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Pursued by authorities throughout the 1930s, Heinrich Habitz left behind a significant paper trail of official documentation, arrest warrants and imprisonment records. As Germany slipped further under National Socialist oppression, Habitz's status as a homosexual man who sold sex marked him as a target of police repression. Even after the end of the war, the Hamburg Prosecutor's Office attempted to locate and again prosecute him under the infamous §175 'sodomy law'. By rights, the study of Habitz should provide insights into the continuities of anti-queer repression between authoritarianism and democracy, but for one key point: 'Heinrich Habitz' existed only as a paper identity in official bureaucracy, and the 'man' authorities repeatedly persecuted was, in fact, a self-identified woman named 'Liddy Bacroff'. Through a series of semi-autobiographical writings, alongside official paperwork, Liddy Bacroff presents the value of but also the difficulties facing the (re)construction of queer and, in particular, transgender (pre)histories. In this instance, the historian is not just faced with the problem of how this life, and others like it, should be represented in historiographical terms. We are left also with the question of how this victim of National Socialist barbarity should (or rather, can) be remembered: as the paper identity that provided a succession of carceral authorities with the justification to persecute and ultimately murder a cisgender gay man, or as the lived experience of a woman whose unique self-understanding allowed her to carve out her place in a society that otherwise relegated her to its margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, West Germans began to accept the more permanent division of the country and rediscovered the regional fundaments of their federal political system. A catalyst for this process was provided by a massive regionalization of the daily press in the aftermath of the recession in 1973. That regionalization entailed the delineation of new regional distribution and advertising areas, the launch of new editions, the growth of regularly and irregularly published alternative papers and a stronger emphasis on regional news. In the 1970s regionalization cut across all segments of the market and across party affiliations and affected established papers, the irregular alternative press and even television and broadcasting. It propelled the West German daily press to its height point in German history, with more than 25 million copies per day in 1982. The new regional focus of the daily press increased public awareness of regional protests, regional identity politics and regional scandals during the chancellorship of Helmut Schmidt (1974-82) to such an extent that the article concludes that the 1970s were not only a 'global' decade, but also a regional decade. The history of the regional press that is presented in the article for the first time facilitates a new view of regional changes in economic prosperity, criticism of the federal state and the emergence of regional consumer markets between 1974 and 1982. The analysis provides a cornerstone for a more detailed media history of the Bonn Republic and a new understanding of the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provided is information about several papers discussed at a workshop sponsored by Peter Wilson and Michael Schaich and the German History Society and the German Historical Institute on religious, political, administrative, medical, and cultural history from various perspectives. Topics include the development of the Rhine River in Germany, how cultural elites could be used to create a national identity, and Lutheranism.

The article presents information on the Third Workshop on Early Modern German History," held in London on the October 22, 2004. The third annual session of this successful venture, sponsored by the German Historical Society, the German Historical Institute and the University of Sunderland, brought over thirty scholars to Bloomsbury Square. The explicit aim of the workshop is to offer a cross-disciplinary forum to discuss new research on early modern German-speaking Europe. Following a general call for papers, co-organizers Michael Schaich and Peter Wilson selected ten speakers representing the rich spectrum of work currently in progress.

