Nina Janz
I am a postdoctoral research associate in the project Warlux, at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg.
follow up the latest research results: https://digiwarhist.hypotheses.org
Before, I was involved in the Project in History of Justice. As an archivist, I was researching and inventorying relevant documents for the project. I analyzed and provided the team with relevant documents and prepares them for the digitalizing and virtual exhibition.
I studied Archival Science in Marburg, European history in Hagen and Haifa/Israel.
I worked as an archivist at the German Federal Archive, in Koblenz and Berlin and at the Military Archive in Freiburg, where I managed requests and inquiries concerning the Wehrmacht, WW II and the fate of POW and other Nazi victims. I supported projects in digitalizing and preservation of documents and worked in a project of the German Historical Moscow to digitalize records of Soviet POW.
After my archival career, I began my doctorate at the University of Hamburg in cultural anthropology about the impact of death and violence and the memory of WW II in the post-war period in Germany and Russia.
I was a visiting fellow at the State University of St. Petersburg, the Institute for High Technology/Institute for Oral History in Voronezh and at the American Institute for German Contemporary Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
My research focus lies on the commemoration aspects of military dead/war dead and war cemeteries in Germany and Russia, the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and on cultural aspects on the Wehrmacht and military violence during WW II. And secondly, my research interests cover the classical historical research in archives and libraries, digital methods and innovations and the questions of digital preservation and accessibility of historical documents.
Supervisors: Norbert Fischer, University of Hamburg and Denis Scuto, University of Luxembourg
follow up the latest research results: https://digiwarhist.hypotheses.org
Before, I was involved in the Project in History of Justice. As an archivist, I was researching and inventorying relevant documents for the project. I analyzed and provided the team with relevant documents and prepares them for the digitalizing and virtual exhibition.
I studied Archival Science in Marburg, European history in Hagen and Haifa/Israel.
I worked as an archivist at the German Federal Archive, in Koblenz and Berlin and at the Military Archive in Freiburg, where I managed requests and inquiries concerning the Wehrmacht, WW II and the fate of POW and other Nazi victims. I supported projects in digitalizing and preservation of documents and worked in a project of the German Historical Moscow to digitalize records of Soviet POW.
After my archival career, I began my doctorate at the University of Hamburg in cultural anthropology about the impact of death and violence and the memory of WW II in the post-war period in Germany and Russia.
I was a visiting fellow at the State University of St. Petersburg, the Institute for High Technology/Institute for Oral History in Voronezh and at the American Institute for German Contemporary Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
My research focus lies on the commemoration aspects of military dead/war dead and war cemeteries in Germany and Russia, the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and on cultural aspects on the Wehrmacht and military violence during WW II. And secondly, my research interests cover the classical historical research in archives and libraries, digital methods and innovations and the questions of digital preservation and accessibility of historical documents.
Supervisors: Norbert Fischer, University of Hamburg and Denis Scuto, University of Luxembourg
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The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was de facto annexed and incorporated into the German Reich during the Second World War. The laws and ordinances of the Reich applied to the local population, and male residents were drafted into the Wehrmacht and thus subject to military jurisdiction. The main reason for Luxembourgers to be tried by the Wehrmacht courts was for disobeying orders, mostly desertion. Wehrmacht court records contain not only individual and personal information about the motives of the convicts and the findings of the court but also details about their families and backgrounds. As a result of deserting from the Wehrmacht, thousands of family members of deserters were resettled in East German territories such as Boberstein (Bobrów) in Poland, and their assets were confiscated.
Given these men’s forced recruitment and non-German identity and the fact that they were being asked to fight for a foreign country that had invaded their home territory, the reasons for their desertion and disobedience are self-explanatory. However, this contribution will examine the efforts of the courts and the military justice administration to capture and arrest them, seizures made in their homeland and threats and arrests of their families. These efforts reflect the cooperation between military courts and local police forces used by the occupying authorities to terrorise the inhabitants of occupied territories and to put pressure on the men in the Wehrmacht not to defect.
The contribution examines the consequences for individual soldiers and their families in occupied territories such as Luxembourg. It aims to use court records and trials, as well as the corresponding police files related to the interrogation and resettlement of families, to establish a link between persecuted soldiers and the consequences for their families, thereby showing the impact of the Nazi military machine on individuals during the Second World War.
In this essay, I collect some thoughts on the challenges of the respective roles - as curator and as researcher.
Two terms – hero glorification and signs of reconciliation – illustrate the differences in how the meaning of the graves and their dead soldiers was perceived. This difference highlights the change in values and meaning that the graves had to face.
In the Second World War, the Wehrmacht responded to the nearly five million German casualties with mythical hero stories, propaganda and parades, but also with an elaborate administration system and rules concerning the dead and their graves. The instructions for the soldier’s death included details about the material and inscription of the gravestone to the identification of unknown dead. The graves sustained a structure and organization in accordance with a modern military grave system. The claim to a single grave and the registration and notification of the relatives was included in the Wehrmacht. The denotation of the dead as heroes and their resting places as heroes' graves (Heldengräber) and heroes' groves (Heldenhaine) shows the attempt to integrate them into the ideology and propaganda of the National Socialist regime. However, the management of graves, as well as the cult of heroes, had to fail due to the reality of war – i.e., the number of casualties, the chaotic conditions at the front and the defeat of the Germans. The hero's glorification could not be maintained after the end of the war.
