Twentieth Century Germany

The name Mildred Fish-Harnack is commemorated in American academic circles. On the other hand, the German resistance group known as "Rote Kapelle" is hardly known, due to the convictions of its protagonists Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid von Harnack, and their Soviet connections. This article attempts to illuminate the biographical background of the members of this group and their motives in which patriotic and socialist ideals merged. In its complexities, the history of the  Rote Kapelle reveals facets of German antifascism that have been excluded from memory. P.S. Dert agent Alexander Korotkov ("Erdberg") (mentioned p. 8) was most likely an emissary from the Soviet military intelligence GRU (not from the NKVD). Trepper´s group in Brussels also belonged to a net set up by the GRU.

This article contains a set of reflections on the impact of the cultural-historical turn on the writing of the history of National Socialism.  It first traces the archaeology of the turn in diverse intellectual currents that coalesced in the 1980s and 1990s; it offers examples of how the historiography of the Third Reich has been enriched by these approaches; and it reflects on the ways in which cultural history methods  might feed into ongoing and future research.

It is part of a forum feature on the subject curated by the journal editors.

The Doi: for this paper is: https://doi.org/10.1515/vfzg-2017-0013 - this should click through to the text.

The English language version of the paper is appended here: please, however, cite the published German version should you wish to do so.

La guerre du pain, médailles et propagande de guerre (1914-1918)

Fabriquées et émises pour circuler et diffuser un message, les médailles de propagande attendent souvent une résurrection et une seconde vie dans une boîte au fond d'un tiroir. Libérées de leur contexte contemporain, souvent dramatique 1 , impressionnant ou pesant, elles s'offrent, quand on les retrouve, un peu plus sereinement à l'observation et au « déchiffrement » du message qu'elles véhiculaient. Les belligérants au cours de la première guerre mondiale ont largement fait appel aux images de propagande : articles de presse illustrés, cartes postales, photographies originales ou retouchées, censurées ou soumises aux avis de l'autorité avant parution… La médaille porte des images politiques « en dur », imprimées dans le métal. Autrefois l'Empire romain fit généreusement usage de ce support. Remise au goût du jour à l'époque de la Renaissance, dès le XVe siècle en Italie, la médaille renoue avec la tradition du message politique. Les séries frappées pour Louis XIV, et un peu plus tôt, les jetons historiés des Pays-Bas utilisés au cours de la guerre dite de quatre-vingts ans (1568-1648) menée par les Provinces-Unies et d'un autre côté par les partisans de la Contre-Réforme ne sont rien d'autre que des instruments de propagande. La médaille est destinée à être commentée par celui qui la détient ou la transmet. Des idées fortes doivent apparaître ouvertement, confirmées par la légende, ou encore, être comprises par l'affichage de thèmes allégoriques ou narratifs. À partir de 1914, pour les besoins de justification d'une guerre qu'on croyait encore « classique » alors qu'elle était devenue « totale », on mobilisera les moyens de communication par l'image, les plus nouveaux comme la photographie (souvent soumise à la censure et parfois truquée…), le dessin, la carte postale et la caricature, on aura aussi recours à cette ancienne technique : la médaille, en particulier en Allemagne 2. Une disparité de style et d'inspiration semble cohabiter.

1 Les médailles de propagande émises aux Pays-Bas au cours du XVIe siècle et pendant les guerres contre Louis XIV, suivent déjà cette tournure « dramatique ». De nombreux exemples sont décrits et commentés par Gerard Van Loon (traduction française de l'abbé Prévost) dans : L'histoire métallique des XVII provinces…, 4 vol., La Haye, 1732-36.