The ‘New Woman’ was an important part of the culture and society of Weimar Germany, both as a discursive figure and as social reality. However, the interdependencies between these two aspects—the ‘New Woman’ as a media phenomenon and as a lived reality—have not yet been investigated in depth. Using the example of the tabloid newspaper Tempo (1928–1933) and its interaction with its readership, this article sheds light on the ways in which Germans reconciled the ‘New Woman’ ideal with their own experiences at the end of the Weimar Republic. Most importantly, it shows the struggle of many readers to accommodate new ideas about ‘modern’ relationships between men and women at a time when traditional morals persisted in a rapidly deteriorating economic climate.A number of scholars have pointed to a change in the media-driven construction of images of femininity in the late 1920s, with the modern, independent ‘New Woman’ making way for a more conservative ideal of motherhood and devotion. This article argues that this shift in the discourse on femininity did not reflect a change in the self-definition of German women. Rather, the interaction of Tempo’s female and male readers with the paper suggests that they tried to accommodate new concepts of modern femininity with persisting traditional ideas about women’s role in society, arriving at a hybrid type of ‘moderately modern’ womanhood. Thus, only the image of the ‘New Woman’ constructed in the media changed at the end of the 1920s, while the self-definition of German women remained relatively stable—even beyond 1933. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Gregorian reform movement in general, and events at Canossa in 1077 in particular, have been credited with tarnishing the lustre of sacral kingship within the Empire. In this paper narrative, liturgical and material sources are drawn upon, to demonstrate the extent to which the image of kingship within the Hohenstaufen Empire continued to be rooted in biblical and liturgical soil. The paper focuses on the ritual of inauguration and draws a distinction between royal and imperial ceremonies. This makes it apparent that, while scholars have been right to stress the extent to which papal alterations to the imperial rite undermined the liturgical associations of the imperial office, the imperial liturgy developed by the papal curia in Rome had negligible impact on the royal inauguration liturgy used in Aachen. On the contrary, German monarchs continued to make lively use of inauguration liturgy to emphasize, in the face of papal opprobrium, the divinely ordained nature of their rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the experiences of one particular, rarely discussed group of 'war children': former pupils of the most prominent type of Nazi elite school, the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten or 'Napolas'. Drawing upon a variety of original testimonies, the paper explores the hardships and dilemmas that Napola pupils (often as young as 12 or 13) faced as the Second World War drew to a close, and the ways in which ex-pupils have attempted to present this aspect of their past in autobiographical memoir literature and personal recollections. Public attitudes have certainly influenced these former pupils' self-presentation, and their personal narratives of victimhood. However, their narrations also seem to contain recurring themes that are specific to their status as former elite-school pupils, and that have interesting implications for the ways in which we might approach such testimonies, both historically and methodologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights conferences related to the historical developments in Germany. Evaluation of achievements of the country; Acceptance of papers on the political and social history of Germany and Austria in 1945; Aims of the conferences.

This article analyses two early plays from the era of the German Reformation, the Tragedia Johannis Huss (1537), by Johannes Agricola, and Ein heimliche Gespräch vonder Tragedia Johannis Hussen (1538), by Johannes Cochlaeus. Agricola's play dramatized the trial and execution of Jan Hus, the Bohemian priest and reformer who was executed by the Council of Constance in 1415. A number of accounts of Hus's trial were published in the 1530s as part of the Lutheran campaign against the convocation of a general church council; this paper argues that Agricola's turn to drama represented a broadening of the Lutherans' use of printed and oral media in publicizing their attack on the council. Cochlaeus's play was a direct response to Agricola's, but utilized different means to undercut the potential impact of Agricola's Tragedia. Cochlaeus satirized his Lutheran opponents and their wives, thus using the comic potential of the stage to expand his own polemical arsenal against Luther and his followers. Through these two plays, this paper examines both the development of Lutheran historical arguments against church councils and the dynamics of the propagandistic interchanges between Roman and Lutheran authors in the second decade of the Reformation. It ultimately argues that these two authors' use of dramatic media exemplified efforts by both churches to reach audiences in new and potentially more effective ways in order to reify their differences and galvanize their followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the conference regarding the relationship of the military and rural society in the early modern period in Germany. Comparison between the Anglophone and German historiography; Reassessment of peasant life and feudal economy; Factors affecting the spread of mercenary service; Discussion on the peasant and soldier antagonism.

Focuses on a conference regarding the conception of history, formation of tradition and self-representation in the Societies of Orders of East-Central Europe in Leipzig, Germany. Debates on issues regarding the relation of histography to political claims, power and authority.

Focuses on political conferences in Germany. Construction of the conference title 'Imperium/Empire/Reich'; Concept of universal monarchy; Problems of political cultures and regional identities.

Presents congresses and conventions on German history. Elaboration on religion and confessionalization; Discussion on the cultural developments of post-war Germany; Differentiation of Catholicism from Lutheranism and Calvinism.

