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This set of essays introduces readers to new historical research on the creation of the new order in East-Central Europe in the period immediately following 1918.The book offers insights into the political, diplomatic, military, economic and cultural conditions out of which the New Europe was born. Experts from various countries take into account three perspectives. They give equal attention to both the Western and Eastern fronts; they recognise that on 11 November 1918, the War ended only on the Western front and violence continued in multiple forms over the next five years; and they show how state-building after 1918 in Central and Eastern Europe was marked by a mixture of innovation and instability. Thus, the volume focuses on three kinds of narratives: those related to conflicts and violence, those related to the recasting of civil life in new structures and institutions, and those related to remembrance and representations of these years in the public sphere.Taking a step towards writing a fully European history of the Great War and its aftermath, the volume offers an original approach to this decisive period in 20th-century European history.

'Heimat'ist in Geschichte und Gegenwart ein besonders schillernder Kampfbegriff: Vereinnahmt vom Rechtspopulismus, umgarnt von der Klimaschutzbewegung und intensiv diskutiert in der Forschung, trägt dieser Band zu seiner Historisierung bei. Er bringt dabei empirische Beiträge renommierter Historiker und Historikerinnen zusammen. Diese vermessen Heimat unter drei Perspektiven: räumlich, akteurszentriert und thematisch. Geographisch liegt der Schwerpunkt auf der deutschen Geschichte mit internationalen und globalen Seitenblicken. Während ein Blick über eine längere Zeit zum Verständnis des Heimatkonzeptes nötig ist, markiert das'lange'20. Jahrhundert den Fokus des Bandes: Denn hier kam es zur'Fundamentalpolitisierung'des Heimatbegriffes. Der Band leistet auch einen Beitrag zur Debatte um einen „deutschen Sonderweg', die in den letzten Jahren im Kontext der neuen Preußenkontroverse, den wiederaufflammenden Diskussionen zur deutschen Kriegsschuld 1914, den Auseinandersetzungen zur deutschen Demokratietradition und der Debatte um die Entschädigungsforderungen der Hohenzollern wieder aufgeblüht ist. Die Beiträge unterstreichen, wie sich Heimat gesellschaftlich zu einer Sonde für Probleme und Fragen der Migration, der politischen Gewalt, des sozialen Wandels und der demokratischen Partizipation entwickelte.

The first English language account of deserters from the German army during World War II The German military executed between 18,000 and 22,000 of its personnel in World War II on the charges of desertion and'undermining the military spirt.'This book examines who these Wehrmacht deserters were, why they deserted, what punishment they could expect, and how German military justice operated. The German army was not apolitical, but rather a pillar of the Nazi state. Although much attention has been devoted to officers within the military who resisted Hitler--particularly those associated with the July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life--far less attention has been paid to those who refused military service or deserted during the war. While providing a full account of what constituted desertion, how it was punished, and how many were convicted for the crime, the book makes the Wehrmacht deserter its main subject. It examines their motivations and the paths they took to evade military service, ranging from hiding in the Third Reich, deserting at the front line, or fleeing to neutral Switzerland or Sweden. After the Second World War, Germans began a generation-long debate about the status that should be accorded Wehrmacht deserters. The topic would be debated between the two Germanies and engaged survivors and perpetrators, playwrights, and judges, those who had stayed in the ranks and those who had not. Was the Wehrmacht a coward, a victim, or a role model? The book's discussion of this postwar debate has no equivalent in English, as it explains how and why Germany finally decided to overturn military court-martial verdicts from the Second World War fifty years after its conclusion.

Today, fallen soldiers of the Second World War find their resting places across the globe. While many nations openly honor their military, Germany maintains a more reserved approach to its war dead. During the war, fallen soldiers were hailed as heroes, but after 1945, the treatment of the deceased and their graves underwent a profound transformation. Janz, focusing on the Eastern Front during wartime and then the post-war Soviet Union and Russian Federation, explores this transformation through three key moments: 1. the treatment of the bodies, burial practices, and exhumations; 2. the burial sites, including cemetery construction and design; and 3. the realm of commemoration, encompassing memorial ceremonies and rituals. These rituals evolved from the hero worship of Hitler's Wehrmacht to the mourning and reconciliation policies of the post-war West German government with Russia. This study offers an examination of the German military dead amidst controversies surrounding Wehrmacht soldiers and their challenging commemoration in the present day.

Die Frage nach der staatlichen Verantwortung für das Gesundheitswesen wird angesichts der Privatisierung vieler Krankenhäuser und Medizinischer Versorgungszentren in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bis heute intensiv diskutiert. Dabei spielen auch Vergleiche mit dem staatlichen Gesundheitswesen der DDR eine Rolle, etwa wenn es um die Verzahnung von ambulanter und stationärer Versorgung geht, die in den Polikliniken der DDR verwirklicht war. Mit ihrem aktuellen Jahrbuch greift die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Krankenhausgeschichte dieses Thema der zeithistorischen Forschung auf und untersucht die Entwicklung von Krankenhäusern im real existierenden Sozialismus. Die einzelnen Beiträge diskutieren die Fragen, welchen Stellenwert Krankenhäuser im Gesundheitswesen besaßen, wie es um ihre Ausstattung bestellt war, und wo die Schnittstellen zu den Polikliniken lagen. Häufig wird übersehen, dass sich auch in der DDR nicht alle Kliniken in staatlicher Trägerschaft befanden, sondern dass hier, im Gegensatz zu anderen sozialistischen Staaten, die Tradition konfessioneller Krankenhäuser in vielen Städten fortlebte.

Through the diaries and personal papers of a German woman, Vera Conrad, this book documents her wartime experiences and deepens our understanding of the complex experiences of trauma and grief that National Socialist supporters experienced. Building on scholarship about mourning and widowhood that largely focuses on state policies and public discourses, This Horrible Uncertainty provides an interpretive framework of people's perceptions of events and their capacity to respond to them. Using a history of emotions approach, Erika Quinn establishes that keeping the diary allowed Conrad to develop different selves in response to her responsibilities, fear, and grief after her husband was declared missing in 1943.

Der Dreißigjährige Krieg gilt als die größte Katastrophe und traumatischste Kriegserfahrung der deutschen Geschichte vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Tatsächlich litten in vielen Regionen große Teile der Bevölkerung schwer unter den Kriegshandlungen und ihren Folgen. Zugleich gab es aber auch deutliche regionale und soziale Unterschiede: Während viele Hab und Gut oder sogar ihr Leben verloren, arrangierten sich andere mit dem Krieg oder konnten sogar von ihm profitieren, selbst in schwer vom Krieg betroffenen Regionen „mitten in Deutschland'. Grundsätzlich gilt: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg wurde von den meisten Menschen nicht nur passiv erlitten, sondern immer auch aktiv bewältigt. Der Band untersucht die dabei zum Tragen kommenden Praktiken individueller, kollektiver wie institutioneller Akteure und arbeitet damit die verschiedenen Handlungsoptionen und Bewältigungsstrategien heraus.