2 Voir à ce sujet une courte présentation sur : http://www.sacra-moneta.com/Monnaies-du-monde/MEDAILLES-DE-LA-PREMIERE-GUERRE-MONDIALE.html 3 Cette légende tente de placer le combat mené par la Triple Alliance dans « bon droit » moral dépassant des différences religieuses…

Using a case study of the Protestant churches in the British zone in occupied Germany after the Second World War, the article explores church responses to an often-neglected aspect of the Allies’ purge of post-Nazi Germany: their mass internment of German civilians. Whereas the literature is critical of church support for former Nazis and opposition to Allied measures, the article argues for differentiation. Church assistance for internees was even more extensive than previously recognized and erred on the side of assisting undeserving former Nazis, while also being somewhat selective and discerning. Much church activity was in opposition to the British, yet there was also a degree of cooperation and negotiation. The article argues that ecclesiastical criticism of civilian internment was not merely a symptom of a refusal to confront the past or an expression of nationalist ideology. Internment was a genuine object of criticism in its own right and a source of wider church objections to denazification. Ultimately, Allied internment policy, pressure from below, interconfessional rivalry, national solidarity and the lack of a German government all contributed to the Protestant churches becoming outspoken critics of the Allies and advocates for those members of the German people who found themselves in civilian internment camps.

Sport annually mobilizes millions of people across Europe: as practitioners in a wide variety of competitive, educational, or recreational contexts, and as spectators, who are physically present or following events through the mass media. This book presents original research into modern sport funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Its aim is to examine the distinctive contribution made by this complex phenomenon to the construction of European identities. Attention is focused on sport's social significance, as a set of mass-mediated practices and spectacles giving rise to a network of images, symbols, and discourses. The book seeks to explore, and ultimately to explain, the processes of representation and mediation involved in the sporting construction, and subsequent renegotiation, of local, national, and, increasingly, global identities. It offers a survey of key developments in sporting Europe - from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and from the Atlantic to the Urals - presenting findings by acknowledged international experts and emerging scholars at the level of individuals, communities, regions, nation-states, and Europe as a whole, in both its geographical and political incarnations. Its focus on representation offers a broadly conceived, and consciously inclusive, approach to issues of 'Europeanness' in modern and contemporary sport.

As the Second World War in Europe came to an end the Russians advanced from the east towards Berlin. German occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia had been particularly brutal. Both of these countries, products of German defeat at the end of World War I contained millions of ethnic Germans, who had previously co-existed with their Slav neighbours, often for many centuries, but were now perceived by these neighbours as having encouraged and collaborated with Nazi Germany. Russians, Poles and Czechs now sought revenge triggering the largest forced expulsion in recorded history. Somewhere between 8 and 16.5 million ethnic Germans fled to the west, and between 2 and 3 million perished during flight. Expellee property was subsequently seized by the Poles and Czechs. In broad terms, until the 1990s these events were seen within Germany as part of a submerged collective memory, suppressed in part by their having lost the war. In the last 20 years with an increasingly powerful expellee org...

This chapter surveys the history of the middle classes in Weimar Germany from social, political , and cultural perspectives. Divisions-between industrialists and master artisans; conservatives, liberals, and left-wingers; Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; modernists and anti-modernists-were by no means new. But they were exacerbated during the First World War and in the subsequent period of rapid shifts and drastic ruptures. Occupational interests diverged, depending on how the respective groups were affected by the democratic transformation of 1918/19 and the hyperinflation that peaked in 1923. As a result , many members of the middle classes turned resentfully against the republic. Still, we should be wary of adopting the ubiquitous rhetoric of decline, for studies of associa-tional life have amounted to a rather different picture of confidence and renewal. This middle-class renewal was initially not anti-democratic per se. But it increasingly defined itself against the perceived threat of socialist revolution and, by the mid-1920s, began to fuel the rise of the extreme right. That said, the middle classes in Weimar Germany should not be seen solely in a political perspective. They exhibited remarkably diverse consumer choices and cultural activities, although it was precisely this diversity that the extreme right targeted with considerable success.