Information about several papers discussed at the 2010 conference of the German History Society held in Manchester, England on topics of German history is presented. Topics include psychological biographies of German priest and initiator of the Reformation Martin Luther, race and the administration of German colonial possessions, and German labor history during the interwar period. The conference featured several historians including Andreas Gestrich, Lyndal Roper, and Jürgen Kocka.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the excise taxes (Ungeld) paid by town residents on the consumption of beer, wine, mead and brandy represented the single most important source of civic revenue for many German cities. In a crisis, these taxes could spike to 70–80% of civic income. This paper examines civic budgets and ‘behind-the-scenes’ deliberations in a sample of towns in southern Germany in order to illuminate how decisions affecting consumer taxes were made. Even during the sobriety movements of the Reformation and post-Reformation period, tax income from drinkers remained attractive to city leaders because the bulk of the excise tax burden could easily be shifted away from privileged members of society and placed on the population at large. At the same time, governments had to maintain a careful balance between what they needed in order to govern and what the consumer market could bear, for high taxes on drinks were also targeted in many popular revolts. This led to nimble politicking by those responsible for tax decisions. Drink taxes were introduced, raised, lowered and otherwise manipulated based not only on shifting fashions and tastes but also on the degree of economic stress faced by the community. Where civic rulers were successful in striking the right balance, the rewards were considerable. The income from drink sales was a major factor in how the cities of the Empire survived the wars and other crises of the early modern period without going into so much debt that they lost their independence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the political historiographical connections between Great Britain and Germany. Conferences of Fruhe Neuzeit Interdisziplinar; Presentation of research papers on the culture, politics and society of the German-speaking central Europe; Engagement of participants in debates; Lists of conference participants.

The founding generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a West German terrorist group, spent two frenzied years in the underground followed by five years in prison, culminating with the suicides of the group's leaders in 1976 and 1977. This paper examines the prison hunger strikes of the RAF as structured acts of communication that together with accompanying texts were central to a sustained media campaign run from within prison. It examines the internal and external prison communication networks established to enable the coordination of the strikes as well as the discursive functions of the self-starvation of the RAF members. Within the prison system hunger was constructed as 'holy' and ascribed a pseudo-religious function used to support a group identity and maintain an internal group discipline. In the texts produced for publication beyond the prison walls, however, hunger became a central element in the RAF strategy to counter what it saw as a mainstream medicalization of terrorism. This, in turn, was the tool employed to repackage the group's established rhetoric, as self-starvation allowed RAF prisoners to literally embody their long-standing 'anti-fascism' and 'anti-imperialism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several reports discussed at two conferences is presented including the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam, Germany and at the University of Glamorgan in Wales in April 2003. The focus of these conferences had been the political interrelationship between Great Britain and the German Democratic Republic, between different institutions and social groups within the framework of the Cold War.

This essay takes the Prussian prison reforms of the first half of the nineteenth century as an example to demonstrate the emergence of specific networks of penological experts which crossed national boundaries as well as the seemingly clear division between state and non-state agencies. It is based on the actor-network approach as developed initially in the works of Bruno Latour and others. The paper tries to show that this approach can help us to understand how state reform processes actually worked. Building on this, it argues that networks of such different groups as state administrations, monarchs, lawyers and penological experts overlapped in the penitentiary as the central tool of the state's treatment of prisoners. These groups claimed for themselves a monopoly on defining the function, construction and legitimization of the reforming machine. For each of these groups, the prison meant something different, but no group could implement its ideas without the support of the others. Each group had to seek allies in order to overcome resistance, whether from the interests of other agents or technological faults. Reform, therefore, must not be understood as a one-way process in which one reforming party translates its ideal type of prison into practice. Rather, it must be seen as a process of adaptation in which power relations between the actors balance each other out via networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory essay the editors suggest that the field of the history of sexuality in general and in modern Germany in particular has been organized around a complex of questions posed by the discourse theory of Foucault and other post-structuralists. The model proposed by these theorists and elaborated in the historical literature of the past twenty years has given us a coherent and widely influential narrative of the development of modern sexualities. This model, however, is now being called into question by historians who explore the social construction of sexualities in greater detail and argue that sexuality is constructed not by sexual experts (e.g., medical, criminological, psychiatric, and psychological experts) but within diverse and particular social milieux. The papers in this issue exemplify this trend, focusing their attention on the complexities of sexual discourse and revealing some of the ways in which constructions of sexuality were contested, contradictory, and shaped by the micropolitics of other social fields (such as politics, production, and the market). Taken together, they suggest that the history of sexuality is entering an exciting new creative phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the conference 'Britain and the GDR: Relations and Perceptions in a Divided World' in Potsdam, Germany. Organizers of the event; Purpose of the convention; Speakers and topics discussed during the conference.