This book draws on a range of key archives and oral testimonies to provide the first systematic and historical study of the origins, context, development, frustrations, inner contradictions, and legacies of the Columbus Centre.The Columbus Centre, a remarkable though largely forgotten research institute, was established at the University of Sussex in 1966, triggered by claims of a dearth of academic research about Nazism and the Holocaust. Its basic stated aim was to bring together psychoanalysis and history for a scholarly investigation of discrimination, mass violence, and the preconditions of genocide in the past and the present. The Nazi crimes were studied along with other instances of prejudice and mass violence, such as sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witch-hunts, South African apartheid, the persecution of the Roma people, and race relations in the United States and modern-day Britain. The book seeks to place the Columbus Centre in the historiography of mass violence by analysing the Centre's works through four historiographical prisms or power relations in which they were produced: psychoanalysis, class, race, and gender.This interdisciplinary volume is a valuable text for scholars and students of historiography, psychoanalysis, genocide and violence, and postwar Europe, and for professionals within the field of psychology.

This book is a study of Adolf Hitler in his role as military commander and strategist from the beginning of the Second World War until the end of 1942, examining in detail the campaign in southern Russia that year.The thesis challenges the post-war narrative of Hitler as a dilettante who was solely responsible for the strategic and operational errors that led to Germany's defeat in the war. Instead, this research highlights that decisions made by Hitler with respect to such disparate themes as strategy, operations, logistics, intelligence, economics, air and naval power, and coalition warfare were generally sound if viewed from his perspective, even if they were not ultimately successful. It also gives an overview of his own ideas concerning all aspects of military affairs, such as intelligence, command and morale. The careful analysis of Hitler's decision-making process offers a unique contribution to Second World War scholarship and moves beyond a superficial understanding that the war's outcome was a result of Hitler's ineptitude as a military leader.Warlord Hitler will appeal to postgraduates and specialists in military history, as well as general readers interested in a deeper study of the Second World War.

Examines ideas of violence in German culture after 9/11 through the lens of'violence elsewhere'- exploring works and discourses about violence in distant locations or times.Following the Nazi era, the Holocaust, and the Second World War, in postwar Germany thinking or speaking about that extreme violence seemed distinctively difficult - even perhaps, at times, impossible. Yet we can learn about understandings of violence in this period in novel ways by exploring images and constructions in German culture of faraway violence, as shown in the recent volume Violence Elsewhere 1: Imagining Distant Violence in Germany, 1945-2001.As of September 11, 2001, violence came to appear transnationally, spectacularly mobile in new ways. Consequently, Violence Elsewhere 2 explores ideas about'violence elsewhere'in German-language culture since 2001. Here,'elsewhere'can mean not only distant places; it may also be violence perceived as foreign, or in the past. Simultaneously, this work suggests that the idea of 9/11 as a watershed in thinking about violence is more complex than meets the eye.Here, nine essays consider classic literary forms like poetry and prose fiction, from the short story to the intergenerational German family novel to Black feminist speculative fiction. Contributors examine, too, philosophy, performance and multimedia art, political and other forms of public discourse, and film. Topics include, amongst others, the'war on terror,'slow environmental violence, the Armenian genocide, portrayals of refugees and migrants, legacies of colonial violence, space travel, and the persistent resonance of the German past.Contributors: Sofía Forchieri, Susanne C. Knittel, Marie Kolkenbrock, Priscilla Layne, Joanne Leal, Francesca Lewis, Frauke Matthes, Lizzie Stewart, Nicola Thomas, and Kathrin Wunderlich.

Eine alltagsrelevante Verwaltungsgeschichte Hamburgs im Zuge der Revolution von 1918/19 November 1918 – der Krieg ist verloren, das Deutsche Kaiserreich am Ende. Im Zuge der Revolution von 1918/19 übernahmen in zahlreichen deutschen Städten und Regionen Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte die Macht, so auch in Hamburg. Die neuen Machthaber dort bemühten sich um einen ruhigen und unblutigen Übergang von der Monarchie zu einer parlamentarischen Demokratie. Dazu traten sie in Gespräche mit den alten Eliten in Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, um die politische, aber auch alltägliche Ordnung der Menschen in der Hansestadt auszuhandeln. Betroffen hiervon waren Aspekte wie die Versorgungssituation, der Wohnungs- und Arbeitsmarkt, aber auch Bildungsmöglichkeiten und Freizeitgestaltung. Erstmals wird die enge Verknüpfung von Revolution und Ordnung im Rahmen einer alltagsrelevanten Verwaltungsgeschichte der Revolution 1918/19 in den Fokus gerückt, die verdeutlicht, wie wichtig der Erhalt alltagsrelevanter Ordnung während der unübersichtlichen und zunächst ergebnisoffenen Situation der Revolution gewesen ist.

As turbulent events – including war, civil war, armed intervention, humanitarian crises and civil unrest – unfold around the globe, the actions of various types of paramilitary organization have attracted considerable attention in academic circles, as well as among the public. This volume brings together a wide range of respected authors from a variety of academic backgrounds, building on a rapidly developing literature on paramilitarism, with a focus on the Balkans, East-Central Europe, and the Caucasus. Chapters cover historical examples and various aspects of paramilitarism, including relationships with the state, legal contexts, conduct towards civilian populations, governance, recruitment, links to organized crime or terrorism, violence, and memory and legacy. Overall, this book aims to reassess the existing body of knowledge, and to offer a new theoretical conceptualization of paramilitarism spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is the outcome of a major research project supported by the Balkan History Association.