Germany likely employs Europe’s largest national lobby labor force. This article presents a comprehensive study of German lobbyists’ workplaces and employer expectations of competencies. It provides insights into emerging requirements for a qualified workforce in a diversified job market.
Drawing on multiple sources of statistics, surveys and cases, a first section examines staffing and entry routes for the main employer types – associations, corporations and consultancies. The job market offers a broad range of career options. This includes an emerging set of junior training programs. German employers have devised fully-paid apprenticeship models as structured practical learning schemes where rotating workplace assignments alternate with seminar learning. Some employers partner in training alliances. Traineeships are tailor-made and unregulated, but their existence points to a growing employer interest in formally developing a talent base and professionalism.
A second section offers a job market snapshot based on 189 advertisements from 2012 to 2014. Job ads can be assumed to be an objective measure of employers’ articulated intentions and expectations for a quality pool of applicants. The survey tabulates preferences for experience, academic degrees, knowledge areas, personal, social and method competencies, and specific political expert skills. Results demonstrate a complex interplay of qualifications and requirements. Ads also show great variety and ambiguity, suggesting that lobbying lacks standardized job classifications and a stable common vocabulary.
Findings show that organizational settings influence task and competency combinations expressed in job ads. While all employers appear to follow similar recruiting patterns in regard to some qualifications, they also differ. For example, associations and businesses place more emphasis on policy concepts, organizational participation, coordination, administration, and direct representation than do consultancies, while the latter stress advisory roles and strategizing. Corporations get less involved in campaign advocacy. Associations focus on members. Consulting firms tend to recruit younger, less experienced staff, and to less often request domain knowledge. Highlighting commonalities and differences, this paper may help stimulate discussion on explicating employers’ competency-based human capital management and recruiting practices.
The results may help develop guidelines for apprenticeship schemes, continuing education, organized efforts of professional bodies and university curricula.

This essay explores the triangular relations between de Gaulle's France, the Federal Republic of Germany and the US during the 1960s, in three policy areas: military (nuclear) policy; European policy; and East-West relations. It explores de Gaulle's vision for a 'grande nation' within an independent Europe, and finds that while Bonn largely rejected this vision in favour of coordination with Washington, this was not the result of socio-cultural ties between the US and Germany, but in each instance for specific realpolitical reasons.

Carl Schmitt continues to haunt German political thought and intellectual life. In order to track the legacy of Schmitt, this article will concentrate on his notion of the ‘decision’ and the post-Weimar development of this idea. The ‘decision’ has proved to be a stumbling block in post-war intellectual debates about the political make-up of German society. Turning one’s attention to the importance of decision-making within a democracy always had to go along with a pronounced distance from the authoritarian ‘decisionism’ which Carl Schmitt and other Weimar intellectuals came to represent. Nevertheless, liberal readings of Schmitt have emerged. Critics like Jürgen Habermasm, however, regard any kind of decisionism as elitist or anti-democratic, even if based on a liberal conviction. This article discusses the link between the anti-liberal decisionism during Weimar and its post-war transformation into a liberal decisionism. It also points to the relationship which, despite the polemical nature of the debate, connects Habermas’ idea of discourse with the post-Weimar notion of decision.

Das 20. Jahrhundert war ein Jahrhundert nationaler Feindbilder. Und wiewohl das Zeitalter der Extreme mit 1989 zu Ende gegangen sein soll, gibt es wenig Hinweise darauf, dass das 21. Jahrhundert das Zeitalter der allgemeinen, vorurteilslosen Menschenverbrüderung und -verschwisterung wird. Feindbilder sind darum ein wichtiges Thema, nicht nur für Historikerinnen und Historiker. Die Autoren wollen anhand eines Blickes in die Geschichte der Feindbildkonstruktion entlang dreier Fallbeispiele – China 1900, Südwestafrika 1904–1907, Belgien 1914 – einen Beitrag zu der Frage zu leisten, wie und warum eine nationale Öffentlichkeit Menschengruppen zu existenziellen Gegnern erklärt.

This study has concentrated on women that have played a significant role in the advocacy of Modern German Art pertinent to the collection accommodated in Leicester.  The scarcity of opportunity for women to advance within a creative and educational habitat has been investigated. How the coinciding of political events, emancipation and artistic explosion characteristic of the Weimar era gave lone female voices the opportunity to be expressed. 
Prominence to the visual artistry within the Leicester collection of female practitioners like Gabriele Münter as well as less recognizable names like Renée Sintenis has been explored.  It has accentuated how artistic innovation and art groups like Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter have alluded to unchartered equality and diversity, how the emergence of key German art movements propagated modernistic perspectives that women prospered within. 
What has been presented was an emphasis on expression rather than decoration. Thus the study uncovered relevant female strategies, émigrés adversities and the endurance of the art works preserved. The resolute determination of women collectors, Dr Rosa Schapire and Thekla Hess that remained obscured and deprecated, all culminated and found expression in the pre-eminent New Walk Museum and Art Gallery German Expressionist Collection, an encapsulation of ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (total work of art) and the exhibitions thereby appertaining.
The patriarchal sphere that was enabled by the politics, environs and repercussions of WWII meant that women have endured marginalisation. The function that women enacted in the advocacy of Modern German Art has proven that women did, and remain defending and vocalising the promotion of what was classified as ‘degenerate’ art, with contemporary women championing outstanding scholarship.