Highlights the conference organized by the British Centre for Historical Research in Gottingen, Germany. Emphasis on the historiographical connections between Britain and Germany; Importance of foundational myths in historical writing; Relationship between patriotic commitment and perceptions.

The article explores the conceptualization of Jewish emancipation and the republican order of state by activists of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens, CV) in the Weimar years. It argues that activists adopted a liberal conception of constitutional patriotism and involved themselves in a republican nation-building project that went substantially beyond its traditional tasks of defence (Abwehr) and enlightenment (Aufklärung) against antisemitism. This entailed rallying fellow republicans to the defence of the order of state, advocating for the spirit of the constitution and rule of law and actively participating in the development of the republican society. In doing so, the CV rethought what it meant to be 'German' and came to understand it in a distinctively republican form, arguing that identification with the constitution and the republican ideals were the truest expression of Germanness. As 'German' came to be understood as the free expression of the people's spirit and will, Jews' belonging to Germany was seen as the result of a teleological process of the materialization of the 'German spirit', manifested in the republic. The article therefore reads the history of the Centralverein during the Weimar Republic not only in regard to its role for the Jewish community but crucially as one of the liberal movements that aimed to develop and defend the German republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights events of the German History Society in 1998. Presentation of papers on the Thirty Years War in the Annual General Meeting of the society; Announcement of the death of Professor Bob Scribner, founding member of the German History Society; Recommendation of Higher Education Funding Council for England of persons to serve as researchers.

Home to the Communist Party of Germany's headquarters and heart of the remaining Scheunenviertel and its Jewish populations, Berlin's Bülowplatz was detested as representative of 'Judeo-Bolshevism' by local Nazis, and they vowed to 'cleanse' the square with an 'iron broom'. In March 1933, SA-men and police officers occupied and confiscated the KPD headquarters and renamed the square 'Horst-Wessel-Platz'. Thereafter, city officials selected the Jewish-owned apartment buildings behind the square for the first urban renewal measures under the new regime, with the explicit intent of evicting the Jewish residents from this Nazi memorial square. Via a close reading of minutes from bureaucratic meetings, this article illuminates how bureaucrats began translating Nazi ideology into practice. Although municipal and federal bureaucrats initially lacked the requisite authority and legislation to implement this ideologically driven project, united by broadly held antisemitic prejudices they creatively devised solutions and collaborated to mobilize bureaucratic processes for city planning that was explicitly antisemitic. The ideological transformation of Bülowplatz constituted the earliest case of de-Jewification (Entjudung) in Nazi Germany and set an important precedent for later measures of spatial and ethnic cleansing enacted against Jews in Germany and across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hanover Club was a discussion group founded by British and German students at the University of Oxford in 1911 to 'promote the cause of good-feeling between Germany and England by giving Englishmen and Germans in the University opportunities of meeting and discussing topics of interest and importance to both nations'. Based on the unpublished minutes of its discussions, this article highlights problems of mutual perception among its members by examining the discourse on some key themes: domestic and foreign politics, the future relationship between the two nations, and 'voices prophesying war'. The paradiplomatic activities and aspirations of the club members are situated in the contexts of pre-1914 pacifism, the conciliation efforts of private Anglo-German pressure groups, and the interaction between students of both nationalities in Oxford in the early twentieth century. It is proposed that the creation of a bilateral network among students was intended to lay the groundwork for a new, more personal and therefore more efficient form of diplomacy. Previous research has been inclined to dismiss the pre-1914 British-German conciliation movement as a fringe phenomenon, and to overlook bilateral contacts at the youth level altogether. By contrast, it is argued here that this movement had the potential to attract future members--both liberal and conservative-- of the Wilhelmine and Edwardian power elites. The traditional dichotomies of 'germanophile' vs. 'germanophobe' and 'anglophile' vs. 'anglophobe' are shown to be of limited analytical value for a discussion of the complex political situation of the prewar years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed during the German Studies Association forum on German environmental history is presented. Topics highlight issues on the way to reshape the concept about German history, the importance of Nazis in the German environmental history and the alternative chronology to capture the German environmental past. The forum featured historians that include Dorothee Brantz, Paul Warde and Thomas Zeller.