This two-volume set explores what postwar German representations and imaginings of violence in other places and times tell us about Germany.Germany's 20th-century history has made imagining and representing violence in German culture especially challenging: it has made certain constructions of violence unspeakable, even unthinkable. As a result, new ways of thinking about violence in postwar and contemporary German culture are needed. One such approach is critical analysis of'violence elsewhere,'that is, representations in literature, art, and film of violence in distant, imagined, or temporally distinct times and places. Such representations have offered Germans a stage on which to imagine violence. Moreover, German representations of'violence elsewhere'are simultaneously images of Germany itself, revealing something about otherwise submerged or deeply encoded meanings and functions of violence in German culture.This two-volume set explores what representations of'violence elsewhere'in a variety of works and genres tell us about Germany. Volume 1, covering the immediate postwar period, 1945-2001, considers works that arose in East, West, and reunified Germany and that imagine violence in foreign lands as well as in the respective'other'German state and in the German past. Volume 2 carries the inquiry forward to the post-9/11 world of the new Federal Republic. The volumes also introduce theoretical perspectives that are transferable beyond German Studies, allowing us to reflect more broadly on relationships between violence, culture, community, and the creation of identities.Contributors for Volume 1: Seán Allan, Martin Brady, Evelien Geerts, Katharina Karcher, J.J. Long, Ernest Schonfield, and Katherine Stone.Contributors for Volume 2: Sofía Forchieri, Susanne C. Knittel, Marie Kolkenbrock, Priscilla Layne, Joanne Leal, Francesca Lewis, Frauke Matthes, Lizzie Stewart, Nicola Thomas, and Kathrin Wunderlich.Chapter 8 of Volume 1,'Problematizing Political Violence in the Federal Republic of Germany: A Hauntological Analysis of the NSU Terror and a Hyper-Exceptionalized'9/11'is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. The open access version of this publication was funded by the European Research Council.

Der Rückblick auf die Jahre des Ersten Weltkrieges würde unvollständig bleiben, wenn man das Landvolk, das damals noch überall die Bevölkerungsmehrheit ausmachte, nicht berücksichtigen würde. Diesem Thema widmet sich der vorliegende Sammelband, der aufzeigt, wie sehr sich die Lebensumstände der ländlichen Bevölkerung drastisch änderten und eine Fülle von Emotionen aufkommen ließen. Der Schwerpunkt der Beiträge liegt auf dem Alpen-, Donau- und Karpatenraum, doch kommt auch die Westfront (Frankreich/Belgien) zur Sprache.

Using the life and work of Günter Henle, Volker R. Berghahn examines the postwar West German approach to labour relations and European integration. The study of Henle simultaneously allows Berghahn to reflect on the unique insights into German Jewish life before and during the Nazi dictatorship that his story provides. The book looks at how Henle suffered from Nazi persecution, but was ultimately protected by the Establishment he had married into. It then charts how, reinstated after 1945, he involved himself not only in the reconstruction of his Klockner industrial enterprise, but also in the rebuilding of the West German economy and society, and the development of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) - the embryo of what was ultimately to become the European Union. The Insider-Outsider of Early 20th-Century German Industry discusses West European and American strategies to complement NATO as the political and military counter to the perceived threat of the Soviet Bloc with the creation of institutions for economic cooperation. It is a timely analysis which stresses the importance of cooperation between employers, trade unions and government in securing compromise, social peace and economic stability in trans-Atlantic perspective at a time when the neo-liberal axioms of Thatcherite and Reaganite shareholder societies are again being held against the strengths of the managed stakeholder societies of the early post-war decades.

This book examines the history of antisemitism in the United States and Germany in a novel way by placing the two countries side by side for a sustained comparison of the anti-Jewish environments in both countries from the 1880s to the end of World War II.Author Richard E. Frankel shatters the widely held notion of exceptionalism in Germany and America: the belief that antisemitism in Germany was uniquely murderous and led inevitably to the Holocaust and that antisemitism in the United States was uniquely benign, making an American Holocaust all but unthinkable. In a series of new and previously published essays that have been revised, updated, and expanded, the book relates antisemitism to issues including Jewish and Chinese immigration, discrimination and exclusion, World War I and its aftermath, Hitler and Henry Ford, Nazis, the American Right, and the Roosevelt Administration, and a German Ku Klux Klan. Taken together, these essays reveal that antisemitism in Germany was less aberrant than commonly believed and that American antisemitism was indeed dangerous and more similar to what existed in Germany during the same period.Antisemitism Before the Holocaust is an essential volume for students and scholars alike interested in European and American history, the history of the Holocaust and World War I.

Jean Quataert redefined the boundaries of at least five historical fields including European socialism, women's history and gender history, and international law and human rights. In this volume dedicated to her pioneering work, established and emerging scholars showcase the signature ways in which Quataert, as one of the discipline's first women's historians, has influenced how subsequent generations think about history writing as a form of intellectual activism. Gender in Germany and Beyond presents cutting edge historiographical commentary alongside new work which address subjects such as the history of German colonialism and women's colonial leagues, human rights advocacy during the Cold War, and the complexities of turn of the century gay and lesbian rights organizing.

Wie spät ist es? Diese vermeintlich einfache Frage bereitete im Verlauf des 19. Jahrhunderts zusehends Kopfzerbrechen. Die Industrialisierung machte eine Standardisierung der Zeit notwendig: Die alten, sonnenbestimmten Ortszeiten passten nicht mehr zu den modernen Zeiten. Nach ersten Vereinheitlichungen durch Eisenbahnzeiten widmete sich auch das Deutsche Reich der Synchronisierung bis dato gültiger Zeitregime: 1893 wurde mit der MEZ erstmals deutschlandweit eine Einheitszeit eingeführt, was zur Identitätsbildung im jungen Nationalstaat beitragen sollte. In den Folgejahrzehnten blieb die Frage neuer staatlicher Zeitregelungen Gegenstand intensiver gesellschaftlicher Debatten. Dies galt für die erstmalige Einführung der Sommerzeit während des Ersten Weltkriegs ebenso wie für den Umstieg auf die 24-Stundenzählung. Wie deutsche Politiker und Wissenschaftler um die Zeit stritten, welche Standards sich etablierten und die vielfältigen Kompromisse, die die Bevölkerung dabei eingehen musste, stellt Felix Schmidt erstmals detailliert dar. Dabei bettet er seine quellenreiche Grundlagenforschung zur Zeitstandardisierung in Deutschland zwischen 1860 und 1930 in den internationalen Kontext ein.

The publication is a collection of research articles that provide an insight to mnemonic governance – a process of shaping the shared social imaginary of the past by legislators, courts, scholars and other actors. This phenomenon can be observed as an element of political discourse or as changes in law consolidating certain officially recognized states. The contributions in this volume offer a political, legal and historical analysis of transitional justice legislation, emerging memory laws, and the societal perception of the past. With this publication, we intend to contribute to the ongoing and changing debate surrounding memory politics and highlight the practical consequences of mnemonic governance.