Wie ist die Vermittlung von Bildung organisiert? Wie sind die verschiedenen Stufen des Bildungswesens aufgebaut? Welche Rolle spielt das Bildungssystem für die Vermittlung von Wissen, für die Sozialisation von Kindern und Jugendlichen im Allgemeinen, welche Bildungsziele werden darin verfolgt, welche Rolle spielt es für soziale Ungleichheit in einer Gesellschaft?

Reprint of a 1984 anthology of stories, poems, drawings, photos from both sides of the Berlin Wall (five years before it came down). Both East Berlin and West Berlin were thriving artistic communities; both sides lived with heavy ideology leaning into their lives. Bilingual German/English (various translators.

In 1893 Oskar Panizza, a German psychiatrist, published a satricial anti-semitic paper title The Operated Jew . Whilst it was not well known at the time, or at least until her published his more famous work Das Liebeskonzil (The Love Council, 1894) for which he served a year in prison and became an immediate success story thereof. His small essay was in fact an anti-semitic insight of the non-Jewish outlook on the Jewish predicament of that time.
Many Jews in just before and immediately after WWI, specifically in Weimar Germany were trying to find ways to assimilate and blend into the German republic since in this time they were ostracized from being an integral and internal part of the German decision making public official machinery or in academic institutions. 
In order to fully understand the Jewish situation in Weimar Germany I argue that we must first look at Germany from 1848, a brief look at the liberal movement and the way in which Jews started to expand their influence in German life.
After looking at the Liberal movement era, I argue that we must look at the effect WWI had on the influx of Eastern Jewry (Poland mainly) into mainstream German life and how immigrants in effect highlighted the assimilated German Jews and accentuated them in ways that the German Jewry could not perceive. 
This conflict within the German Jewry together with the effect it had on anti-semitic movements in Germany, all mirror in ways "The Operated Jew" and as the Weimar republic was replaced by the Nazi era, so too did our operated Jew attend his infamous wedding ceremony.

Przywara's 1923 framing of the superiority of a specifically Roman Catholic both-and of divine immanence in and transcendence of human culture and activity, as vs theologies that exclusively take one horn of that dilemma, by reference to a range of Catholic and Protestant thinkers including (negatively) the work of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten in their newly formed journal Zwischen den Zeiten.

Germany was in a state of despair at the turn of the 20th century. Its economy was not up to par with the rest of the European nations due to the negligence of the Weimar Republic. As the attaché for the German Embassy in Great Britain, Hermann Muthesius studied the Arts and Crafts movement that was occurring in England and noticed the quality of the production due to the movement’s ideals. He brought back the movement’s ideals to Germany through his book, Das Englische Haus, but added technology to the formula, effectively leading to mass production of goods with high quality.
The ideals that Muthesius studied and applied in Germany were then formed into what is now known as the Deutscher Werkbund. The ideals of the Werkbund aided in the advancement of Germany and the stabilization of its once weak economy. Parallel to this occurrence, political movements were also developing; different political parties were emerging after the collapse of the Weimar Republic. The National Socialists German Workers’ Party emerged onto the scene. This party had similar economical ideals to the Werkbund as it sought out a greater and technologically advanced Germany.

The present article departs from the concept of “mimicry” or “masquerade”, theorised by such feminist critics as Joan Rivière (1929), Luce Irigaray (1985), or Mary Ann Doane (1991). This implies that women deliberately assume the feminine style and posture assigned to them within patriarchal discourse with a subversive rather than merely imitative intention by means of what Gèrard Genette calls “saturation”. In particular, this study focuses on Katherine Mansfield’s satire of gender stereotypes in Germany. Through this mimicry, Mansfield aims to prove that such stereotypes go beyond national boundaries and affect the people of different countries similarly—in this case Germany and England. The selected texts are two short stories included within her early collection In a German Pension (1911): “The Modern Soul” and “Germans at Meat”.