The author traces the reactions of the British press to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany between his accession in 1888 and his death in 1941. Rather than concentrating only on the later phases of Germanophobia leading up to and during the First World War, the piece takes a holistic view of the initial popularity of the young Kaiser, who was sometimes held up as a positive example to the perceived indolence of Britain's own Prince of Wales. Fleet Street acknowledged Wilhelm's dynamism and personal charisma, even coining new terms such as 'kaiserish'. Wilhelm successfully popularized himself by entering his yacht in Cowes Week and attending the death-bed of his grandmother, Queen Victoria. Nevertheless, attempts to cultivate a positive media image backfired in incidents such as the Daily Telegraph Affair of 1908. The deteriorating international situation and perceived militarism of Imperial Germany led to an increasingly bad press for the Kaiser. Using the concept of the 'representative individual', the author argues that Wilhelm came to embody both the positive and negative perceived traits of his nation. Nevertheless, despite his attempts as a modernizing populist monarch to manipulate the foreign press, in the end he became its victim. It did not require much official British pressure once the First World War broke out for Fleet Street to attack the Kaisers personality. Only in death--and in contrast to the new and more virulent threat of National Socialism--were Fleet Street's obituaries kinder to the memory of the Kaiser they had loved to hate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the transformation of German political mentalities after 1945 from war to peace culture. Definition of peace culture; Usefulness of the peace culture model in providing an overview of political, social and cultural developments in Germany; Studies on the legacy of the Second World War.

The few pre-modern elites who conjured up a two-dimensional "Germany" on a map did not create a modern nation, but their efforts also inspired later nation-builders. What is unclear is whether this is a particularly German theory of the nation, a sort of smuggled-in I Sonderweg i , or whether all nationalisms suffer self-destruction when they fly too close to the sun. For modern history, meanwhile, Smith has arguably crafted a dialectic of the nation: nationalism creates the conditions for its own destruction, and then sublimation, by wedding itself to state power and legitimacy. [Extracted from the article]