To disentangle the National Socialists'path to power in Germany, one must attend to the discursive strategies and liturgical practices employed by its emocrats, or manipulators of emotions. The apotheosis of martyrdom in the National Socialist propaganda template is far from being a marginal element in the movement's history. Owing to its mobilising and unifying potential in constructing a community of memory, the glorification of Nazi martyrdom constituted a fundamental pillar of the movement's communicative and propaganda strategy, stressed to the point of paroxysm.The propaganda and lies that ground the construction of the martyr as a prefiguration of the'new man'are the core ideas that form the backbone of this book. The Nazis'politics of death was a carefully managed element of National Socialism from its very inception. The martyrs, and their blood sacrificed on the altar of the fatherland, were an invaluable propaganda weapon. There were three pillars of the Nazi martyrdom frame: sublimation of death, posthumous sugar-coating and'tamed'death. Once the Nazi movement had taken control of German state apparatus, the mechanisms for disseminating the exemplary martyr in society may have changed, but not the specifics of the propaganda strategy itself.

Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies ShortlistGermans remember the Nazi past so that it may never happen again. But how has the abstract vow to remember translated into concrete action to prevent new genocides abroad?As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany's pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”?Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port examines how the Nazi past shaped German responses to the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda—and further, how these foreign atrocities recast Germans'understanding of their own horrific history. In the late 1970s, the reign of the Khmer Rouge received relatively little attention from a firmly antiwar public that was just “discovering” the Holocaust. By the 1990s, the genocide of the Jews was squarely at the center of German identity, a tectonic shift that inspired greater involvement in Bosnia and, to a lesser extent, Rwanda. Germany's increased willingness to use force in defense of others reflected the enthusiastic embrace of human rights by public officials and ordinary citizens. At the same time, conservatives welcomed the opportunity for a more active international role involving military might—to the chagrin of pacifists and progressives at home.Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again is a story with deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past.

The process of the Orthodoxization of memory in Russia started long before the Russian Orthodox Church engaged in the memory politics. It was a grassrooted process initiated by both the living and the dead. By using religious symbols and rituals, various groups of living were restoring their relationship with the forgotten dead of Soviet repressions and war. When the Moscow Patriarchate has returned to active public life and started developing its religious memory infrastructure, the Orthodoxization process got a new up–down dimension. Finally, a turn of the Putin's regime towards religious commemorative practices caused the disappearance of the boundary between religious and political memory. The bricolage memory, consisting of elements of Orthodox tradition and Soviet memory culture, appeared.

No sepuedeentenderelsiglo XX sinconocer lahistoria deBerlín. Unabiografía magistral de la ciudad y sushabitantes. A lo largo del siglo XX, Berlín estuvo en el centro del mundo. Su historia suele abordarse de manera fragmentaria, pero este libro borra las líneas entre generaciones de berlineses para ofrecer una mirada panorámica y enormemente reveladora. El relato arranca en 1919, cuando la ciudad emergió de las sombras de la Gran Guerra para convertirse en sinónimo de modernidad en el arte, el cine, la arquitectura, la industria y la ciencia. Y abarca la posterior caída en picado de la economía, el ascenso nazi, la destrucción de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la psicosis del genocidio y la larga convivencia de dos ideologías enfrentadas que mantuvieron la capital alemana partida en dos hasta la caída del Muro. El relato de Sinclair McKay recoge las voces de quienes transitaron sus calles, amas de casa, oficinistas, trabajadores y unos jóvenes pletóricos, testigos de unos años de transformación emocionante y también aterradora. A su vez arroja luz sobre figuras como Albert Einstein o Albert Speer, y muestra los curiosos contrastes de una ciudad que pasó de momentos de increíble oscuridad a escenas de un irónico humor berlinés -como el a menudo ridículo tira y afloja entre Berlín Este y Oeste- y a otros de alegre esperanza. McKay nos muestra como como nunca antes la habíamos visto esta hipnótica ciudad que alguna vez fue la más sofisticada del mundo. La crítica ha dicho: «Me encanta este libro. Oportuno y sabio, es ideal para cualquiera que conozca un poco Berlín y esté fascinado por ella, pero le gustaría entenderla mejor». David Aaronovitch, The Times «Notable. Una espléndida obra de no ficción». Matthew D'Ancona, Tortoise «La mirada de McKay capta brillantemente los éxitos iniciales de Alemania, y luego los reveses y las crecientes derrotas. Descubrir tantos personajes desconocidos y anécdotas fascinantes es maravilloso». Ian MacGregor, TheSpectator «Un gran tema, investigado de forma exhaustiva, escrito de manera brillante. Cualquiera que quiera comprender el lugar incomparable que ocupó Berlín en la historia del siglo XX, debería empezar por este impresionante y asombroso libro». Keith Lowe, autor de SavageContinent and TheFear andtheFreedom «El potente imaginario de McKay y su magnética prosa combinadas producen un nuevo relato sobre Berlín que resulta muy estimulante. No puedes entender el siglo XX sin entender Berlín, afirma el autor. Su alegato resulta muy convincente». Julia Boyd, autora de Viajeros en el Tercer Reich «Poderosa. Visceral. Realmente reveladora. Con una escritura hermosa y absolutamente convincente. No pensé que Sinclair McKay pudiera superar su anterior libro, que era magistral. Con Berlín, ha demostrado que me equivocaba». Damien Lewis, autor de SAS BravoThree Zero

The first transnational study of the memory of the Kindertransport and the first to explore how it is represented in museums, memorials, and commemorations.The Kindertransport, the rescue of ca. 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi sphere of control and influence before the Second World War, has often been framed as a'British story.'This book recognizes that even though most of the'Kinder'were initially brought to the UK and many stayed, it was more than that. It therefore compares British memory of the Kindertransport to that of other host nations (the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). It is the first book to ask how the Kindertransport is remembered both in the countries of origin, particularly Germany, and in the host nations, as well as the first to analyze how it is represented in museums, memorials, and commemorations. Seeing memory of the Kindertransport in the host nations and in Germany as significantly different, the study argues that the different national memory discourses around the Nazi persecution of Jews shape the respective countries'images of the Kindertransport, and that those images in turn shape the discourses - especially in Britain. Yet while national memory frameworks remain crucial to how the Kindertransport is remembered, the book also documents the increasing significance of transnational memory trends that link the host nations with each other and with the countries from which the children originated.

