Death Observed

by Anna Hajkova

Review of Feuchert, Sascha; Leibfried, Erwin; Riecke, Jörg, eds., Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz / Litzmannstadt. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2009