On an international level, temporal standardization was increasingly discussed in the last third of the nineteenth century, but how exactly it was defined and implemented in everyday life in late Imperial Germany has awaited investigation. This article comprises three examples that show how administrative attempts to denominate and institutionalize certain homogeneous concepts of time were dealt with in Germany on a practical basis around 1900. Drawing on both archival material and printed sources, the first example analyses temporal semantics in the public sphere and explains the boom in 'normal' times; the second example looks at how distributing normal time signals became a trade and, thus, a contested service; and the last example focuses on discussions and conflicts around the introduction of unified working times, especially in the industrial firm Siemens & Halske. The findings presented in this article show that, initially, introducing abstract concepts of normal times in different sectors of life paradoxically did not standardize the ways people understood and used time but rather further pluralized them. Thus, the processes of regulating and reforming pluritemporality in Imperial Germany were far from complete by the end of the century. The article offers a perspective on contemporaries as actors involved in a complex plurality of modernization efforts and projects, including temporal (self-)definitions and arrangements. By historicizing 'time' proper in late Imperial Germany, it contributes to the temporal turn, since it provides empirical evidence about how today's standard time regimes emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the local history of the Silesian city of Oels as presented in selected early modern books and pamphlets published primarily in the local print shop, but also in other cities. A prominent example of such a historical event is the 1535 tempest, descriptions of which were published in its immediate aftermath. The much-later Beschreibung of 1657 is presented as an example of creating local identity through emphasizing two cultural aspects linked to the event: the alleged nefarious role of the Jewish community and the special relationship of the local citizens with the dukes of, at first, the Podebrad, and later the Württemberg families. Although natural disasters are repetitive occurrences, the 1535 tempest was understood by the people of Oels in a singular manner, which was characteristic for the local context. The thesis about the singularity of the local history is further corroborated through a number of examples from Oels. Different aspects of singularity dominate in different publications depicting local events: the singularity of situations, people and places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Rohrbach was an influential publicist in Wilhelmine Germany. He also routinely used racial justifications to defend brutal policies for managing the indigenous populations of Germany's African colonies. In recent years, scholars have interpreted Rohrbach's promotion of colonialism as evidence that colonial ideas increasingly saturated German political and imperial discourse before and during the First World War. His work has thus been cited to support an emerging narrative of pathological continuity, which contends that Wilhelmine German imperialists reflexively drew upon colonial ideologies, experiences and models to inform increasingly repressive and violent plans to rule ethnically diverse space in Eastern Europe. This article argues that Paul Rohrbach has been misinterpreted. His career represents not the ease with which colonial ideas infiltrated German imperial discourse, but rather the severe reluctance of an ardent colonialist to employ colonial methods in European space. Drawing upon his writings on Africa and his discussions of German war aims in Eastern Europe during the First World War, this article demonstrates Rohrbach's profound unwillingness to structure German imperial expansion in Russia's Baltic provinces and Congress Poland according to colonial precedents. Differences in the perceived cultural and political sophistication of African, Baltic and Polish societies convinced Rohrbach that repressive and brutal colonial models of rule would be inefficient or counterproductive for achieving German objectives in Eastern Europe. Indeed, Rohrbach's studies of colonialism actually reinforced his commitment to decentralization and respect for national diversity as essential instruments for governing politically sophisticated European societies. His experiences in Africa, in other words, steeled his confidence in multinational imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany and Britain have served as models of either corporatist or voluntarist industrial relations. The more recent typology of 'varieties of capitalism' then identified Britain as a model case of a 'liberal market economy' while Germany was portrayed as a (state) 'co-ordinated market economy'. The mainstream of German-language labour history also tells this success story. Some research on the evolution of co-determination has portrayed its subject as a long-standing trait of German capitalism, with predecessors dating back as far as 1848. With its focus on the history of two key trade unions in core industries of Britain and Germany, the British metalworkers' union the Amalgamated Society of Engineers / Amalgamated Engineering Union and the German Metal Workers' Union / IG Metall, this article questions both exceptionalism and continuity. It argues that a path dependency exists in the structure of both unions and the industrial relations around them—but that this never came close to a linear evolution of voluntarism or corporatism. On closer examination, the history of both unions includes localist as well as centralist practices. From the 1890s both unions were part of collective bargaining with strong employers' associations; especially after 1945 both were open to corporatist compromises. For West Germany only, such a compromise was found in the early 1950s, and not before, while in Britain that same compromise was attempted but failed during the crucial years between 1965 and 1979. Therefore, to quote Stefan Berger, this article argues that 'similarities between the British and the German labour movements have been underestimated'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of computer technology in West German industry during the 1980s and 1990s dramatically changed the demand for skilled and unskilled work in manufacturing. As a result the knowledge used in production was redefined and reformers pushed for radical reform in vocational and general education. In these decades a corporate agreement across trade unions, associations