Empires sind in unsere Welt zurückgekehrt. Russlands Krieg gegen die Ukraine und Chinas neue Machtpolitik erinnern an das imperiale Ausgreifen großer Reiche im Jahrhundert der Imperien zwischen dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts und dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Doch wie lief die europäische Aufteilung großer Teile der Welt konkret ab? Und welche Handlungsoptionen hatten die Kolonisierten im Umgang mit der imperialen Macht? Ulrike von Hirschhausen und Jörn Leonhard schauen genau hin und zeigen, wie vielfältig die historische Entwicklung war. So entsteht eine innovative Geschichte der Empires: als Teil einer globalen Geschichte zum Zeitpunkt ihrer größten Ausdehnung. im 19. Jahrhundert teilten die großen europäischen Mächte die Welt unter sich auf. Das Britische Empire reichte von Kanada über weite Teile Afrikas bis nach Indien und Australien. Das Russische Reich erstreckte sich vom Baltikum bis zum Pazifik, und Habsburg expandierte auf dem Balkan, während das Osmanische Reich als'kranker Mann am Bosporus'erschien. Doch was ist gemeint, wenn von Imperien und Empires die Rede ist? Diese Buch erzählt ihre Geschichte neu, indem es die Begegnungen der Menschen unter den Bedingungen von Kolonialismus untersucht. Es stellt die zentralen Herausforderungen der Empires, den Untergang ethnischer Vielfalt, in den Mittelpunkt. Und es erklärt, wie Kolonisierte mit Eroberung, Beherrschung, Intergration und Ausbeutung umging. So wird die Logik imperialen Handlens und die Dynamik der Gewalt ebenso erkennbar wie die Strategien der Kolonisierten, die in einfachen Gegensätzen zwischen Herrschern und Beherrschten nicht aufgingen. Das Ergebnis ist eine innovative und zeitgemäße Geschichte der Empires in der Welt des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts.

Dass Räumlichkeit nicht nur als neutraler Rahmen interpretiert werden kann, zeigen deutsch-jüdische Selbstzeugnisse während des Nationalsozialismus und insbesondere die Geschichte der Stadt Breslau. Diese beherbergte damals die drittgrößte jüdische Gemeinschaft Deutschlands. Die Beziehung zwischen ‚Arier‘ und ‚Jude‘ im ‚Dritten Reich‘ war tatsächlich im und durch den Raum strukturiert. Die raumpolitischen Eingriffe – von der Schrumpfung bis hin zur Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinschaft Breslaus – regten zum Schreiben an. Diese bisher relativ wenig beachteten Breslauer Tagebücher und Autobiographien bieten wichtige Einblicke in den Zusammenhang zwischen nationalsozialistischer Raumnutzung und Ausgrenzung von ‚Gemeinschaftsfremden‘. Zentral für diese Arbeit ist die Erfahrung des sich verändernden Raumes und dessen Wiedergabe im autobiographischen Narrativ. Ziel ist, einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Darstellung der deutsch-jüdischen Stadterfahrung in Breslauer Selbstzeugnissen während des ‚Dritten Reiches‘ zu leisten.

In the Axis War on the side of Germany, Mussolini's Italy was responsible for serious war crimes, especially in Yugoslavia and Greece. This'dark side'of the fascist war, however, is not present in the national memory built after 1945. To distinguish Italy from the former German ally and avoid a punitive peace, the monarchist and anti-fascist ruling classes elaborated a master narrative that highlighted the opposition of the Italian people to Mussolini's war and the humanitarian behavior of Italian soldiers, depicted as saviors of Jews. All responsibility for the crimes committed in the Axis war was placed on the shoulders of the Germans, who thus became a convenient alibi for the national conscience.

This book shows how institutional religion and the religiosity of political and cultural life provide a necessary dimension to Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers. Lived religion surrounded Benjamin, whose upper-middle-class Jewish family celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah in Berlin as the turmoil of war, collapsing empires, and modern urban life gave rise to the Nazi regime that would destroy most of Europe's Jews, including Benjamin himself. Documenting the vitality and diversity of religious life that surrounded Benjamin in Germany, France, and beyond, Brian Britt shows the extent to which religious communities and traditions, especially those of Christians, influenced his work. Britt surveys and analyzes the intellectual, cultural, and social contexts of religion in Benjamin's world and broadens the religious frame around discussions of his work to include lived religion—the daily practices of ordinary people. Seeing religion around Benjamin requires looking at forms of life and institutions that he rarely discussed. As Britt shows, dramatic changes in religious practices, particularly in Berlin, reflected broader political and cultural currents that would soon transform the lives of all Europeans.An original perspective on the religious context of a thinker who habitually raised questions about the survival of religion in modernity, Religion Around Walter Benjamin contributes to wider discussions of religious tradition and secular modernity in religious and cultural studies. It provides a foundational overview and introduction to the context of Benjamin's writing that will be appreciated by scholars and students alike.

This book shows how institutional religion and the religiosity of political and cultural life provide a necessary dimension to Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers. Lived religion surrounded Benjamin, whose upper-middle-class Jewish family celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah in Berlin as the turmoil of war, collapsing empires, and modern urban life gave rise to the Nazi regime that would destroy most of Europe's Jews, including Benjamin himself. Documenting the vitality and diversity of religious life that surrounded Benjamin in Germany, France, and beyond, Brian Britt shows the extent to which religious communities and traditions, especially those of Christians, influenced his work. Britt surveys and analyzes the intellectual, cultural, and social contexts of religion in Benjamin's world and broadens the religious frame around discussions of his work to include lived religion—the daily practices of ordinary people. Seeing religion around Benjamin requires looking at forms of life and institutions that he rarely discussed. As Britt shows, dramatic changes in religious practices, particularly in Berlin, reflected broader political and cultural currents that would soon transform the lives of all Europeans.An original perspective on the religious context of a thinker who habitually raised questions about the survival of religion in modernity, Religion Around Walter Benjamin contributes to wider discussions of religious tradition and secular modernity in religious and cultural studies. It provides a foundational overview and introduction to the context of Benjamin's writing that will be appreciated by scholars and students alike.

This book discusses the active relationship among the mechanics of memory, visual practices, and historical narratives.Reflection on memory and its ties with historical narratives cannot be separated from reflection on the visual and the image as its points of reference which function in time. This volume addresses precisely that temporal aspect of the image, without reducing it to a neutral trace of the past, a mnemotechnical support of memory. As a commemorative device, the image fixes, structures, and crystalizes memory, turning the view of the past into myth. It may, however, also stimulate, transform, and update memory, functioning as a matrix of interpretation and understanding the past. The book questions whether the functioning of the visual matrices of memory can be related to a particular historical and geographical scope, that is, to Central and Eastern Europe, and whether it is possible to find their origin and decide if they are just local and regional or perhaps also Western European and universal. It focuses on the artistic reflection on time and history, in the reconstructions of memory due to change of frontiers and political regimes, as well as endeavours to impose some specific political structure on territories which were complex and mixed in terms of national identity, religion and social composition.The volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, history and visual studies.