El «Canciller de la Unidad», que logró la reunificación de Alemania solo once meses después de la caída del Muro de Berlín, fue también un entusiasta impulsor de la unidad europea desde el inicio de su mandato. Cuando en 1989 se abrió inesperadamente la posibilidad de la reunificación, el canciller logró ganarse el apoyo de sus socios en la Comunidad proponiendo que el paso de la unidad alemana fuera acompañado de otro paso en la unidad europea. En sus últimos años de canciller fue el principal valedor de la moneda única, que esperaba que hiciese casi irreversible el proceso de integración. Este libro recoge algunas de las intervenciones más significativas de su vida política, como el debate sobre la instalación de misiles norteamericanos en suelo alemán, sus palabras tras lograr el apoyo de Gorbachov a la reunificación o el emocionado discurso sobre la unidad ante la multitud de Dresde. Especial mención merece su intervención con motivo de la visita del presidente del gobierno español, el 3 de mayo de 1983. Kohl se comprometía a hacer lo posible por desbloquear la solicitud de adhesión: «Abogaremos por vuestros intereses». El canciller recordaba aquel día las palabras de ánimo que un español había dirigido a los alemanes en 1949, en el «momento más aciago» de su historia, en el que «muchos habían perdido la fe en el futuro de nuestra vieja nación». Se cumplían entonces cien años del nacimiento de Ortega y Gasset, que tanto había deseado un futuro europeo para España, y que de este modo reaparecía en escena en el momento preciso en el que, con el apoyo del canciller y tras años de negociaciones, se hacía posible la adhesión.

Eric J. Schmaltz.  "Carrots, Sticks...and Demonstrations:  Yuri Andropov's Failed Autonomy Plan for Soviet Kazakhstan's Germans, 1976-1980."  Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Lincoln, Nebraska), Vol. 39, No. 3 (Fall 2016):  pp. 1-21.  (Revised and expanded reprint version.) 

The original article appeared in the Eurasia Studies Society Journal of Great Britain and Europe, Vol. 3, No. 1. (Jan. 2014):

https://eurasiahistory.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/eric-schmaltz-tess-eurasia-studies-soc-journal-vol-3-no1-jan-20141.pdf

Copyright permission is granted from original journal publisher.  This revised version contains updates, additions, and minor modifications.  Research on the topic grew out of one of the author’s dissertation chapters completed in 2002 for the fulfillment of his Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  German- and Russian-language translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted.  The author included some of these findings in his presentations at the 2016 AHSGR Convention, held in July in Concord, California.

Many scholars are unaware of the resources available at the AHSGR.  See link to AHSGR Website for this and so many other fine research materials: 

https://ahsgr.site-ym.com/store/default.aspx?

Since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, debates have raged between historians who emphasise the supremacy of Adolf Hitler-encapsulated in This paper seeks to resolve this longstanding dispute by clarifying whether Hitler can be accurately considered all-powerful or weak. It will examine Hitler's role in the National Socialist (Nazi) regime and several important spheres of activity. Firstly, it addresses the question of free will and human responsibility and briefly outlines the historiographical context in which this work is situated. Secondly, it provides a short overview of the nature of the Third Reich and Hitler's place in it as well as the implications for Nazi domestic policy of his distant style of leadership. Then, the paper considers the foreign and expansionist policies of Hitler's Germany. Lastly, the essay addresses Hitler's participation in the development of the so-called Final Solution, and his anti-Semitic views. Ultimately, it concludes that there is no basis for calling Hitler a 'weak dictator', but neither would it be correct to call him a total master of the Third Reich.

Weimar was not a democracy without democrats; it was, though, a democracy without a deeply held democratic conviction amongst a majority of its population. Weak performance by embattled democratic political elites combined with an effective framing of debates in nationalistic terms by right-wing politics and media to ensure that nationalism replaced Republicanism as the dominant concept commanding popular attachment. While kept in check by democratic conviction at the very highest level under Ebert, Hindenburg permitted and even actively encouraged the corrosion of Weimar’s democratic spirit.