of employers and state bureaucracy brought about a series of adaptive reforms of existing apprenticeships and the creation of new apprenticeships in new branches. This survival of the dual system is analysed as part of the strategies of modernizing West German manufacturing industries. Both employers and trade unions defended the central role of skilled workers in the new system of flexible quality production that developed during this period of rapid technological change. Data from the Socio-Economic Panel and from other sources enable analysis of the social effects of this economically successful strategy. They show the large-scale use of skilled workers in industrial production and their opportunities for upward mobility and additional qualifications. At the same time unskilled workers, and unskilled migrant workers in particular, experienced greater risks of unemployment and increased job uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While generational and biographical approaches are well-established methods in historical scholarship, life-course approaches are less prominent. This article seeks to bridge that gap by applying all these methods to an examination of the early membership of the German labour movement in the 1860s and 1870s. It considers whether we can interpret the rise of the labour movement in the nineteenth century as a generational phenomenon and explain it in light of (work) experiences that were life-phase specific. We see that while life-course experiences were more decisive than generational factors for the making of the movement, the retrospective identification of a founding generation was significant for the creation of the identity of a united labour movement in the years of the Kaiserreich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History museums in old industrial regions are important agents in the current debate on how we perceive work in our society. One of their key issues is how work built the region and how it changed in the context of deindustrialization. The article explores the depictions of work in the Ruhr Museum, which is the central regional history museum of the foremost region of heavy industry in Germany. It shows that with few exceptions the representations of the past in this museum include only images of standardized male industrial work, mainly in the coal and steel industries. Furthermore, it demonstrates that in the sections of the museum dedicated to the present, work has disappeared almost entirely from the representations, to be replaced with representations of culture, including industrial heritage, and lifestyles. In light of these findings the article argues that this way of presenting (and not presenting) work emphasizes the break between the past and the present. It homogenizes the historical narrative of work while making current work forms invisible and downplaying the continuing importance of the world of work. Instead, the museum tells a story of loss that requires compensation by culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of the office of the Bundestag's military ombudsman through a 1957 amendment to West Germany's Basic Law was and remains today an important manifestation of the Bundeswehr's Innere Führung. This reform concept was aimed at transforming the new military into a force that respected the individual rights of the 'citizen in uniform' and the rule of law in the young democratic state. The ombudsman was to be an independent check on whether these goals were being met. His office, therefore, held practical and symbolic value as a tool for parliamentary oversight of the military and therein the extension and protection of democratic values and practices in the Federal Republic. In the summer of 1964, the current ombudsman, Hellmuth Heye, released a series of three articles in the illustrated magazine Quick claiming that Innere Führung was under threat and with it Germany's democracy. Reaction to the articles was swift and vociferous. While officials in Bonn universally disavowed the criticism, the West German public supported Heye in thousands of letters to the media. The article examines this controversy and argues that while concern was widespread, there was little consensus about a solution. Military training that was too 'hard' harkened back to the dark days of the Wehrmacht. Training that was too 'soft' created weak, selfish men. The welfare-supported, consumption-driven society was seen as much at fault as an unreformed military. Ultimately, the article examines the quest for a healthy male who could serve as both a democratic citizen and a soldier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Battle of Stalingrad in winter 1942/43, a rift had been growing between Nazi propaganda claims and the reality of almost uninterrupted military setback. By the final months of the war, with the Allies rapidly advancing across Germany, this contradiction reached a new level. This article is a case study of the German domestic radio service from January to May 1945 as it was confronted with an unrelenting crisis that ended in total defeat. Using original sources, it focuses on radio policy and tactics, as mirrored in the radio conferences at the Propaganda Ministry, the programmes broadcast and listener response. The dual and irreconcilable courses characterized, on the one hand, by a clinging on to normality, echoed in the programme schedules and, on the other, by outpourings from a dying propaganda machine, including the Radio Werewolf venture, are examined. However, the article first sets the limits within which Nazi radio was forced to operate. Here access to its audience in light of massive technical problems and inroads by Allied stations that broadcast to the Reich play a key role. Among the interesting aspects covered in the study is the resumption of religious broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A small city of students and pensioners prior to 1949, Bonn became perhaps the most peculiar European capital city of the twentieth century. Central to Bonn's transformation into the provisional capital of West Germany was a conflict between the federal government's attempts to meet an insatiable need for space and the municipal government's efforts to retain control over its urban space and conserve its traditional identity. This conflict took a decisive turn in the 1960s with the planning and construction of a 30-story office tower designed by Egon Eiermann and completed in 1969 for members of the Bundestag. The tower radically altered Bonn's skyline and became a central part of a much larger debate in Bonn about the function and role of a capital city, national symbolism and the responsibilities that a national government held for its