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Scholars have long recognised the importance of contexts of reception in shaping the integration of immigrants and refugees in a host society. Studies of refugees, in particular, have examined grou...

John Paul II’s first papal visit to his home country in 1979 is considered a key event that contributed to the decline and fall of communism. Drawing on Polish and international sources, this chapter shows how the Vatican negotiated in advance with the Polish government to determine the pope’s itinerary and aspects of the visit’s media coverage. While the Polish government made numerous concessions in order to garner prestige, it also sought to maintain control of the visit and its interpretation. However, the pope’s appearances at various locations around the country, which were attended by some 10 million people, ultimately engendered a shared identity that acted as a countermodel to socialism. As indicated by internal government surveys, the visit also promoted religiousness in Poland and was a catalyst to the future protest movement.

Until the 1970s, only 1000 Vietnamese lived in West and East Germany, most of them international students. West Germany, in particular, had not yet been confronted with non-European refugees. This changed after 1978 with the influx of around 35,000 “boat people” from Vietnam and other countries in South East Asia, who arrived as part of a contingent quota admission. Their entry led to new strategies for integration, including obligatory language classes and a host of measures resembling those in other countries of refugee resettlement. Yet, the German case differs from other countries because of the simultaneous arrival of non-refugee Vietnamese, who came on temporary labour contracts to socialist East Germany starting in 1980. These two migration streams would converge when Germany reunified in 1990. Drawing on mixed qualitative methods, this paper offers a strategic case for understanding factors that shaped the arrival and resettlement experiences of Vietnamese refugees and contract workers in Germany. By comparing two migration streams from the same country of origin that experienced varied contexts of reception (government, labour market, and ethnic community), we suggest that a context of reception need not be uniformly positive for immigrants and refugees to have an integration experience deemed successful.

In both the US and West-Germany, the history of the 1970s is perceived as a time of economic and cultural crises. More recent publications in both countries concentrate on political protest and reform movements. American studies, however, choose a wider focus, that could be inspiring for future German studies, through amplifying the crisis narrative with the everyday developments of the 1970s, ranging from new forms of consumption to tourism and mass sports. Moreover, successful movies and TV series were analysed to develop fundamental interpretations for the history of societies. Quite often, American publications succeed in connecting classical governmental policy with social history whereas German works tend to centre on either one of these aspects. Quelle: Verlag

The political integration of German expellees from former eastern territories and those annexed during the war seems to have been a success. Many contemporary observers had expected a political radicalization of these 12 million expellees after 1945. It was feared that they would turn to communist or populist right-wing parties. The founding of their own party, the ‘League of Expellees and Disenfranchised’ (Block der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten (BHE)), and its rapid success at many regional elections suggested that their integration would be difficult. But the BHE was voted into the Bundestag only once, in 1953, and rapidly lost importance. It seems therefore that the ruling Christian Democrats successfully managed to integrate the expellees in German politics. The leading figures in the League of Expelled Germans (Bund der vertriebenen Deutschen (BvD)) were almost always Christian Democratic politicians, and the expellee organizations (Vertriebenenverbande) were thought to have close ties to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Der Artikel untersucht Mediennutzung und Medienwirkung im Kaiserreich. Er prüft anhand von Polizeiberichten, die heimlich in Kneipen angefertigt wurden, ob und wie Unter- und Mittelschichten über die Zeitungsmeldungen kommunizierten. Eine Analyse von Gesprächen über ausgewählte Skandale ergänzt und vertieft diesen Fokus, der in Beziehung zu unterschiedlichen Ansätzen der Medienwirkungsforschung gesetzt wird. Als Hauptergebnis lässt sich für die Jahrzehnte um 1900 eine starke Medienwirkung ausmachen. Die Kneipengäste griffen schnell und ausführlich Medienthemen auf und entwickelten daraus politische Gespräche. Alle geprüften Skandalfälle fanden sich in verschiedenen Unterhaltungen wieder. Aus den Spitzelberichten lassen sich erstaunlich detaillierte Kenntnisse bei den Mediennutzern nachweisen, selbst wenn die Ereignisse nicht unmittelbar ihrer Lebenswelt nahe standen. Insbesondere die Arbeiter übernahmen zwar häufig Positionen aus der sozialdemokratischen Presse, zeigten dabei aber zugleich eine eigensinnige Aneignung. Die Zeitungsmeldungen wurden mit persönlichen Erfahrungen verbunden, spielerisch-humorvoll gewendet oder mit emotionalen Affekten übersteigert. The article analyses media use and media effects in the Wilhelmine empire. Based on secret police reports covering conversations in pubs, it tackles the question if and how the working and lower middle classes talked about newspaper stories. An analysis of conversations about selected scandals complements this focus, which is also discussed in relation to various theories of media effects. The study highlights the strong influence of the media in the decades around 1900. People in pubs quickly and extensively picked up topics covered in the press and used them in political conversations. All of the selected scandals were also debated in pubs. Newspaper readers had an astonishingly detailed knowledge even of events unrelated to their everyday life. Workers in particular often adopted the arguments presented in the Social Democratic press. However, they appropriated news quite often in a self-willed and unconventional way. News reports were connected with personal experiences, twisted in a playful and humorous way, or loaded with emotional exaggerations.