Kein Krieg wurde sexualwissenschaftlich so intensiv erforscht wie der »Große Krieg« von 1914 bis 1918. Er fiel in eine Phase, als die »Entdeckung« des Unbewussten und die Begründung der Sexualwissenschaft als interdisziplinäres Fach erst wenige Jahre zurücklagen. Richard Kühl untersucht, wie die neuen Expert•innen im Kriegsraum ein regelrechtes Laboratorium der Triebe vorfanden und sich noch bis in die 1920er Jahre hinein mit den sozialen und kulturellen Kriegsfolgen kontrovers auseinandersetzten. Seine Analysen reichen bis in die Zeit um 1930, in der Sexolog•innen wie Magnus Hirschfeld in der »umkämpften Erinnerung« an die Materialschlachten auf eine Weise mitmischten, die das gesamte politische Spektrum beschäftigte.

Seit Aufstellung der Bundeswehr 1955 verloren über 3300 Soldaten ihr Leben im Dienst. Nur eine Minderheit von ihnen fiel in Kampfeinsätzen. Die weitaus meisten kamen bei Unfällen ums Leben. Das stets wiederholte Versprechen, all diesen Toten ein öffentliches Andenken zu bewahren, verhallte. Erst mit Beginn des Afghanistan-Einsatzes 2002 setzte ein Umdenken ein, das in der Einweihung des Berliner Ehrenmales der Bundeswehr 2009 seinen vorläufigen Höhepunkt fand. Seitdem gedenkt die Bundeswehr offiziell und öffentlich ihrer toten Soldaten. Warum verweigerte die Bundeswehr so lange ein öffentlich sichtbares und dauerhaftes Gedenken? Julia Katharina Nordmann beleuchtet die komplexen Ursachen für dieses Verhalten. Sie rekonstruiert zugleich den langen und mühsamen Prozess, der zur Ausbildung einer Gedenkkultur geführt hat, die heute in vielfältiger Weise die Toten der Bundeswehr würdigt.

Die bundesdeutsche Gedenkstättenlandschaft gilt heute als Vorbild einer gelungenen Auseinandersetzung mit der NS-Vergangenheit. Wie Gedenkstätten an ehemaligen Tatorten aus jahrzehntelangen Aushandlungen um die Deutung der NS-Verbrechen und ihrer Opfer hervorgegangen sind, zeichnet die vorliegende Fallstudie nach. Anhand der Ortsgeschichten der Emslandlager wird Erinnerungskultur als ein gesellschaftlicher Prozess verstanden, der in den jeweiligen Zeitkontexten betrachtet wird. Die Studie widmet sich dabei den Akteuren, die um die Erinnerung an die Emslandlager zwischen 1945 und 2011 stritten, und legt einen Schwerpunkt auf die überlebenden Moorsoldaten. Diese kämpften in Zeiten des Kalten Krieges hartnäckig gegen die Widerstände konservativer Lokal- und Landespolitiker und indifferenter Zeitgenossen um die Anerkennung ihres Schicksals. The landscape of German memorials is considered as a role model in the confrontation with the Nazi past. The present case study shows how memorials emerged on former historical sites after decades of debates on the significance of Nazi cruelties. With the help of stories from the Emslandlager ('Emsland camps') remembrance culture is understood as a social process which is analysed from the relevant time context. The study devotes itself with the protagonists who fought for remembrance of the'Emsland camps'between 1945 and 2011 and concentrates on the surviving Moorsoldaten ('Peat Bog Soldiers'). During the cold war these soldiers fought against the strong resistance of conservative local and regional politicians, as well as indifferent people for the recognition of their doom.

This thematic encyclopedia presents a broad overview of contemporary Germany, spanning such topics as geography, pop culture, the media, and gender roles.Themes in the book cover geography; history; politics and government; economy; religion and thought; social classes and ethnicity; gender, marriage, and sexuality; education; language; etiquette; literature and drama; art and architecture; music and dance; food; leisure and sports; and media and pop culture. Within each theme, short topical entries cover a wide array of key concepts and ideas, from LGBTQ issues in Germany to linguistic dialects to the famous Oktoberfest.

To reclaim a sense of hope for the future, German activists in the late twentieth century engaged ordinary citizens in innovative projects that resisted alienation and disenfranchisement.By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of crisis after the 1973 global oil shock appeared to doom dreams of a better world. The eventual victory of capitalism and, seemingly, liberal democracy relieved some fears but exchanged them for complacency and cynicism.Not, however, in West Germany. Jennifer Allen showcases grassroots activism of the 1980s and 1990s that envisioned a radically different society based on community-centered politics—a society in which the democratization of culture and power ameliorated alienation and resisted the impotence of end-of-history narratives. Berlin's History Workshop liberated research from university confines by providing opportunities for ordinary people to write and debate the story of the nation. The Green Party made the politics of direct democracy central to its program. Artists changed the way people viewed and acted in public spaces by installing objects in unexpected environments, including the Stolpersteine: paving stones, embedded in residential sidewalks, bearing the names of Nazi victims. These activists went beyond just trafficking in ideas. They forged new infrastructures, spaces, and behaviors that gave everyday people real agency in their communities. Undergirding this activism was the environmentalist concept of sustainability, which demanded that any alternative to existing society be both enduring and adaptable.A rigorous but inspiring tale of hope in action, Sustainable Utopias makes the case that it is still worth believing in human creativity and the labor of citizenship.

Antifascist and socialist monuments pervaded the landscape of the former German Democratic Republic (1949-89), presenting a distorted vision of the national past. Official commemorative culture in East Germany celebrated a selective set of political heroes, seeming to leave no public space for mourning those who were excluded from the country's founding myths. Socialist Laments: Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic examines the role of music in this nation's memorial culture, demonstrating how music facilitated the expressions of loss within spaces of commemoration for East German citizens. Music performed during state-sponsored memorial rituals no doubt bolstered official narratives of the German past. But it simultaneously provided an outlet for mourning in highly politicized environment. The book presents both a history and theory of musical mourning in East Germany. Using a site-specific approach to analysis, author Martha Sprigge demonstrates how the multiple semantic networks opened up by these musical works facilitated many memorial associations without necessitating the overt articulation of a mourned subject. Throughout the country's forty-year existence, music offered East German citizens an audible outlet for working through traumatic losses-both collective and individual-that was distinct from other artistic expressive possibilities. The book reveals the ways that East Germany's extensive commemorative repertoire helped composers, performers, and audiences navigate between the inevitable need to mourn on the one hand, and the seeming impossibilities of mourning on the other.