municipal host in the context of a modern federal democracy. For residents of Bonn, the glass-and-steel monolith represented a betrayal by the federal government and the disfigurement of the mythical Rhine landscape. However, as much as the building was vilified, it was also the result of the kinds of vigorous debate and compromise that are hallmarks of democratic societies, and although the planning process was imperfect, it was a first halting step in Bonn's coming to terms with its new position as national capital while forcing the federal government to respect and fulfil its desires and needs as a small but vital city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These essays constitute a sample of current work by engaged scholars of German history using cities and towns as settings for important historical inquiries. Together, they might indicate where Central European urban history is headed now. On one hand, these articles fit into a long tradition of German urban histories: they use defined urban settings to illustrate larger historical developments; they offer explicit comparisons between urban experiences; and they explicate a changing urban experience across time and space. On the other hand, these essays have clearly moved on from discussing many of the venerable themes that preoccupied urban historians in previous decades, such as population growth, urban administration, quantifying description and the search for local liberalisms. Instead, these essays exhibit new impulses in urban history by highlighting materiality, agency, network linkages and cities as centres of cultural production. Municipal autonomy and city-state tensions within the evolving federal structure of the German lands remain central concerns and stand out as distinctive subjects that connect the newer research presented here with important established work in German urban history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the sensory experience of the audience for urban public rituals in the Reformation period. Based on the microhistorical analysis of a shoemaker's chronicle, it demonstrates how perception was formed by factors such as the social and occupational habituation of the senses, sensory impairment, reading and oral communication, and theological teaching. The intersections of these influences in the embodied experience of the individual, the argument runs, needs to be taken into account in an interpretation of ritual change and, more generally, of the premodern urban public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities and war have a long shared history, but the historical constructs to explain the place of the city in modern warfare during the Revolutionary era and nineteenth century are underdeveloped. I define this experience as 'modern military urbanism' and explore the examples of Hamburg and Leipzig during the Napoleonic Wars and in their immediate aftermath to highlight the responses of urban society to wartime mobilization, destruction and civilian displacement. To reveal these practices, I analyse how volunteer militias and civic associations operated and intersected with central urban institutions, churches, public spaces and the press and print media in times of war and civilian distress. Associational life, churches and the press formed a trinity that embodies key elements of modern urban militarism in co-operating to support local and state armies, patriotic wartime mobilization, humanitarian relief and postwar commemorative practices and rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of his continuing political and cultural currency in Germany and beyond, this article endeavours to understand the widespread and singular interest in sexologist and sex reformer Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) as a historical figure. To this end, it analyses four book-length biographies, two in English and two in German, written between the mid-1980s and the early 2010s. By highlighting repeated themes, claims and assertions, the article demonstrates how the dominant representation of Magnus Hirschfeld that emerges across all of his biographies is that of a tireless humanitarian doctor who dedicated his life to fulfilling the spirit of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee's motto: Per scientiam ad justitiam, 'Through Science to Justice'. Based on this framing, his biographers mobilize Hirschfeld's legacy to defend the Enlightenment tradition and champion a liberal approach to sexual politics. This article considers the consequences of these representational choices by examining how biographers suppress or mitigate the more troubling aspects of Hirschfeld's life in order to sustain a narrative that can bear the weight of these political investments. By way of conclusion, it explores the narrative and analytical possibilities afforded by a more ambivalent reading of Hirschfeld's life and legacy, and maintains that a less certain and less heroic view of Hirschfeld may ultimately provide more insight into both the past and the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radioactive therapies from spa water to chocolate won wide popularity in early twentieth-century Europe, connecting interest in modern science, concern about health and desire for a life that was both 'natural' and rational. Europeans learned to consider radioactivity a modern health aid from a variety of public experts, from scientists and physicians to government officials, advertisers and spas. German radium spas engaged in public debates about the therapeutic versus dangerous properties of radioactivity, helping to sell the German and European publics on the idea that radioactivity promised health and vitality. They connected scientific discovery, new ideas about healing and an emerging social-welfare state to modern consumer culture, offering a vivid illustration of how public understandings of science and health were constructed in a rapidly modernizing European society. Radium spas were nimble modern actors--adjusting to changing scientific information, state regulation, commercial markets, mass media and popular opinion. When radioactivity was hailed as a cure-all in the 1910s and 1920s, they celebrated 'radium water' as the modern answer to public and individual health. But in the 1930s, when evidence emerged that radioactivity might be dangerous, and competition for consumers was fierce, they emphasized their medical expertise in providing safe 'radium cures'. As a case study, German radium spas provide insight into the evolution of popular perceptions about what radioactivity was and why it mattered, as well as into how diverse actors shape modern popular understandings of health more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]