In post-war society, an attempt was made to defuse the symbolism of military death and put it into a neutral and harmless context other than National Socialism. The continuation of the graves’ management, the search for unknown resting places and the construction of cemeteries could no longer be operated by the military. Under the slogan of reconciliation and the expression of peace and understanding instead, access to the Wehrmacht graves was reached first in Western Europe, after 1989 in Eastern Europe by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. The Volksbund builds and cares for cemeteries and exhumes the
remains until the present. This effort is still being made by the Germans today and illustrates the importance of war graves care in modern international context. The studies show how mutable and dependent are the meaning and symbolism of the death of a soldier within different political and social constructs and epochs. In these studies, the range of soldiers' graves as a research topic is clarified and further perspectives for questions and investigation contexts are shown. The investigation of German soldiers' graves of the Second World War in terms of their relevance is of particular importance.
The fact that great efforts are still being made to find and maintain the resting places of dead soldiers more than 70 years after the war demonstrates the political dimension of the war dead and their graves. Above all, the distinctiveness of these objects as resting places for German soldiers makes an interesting and even controversial topic for science, politics and society not only in Germany but also in other European countries.
This paper will analyse their identity in the Nazi army, their adaptation, integration, and the differentiation of their (national/regional) identity from ethnic Germans. I will shed light on their self-image of fighting and their performance in the military system. I focus on their definition of masculinity and fighting spirit. This includes an analysis of their emotions, such as the fear of dying, killing and their morals. This biographical approach draws on the actors and the first-person documents of these groups of soldiers, who have not been studied from this perspective before.
Violence has always played a central role in fascist ideology and political practice, either as a means by which to overthrow governments, or to achieve national rebirth and cleansing through
the physical removal or annihilation of political enemies and “alien”
ethnic or racial communities. And yet there were huge differences when it came to the dynamics and magnitude of violence depend- ing on the political context in which fascists came to power and ruled.
Not only were soldiers of the Second World War buried there, but they also forced labourers and their children and other civilian victims and deserters of the Wehrmacht.
Discover the difficult history of the Second World War and its deadly consequences for so many people. The upcoming books will introduce different groups of people buried there and their commemoration in post-war Europe.
Was ist eine Complainte? Wurden Galgenreden auch gedruckt? Was versteht man unter Nachzehrern? Wo kommen Sanduhren in der Lite¬
ratur vor? Was sind Vadomori-Gediehte?
Solche und viele andere Fragen beantwortet dieses Lexikon. In über 200 Stichwörtern wird der Themenkomplex „Sterben und Tod, Bestattung und Erinnerung" in Bezug auf die Medien abgehandelt. Eine Fülle von Beispielen aus Literatur, Fotografie und Film, Musik und darstellender
Kunst zeigen die Vielfalt sowie die umfassende Bedeutung der Sepul- kralkultur. Durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch hat sie sich sowohl in Tex¬
ten und Musikstücken als auch in bewegten und unbewegten Bildern oder auf der Bühne niedergeschlagen. Mit diesem Lexikon wird Neuland betreten, denn erstmals liegt damit ein themenspezifischer Überblick über die mediale Todesthematik vor, der das Themenfeld breit abdeckt
und eine Fülle von Informationen und Anregungen zum Weiterdenken bietet.
Was ist eine Complainte? Wurden Galgenreden auch gedruckt? Was versteht man unter Nachzehrern? Wo kommen Sanduhren in der Lite¬
ratur vor? Was sind Vadomori-Gediehte?
Solche und viele andere Fragen beantwortet dieses Lexikon. In über 200 Stichwörtern wird der Themenkomplex „Sterben und Tod, Bestattung und Erinnerung" in Bezug auf die Medien abgehandelt. Eine Fülle von Beispielen aus Literatur, Fotografie und Film, Musik und darstellender
Kunst zeigen die Vielfalt sowie die umfassende Bedeutung der Sepul- kralkultur. Durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch hat sie sich sowohl in Tex¬
ten und Musikstücken als auch in bewegten und unbewegten Bildern oder auf der Bühne niedergeschlagen. Mit diesem Lexikon wird Neuland betreten, denn erstmals liegt damit ein themenspezifischer Überblick über die mediale Todesthematik vor, der das Themenfeld breit abdeckt
und eine Fülle von Informationen und Anregungen zum Weiterdenken bietet.
Die sepulkralen Stichwörter des medienkulturellen Teils beziehen sich auf die Bereiche
– Literatur
– Musik
– Darstellende Kunst (Sprech- und Musiktheater)
– Film
– Fotografie.
Da die Gebiete auch das Internet betreffen, wurde auch dieses mit einigen wenigen Stichwörtern und Hinweisen einbezogen.
Insgesamt umfassen die Beiträge einen Zeitraum von den frühesten Schriften des westlichen Kulturraumes bis in die Gegenwart. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf dem deutschsprachigen Raum, wobei wichtige Werke der europäischen und außereuropäischen Kulturgeschichte einbezogen wurden, da sie in Übersetzungen auch den deutschen Kulturraum beeinflusst haben.
Hg. vom Zentralinstitut für Sepulkralkultur