Ausgehend vom Gedenken an die Pogromnacht von 1938 untersucht der Band die Bedeutungswandlungen der Erinnerung an die Shoa und an die Geschichte jüdischen Lebens in Deutschland sowie die aktuellen Entwicklungen der erinnerungspolitischen Debatte, der Erinnerungsforschung und der Gedenkkultur. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Frage nach den zukünftigen Formen und Inhalten des Erinnerns und seiner institutionellen Manifestationen in politischen Diskursen, in der Wissenschaft und in den Gedenkorten. Wie kann die Erinnerung an die jüdische Geschichte in Deutschland und Europa, an die Diskriminierung und Verfolgung der jüdischen Minderheit und an den Völkermord auch mehr als 80 Jahre nach der Pogromnacht aufrecht erhalten werden und wirksam bleiben?

One of the world's largest sellers of footwear, the Bata Company of Zlín, Moravia has a remarkable history that touches on crucial aspects of what made the world modern. In the twilight of the Habsburg Empire, the company Americanized its production model while also trying to Americanize its workforce. It promised a technocratic form of governance in the chaos of postwar Czechoslovakia, and during the Roaring Twenties, it became synonymous with rationalization across Europe and thus a flashpoint for a continent-wide debate. While other companies contracted in response to the Great Depression, Bata did the opposite, becoming the first shoe company to unlock the potential of globalization. As Bata expanded worldwide, it became an example of corporate national indifference, where company personnel were trained to be able to slip into and out of national identifications with ease. Such indifference, however, was seriously challenged by the geopolitical crisis of the 1930s, and by the cusp of the Second World War, Bata management had turned nationalist, even fascist. In the Kingdom of Shoes unravels the way the Bata project swept away tradition and enmeshed the lives of thousands of people around the world in the industrial production of shoes. Using a rich array of archival materials from two continents, the book answers how Bata's rise to the world's largest producer of shoes challenged the nation-state, democracy, and Americanization.

The Second World War was filled with many terrible crimes, such as genocide, forced migration and labour, human-made famine, forced sterilizations, and dispossession, that occurred on an unprecedented scale. Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War examines victim groups constructed in the twentieth century in the aftermath of these experiences. The collection explores the concept of authenticity through an examination of victims'histories and the construction of victimhood in Europe and East Asia. Chapters consider how notions of historical authenticity influence the self-identification and public recognition of a given social group, the tensions arising from individual and group experiences of victimhood, and the resulting, sometimes divergent, interpretation of historical events. Drawing from case studies on topics including the Holocaust, the siege of Leningrad, American air raids on Japan, and forced migrations from Eastern Europe, Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War demonstrates the trend towards a victim-centred collective memory as well as the interplay of memory politics and public commemorative culture.

The Virtuous Wehrmacht explores the myth of the German armed forces'innocence during World War II by reconstructing the moral world of German soldiers on the Eastern Front. How did they avoid feelings of guilt about the many atrocities their side committed? David A. Harrisville compellingly demonstrates that this myth of innocence was created during the course of the war itself—and did not arise as a postwar whitewashing of events. In 1941 three million Wehrmacht troops overran the border between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland, racing toward the USSR in the largest military operation in modern history. Over the next four years, they embarked on a campaign of wanton brutality, murdering countless civilians, systemically starving millions of Soviet prisoners of war, and actively participating in the genocide of Eastern European Jews. After the war, however, German servicemen insisted that they had fought honorably and that their institution had never involved itself in Nazi crimes. Drawing on more than two thousand letters from German soldiers, contextualized by operational and home front documents, Harrisville shows that this myth was the culmination of long-running efforts by the army to preserve an illusion of respectability in the midst of a criminal operation. The primary authors of this fabrication were ordinary soldiers cultivating a decent self-image and developing moral arguments to explain their behavior by drawing on a constellation of values that long preceded Nazism. The Virtuous Wehrmacht explains how the army encouraged troops to view themselves as honorable representatives of a civilized nation, not only racially but morally superior to others.

Questions of truth, ethics, state power, and propaganda, of how to render account of catastrophes and reconcile oneself with one's past are not only crucial to our time, they were also central to the German historian Friedrich Meinecke (1862-1954). Probably no generation of historians before Meinecke had lived through more unsettling transformations, during which these questions were most pressing. Reinbert Krol's analysis of Meinecke's intellectual development does not only give us insight into his philosophy of history - which turns out to be more conciliatory than previously assumed - it can also be a source of inspiration for scholars of history today.

This is the first edited volume dedicated to the study of East Asian-German cinema. Its coverage ranges from 1919 to the present, a period which has witnessed an unprecedented degree of global entanglement between Germany and East Asia. In analyzing this hybrid cinema, this volume employs a transnational approach, which highlights the nations'cinematic encounters and entanglements. It reveals both German perceptions of East Asia and East Asian perceptions of Germany, through analysis of works by both German directors and East Asian/East Asian-German directors. It is hoped that this volume will not only accelerate cross-cultural exchange, but also provide a wider perspective that helps film scholars to see the broader contexts in which these films are produced. It introduces multiple compelling topics, not just immigration, multiculturalism, and exile, but also Japonisme, children's literature, musical modernity, media hybridity, gender representation, urban space, Cold War divisions, and national identity. It addresses several genres—feature films, essay films, and documentary films. Lastly, by embracing three East Asian cinemas in one volume, this volume serves as an excellent introduction for German cinema students and scholars. It will appeal to international and interdisciplinary audiences, as its contributors represent multiple disciplines and four world regions.

Tannenberg war nicht nur der Ort eines mythenumwobenen deutschen Sieges Ende August 1914. Die Schlacht bei Tannenberg zu Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges galt vielen als Beweis für die überlegene deutsche militärische Führungskunst und die Richtigkeit des Dogmas der Vernichtungsschlacht. Sie bescherte dem Oberbefehlshaber der 8. Armee Paul von Hindenburg Legendenstatus, der den „Retter Ostpreußens'schließlich bis ins Präsidentenamt der Weimarer Republik trug.Geschickt inszenierte die zeitgenössische Propaganda den umfassenden Sieg als erfolgreichen Kampf des „Germanentums'gegen das „Slawentum'. Schon die Benennung nach dem Ort Tannenberg, der eher am Rande des Geschehens lag, weist in diese Richtung: Sie sollte an die gleichnamige Schlacht von 1410 erinnern, in der ein Heer des Deutschen Ordens vernichtend von einem polnisch-litauischen Heer geschlagen wurde.John Zimmermann analysiert auf breiter Quellenbasis den Verlauf und die Folgen der Schlacht. Er hinterfragt die Mythenbildung und legt anschaulich dar, warum der Mythos „Tannenberg'nach 1945 ausgedient hatte.