„Manifestation of the Idea of European Unity – Living Magna Charta of Peace“: The Political Dimension of the PRESSA Cologne 1928 and its Reception in the Contemporary German and International Press“

The PRESSA was the most ambitious and comprehensive exhibition ever held to present modern journalism. The exhibition highlighted numerous facets of contemporary journalism, including its historical roots and its cultural, technical, economic and international interdependencies to a professional audience and the general public. In addition, the exhibition also had a political dimension. Its organisers wanted to demonstrate, with the first major international fair held on German soil after the end of the First World War, that the Reich was a great power and willing and capable of contributing actively to international peace and cooperation. The political dimension of the PRESSA found its expression in the speeches held during the opening and closing ceremonies and in the official publications of the exhibition.
As a result of these high expectations the PRESSA became an international media event. The German and foreign press reported extensively the opening and closing ceremonies, and the concept and contents of the exhibition. Furthermore, the press paid particular attention to the political dimension of the PRESSA, and to the crucial role of the Cologne exhibition – and the press generally – in furthering international peace and cooperation. The intensity and euphoria with which this idea was taken up in the press leads to the conclusion that the exhibition with its emphasis on the peace mission of the press had raised an issue that concerned politicians, the public, and the press worldwide.
This essay reconstructs the political dimension of the PRESSA and its reception in the German and international press. The first part analyses the political motivations of the organisers. The second part examines the coverage of the PRESSA in selected German and international newspapers, with particular emphasis on the treatment of the political dimension of the exhibition. The final part is devoted to the question of whether or not the coverage of the PRESSA and its peace mission was too optimistic, in particular in view of the political developments in Germany and Europe after the rise to power of Nazism in 1933.

Os alemães? Todos sabemos como eles são. Ou achamos que sabemos. Para alguns de nós, são sisudos, fechados e até levemente arrogantes. Para outros, são pontuais, preparados e capazes. Sinônimos de cerveja, economia forte, indústria automobilística de sucesso, esportistas de elite. Mas também donos de uma história única, permeada de personagens fascinantes, da altura de Goethe, Beethoven e Einstein, e de passagens sombrias e extremamente violentas, com militarismo, antissemitismo, duas guerras mundiais, genocídios, um governo totalitário nazista e um muro dividindo o coração do país entre comunistas e capitalistas. Afinal, quem é realmente esse povo, que adora números e estatísticas, mas que ao mesmo tempo abriga alguns dos mais influentes filósofos do mundo? Como sua história peculiar de unificação tardia, nova divisão no pós-guerra e reunificação em 1990 ajudou a definir sua identidade como pertencentes a uma nação? Este livro imperdível apresenta todas essas Alemanhas em detalhes. Mas conheceremos também um país – e um povo – muito mais complexo e diverso do que nosso imaginário pode vislumbrar.

see full version:

"Geliebter Führer"
Briefe der Deutschen an Adolf Hitler
Herausgegeben von Ebeling, Theresa; Heidrich, Max; Jakob, Kai u. a.

Vergangenheitsverlag
Seitenzahl: 277
180 S. m. zahlr. Abb. 170 mm
Deutsch
Abmessung: 168mm x 115mm x 20mm
ISBN-13: 9783940621443

Hitlers Charisma wird bis heute in der Geschichtsforschung diskutiert. Die Frage, ob Hitler charismatisch war, muss dabei im historischen Kontext nachvollzogen werden. Die hier zusammengestellten Briefe an Adolf Hitler geben einen Hinweis darauf, wie sehr er als unnahbar inszenierter Führer Projektionsfläche für viele Deutschen geworden ist, die elektrisiert von ihm waren, sich ihm leidenschaftlich, teils erotisch zugeneigt fühlten. Nachdem bereits Briefe aus der Bevölkerung an Hitler aus Beständen in Washington und Moskau publiziert worden sind, präsentiert der Band erstmals eine umfangreiche Sammlung von Bevölkerungspost aus den Beständen des Bundesarchiv Berlin der Jahre von 1933 bis 1945.