Um 1500 werden in den Karten der frühen Kartographen und Berichten von Abenteurern und Reisenden erstmals die Spuren einer Nation erkennbar, die Jahrhunderte später Goethe und Schiller hervorbringen wird, aber auch den größten Massenmord der Weltgeschichte zu verantworten hat. Ist dieses'Deutschland'eine Nation mit einer festen Identität und einem angestammten'Volk', oder ist es weit eher ein historischer Raum, in dem sich konkurrierende Vorstellungen davon, was Deutschland ist oder werden soll, permanent ablösen? Helmut Walser Smith geht in seinem elegant geschriebenen Werk der'longue durée'der deutschen Geschichte nach und hält die Idee der Nation und die Ideologie des Nationalismus so hellsichtig auseinander, wie es wohl nur einem Beobachter von außen möglich ist. Imaginationen von Deutschland und deutsche Wirklichkeiten stoßen in seinem geradezu anti-essentialistischen Buch hart aufeinander und entladen sich im 20. Jahrhundert in nationalistischen Exzessen, die Walser Smith ebenso eindringlich wie schonungslos schildert. Bis hin zur Bundestagsrede von Navid Kermani und den aktuellen Versuchen der AfD, sich der deutschen Geschichte zu bemächtigen, reicht diese kluge Meditation über Deutschland und das Erbe seiner Vergangenheit.

Das akademische Göttingen nach 1945: ein Neuanfang? Das akademische Göttingen nach 1945 lässt sich als'Laboratorium der Selbstbehauptung'verstehen, in dem die lokale Hochschulelite ungeachtet ihrer NS-Belastung am Anspruch auf Weltdeutungskompetenz festhielt. Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen die vergangenheitspolitische Kommunikation, mit der zentrale Akteure vor allem aus der Physik und der Geschichtswissenschaft seit der Wiedereröffnung der Universität ihre Rolle im'Dritten Reich'zu überschreiben versuchten.

What was known and understood about the nature of the Nazi dictatorship in Britain prior to war in 1939? How was Nazism viewed by those outside of Germany? The British Press and Nazi Germany considers these questions through the lens of the British press. Until now, studies that centre on British press attitudes to Nazi Germany have concentrated on issues of foreign policy. The focus of this book is quite different. In using material that has largely been neglected, Kylie Galbraith examines what the British press reported about life inside the Nazi dictatorship. In doing so, the book imparts important insights into what was known and understood about the Nazi revolution. And, because the overwhelming proportion of the British public's only means of news was the press, this volume shows what people in Britain could have known about the Nazi dictatorship. It reveals what the British people were being told about the regime, specifically the destruction of Weimar democracy, the ruthless persecution of minorities, the suppression of the churches and the violent factional infighting within Nazism itself. This pathbreaking examination of the British press'coverage of Nazism in the 1930s greatly enhances our knowledge of the fascist regime with which the British Government was attempting to reach agreement at the time.

Diamonds have long been bloody. A new history shows how Germany's ruthless African empire brought diamond rings to retail display cases in America—at the cost of African lives.Since the late 1990s, activists have campaigned to remove “conflict diamonds” from jewelry shops and department stores. But if the problem of conflict diamonds—gems extracted from war zones—has only recently generated attention, it is not a new one. Nor are conflict diamonds an exception in an otherwise honest industry. The modern diamond business, Steven Press shows, owes its origins to imperial wars and has never escaped its legacy of exploitation.In Blood and Diamonds, Press traces the interaction of the mass-market diamond and German colonial domination in Africa. Starting in the 1880s, Germans hunted for diamonds in Southwest Africa. In the decades that followed, Germans waged brutal wars to control the territory, culminating in the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples and the unearthing of vast mineral riches. Press follows the trail of the diamonds from the sands of the Namib Desert to government ministries and corporate boardrooms in Berlin and London and on to the retail counters of New York and Chicago. As Africans working in terrifying conditions extracted unprecedented supplies of diamonds, European cartels maintained the illusion that the stones were scarce, propelling the nascent US market for diamond engagement rings. Convinced by advertisers that diamonds were both valuable and romantically significant, American purchasers unwittingly funded German imperial ambitions into the era of the world wars.Amid today's global frenzy of mass consumption, Press's history offers an unsettling reminder that cheap luxury often depends on an alliance between corporate power and state violence.

Das Kompendium zur Geschichte der Weimarer Republik: Alltag, Politik und Wirtschaft Die Weimarer Republik war weit mehr als permanente Krise, mehr auch als die glitzernde Welt der zwanziger Jahre. In der verhältnismäßig kurzen Zeit von 1918 bis 1933 verdichteten sich in aller Schärfe die Aufbrüche und Abgründe der deutschen und europäischen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mit diesem Standardwerk zeichnet ein internationales Team von Experten ein neues, vielschichtiges Bild der ersten deutschen Republik. So wird deutlich, warum über hundert Jahre nach ihrer Gründung die Weimarer Republik ein fester Bestandteil der deutschen Gegenwart ist. - Umfangreiches Handbuch zur Geschichte Deutschlands von 1918 bis 1933 - Aufsätze zu Kultur, Kunst und Literatur der Weimarer Republik - Industrie und Landwirtschaft, Arbeiterschaft und Mittelschicht: Überblick über Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft - Zusammenfassungen zur Außen- und Innenpolitik, den Parteien und ihren Parteimilieus - Umfassend und aktuell: 32 abgeschlossene Kapitel beleuchten alle Facetten der ersten deutschen Republik Deutschland 1918 - 1933: Ein vielschichtiges Bild der Weimarer Republik Mit ihrem Handbuch rücken die Autorinnen und Autoren oft übersehene Aspekte dieser Epoche der deutschen Geschichte in den Blick: die massenhafte Mobilisierung engagierter Republikaner, die konfessionellen Konflikte zwischen Katholiken und Protestanten oder die Relevanz von Föderalismus und Regionalismus. Anderes wie der Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur und die Gründe für den Aufstieg der NSDAP erscheint in neuem Licht. Und ›Weimar‹ war nicht nur Berlin: Zur Weimarer Republik gehören auch die Bauern und Landarbeiter, der Heimatroman oder die Architektur der Gartenstädte. So wird eindrucksvoll deutlich, dass die Geschichte Weimars nicht nur von ihrem Endpunkt 1933 her zu verstehen ist!

A wide range of transatlantic contributors addresses Berlin as a global focal point of the Cold War, and also assess the geopolitical peculiarity of the city and how citizens dealt with it in everyday life. They explore not just the implications of division, but also the continuing entanglements and mutual perceptions which resulted from Berlin's unique status. An essential contribution to the study of Berlin in the 20th century, and the effects - global and local - of the Cold War on a city.