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In July 1951, the American Midwest experienced one of its worst floods in its history up to that point, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. While ostensibly a national issue, the natural disaster also drew the attention of hundreds of German citizens who donated to the relief effort. In the letters accompanying their donations, these Germans emphasized that they wanted to submit a token of their gratitude to the American people and begin to pay back a fraction of what they felt they owed for American humanitarian assistance in the immediate postwar era. Though the American government did not solicit these donations, it saw value in help publicising the donations and their letters. Locked in a propaganda battle with the Soviet Union, American authorities promoted these donations not only as evidence of German-American friendship, but also as evidence that their humanitarian policy at the dawn of the Cold War had achieved significant cultural, political, and diplomatic goals throughout Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards the end of the Cold War, the vocabulary of global power, space and economy received a qualitative update. Amongst the terms rapidly gaining prominence since the early 1990s has been the notion of geoeconomics, the coining of which has frequently been attributed to the strategist Edward N. Luttwak. In his interpretation, it signified a transition away from Cold War ideological and military geopolitical competition towards commerce and market‐based geo‐power. Over the past three decades, a 'geoeconomics boom' set in, characterised by think tanks and a varied body of politico‐economic literature making extensive use of the term. Conventionally treated as a neologism, the provenance and earlier iterations of geoeconomics, some dating back more than a century, have been largely ignored by both celebratory and critical accounts. In this paper, we trace and contextualise these earlier instances, leading us to the Geopolitik era in Germany and references to geoeconomics in the United States in the decades after WWII. We thereby offer a critical genealogy of geoeconomics, conceptualised as an object of definitional struggle. Proponents of the term sought to position it variously as a tool of national economic cohesion and competition or as a way of understanding and harnessing shifting global power relations, whilst others sought to subsume geoeconomics to geopolitics. These past struggles track forward into ongoing dialectical tensions between geoeconomics and geopolitics as competing but related geostrategic visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the night of January 17–18, 1955, the rain-swollen Rhine and Neckar rivers crested. At their confluence, inhabitants of the German city of Mannheim scrambled to protect their homes and property. Residents of the small islands on the outskirts of the city faced imminent disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The horror of the military coup in Chile motivated a massive international solidarity network. One of them was composed of self-organized citizens, NGOs, and Chilean exiles in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This movement was a response to affected individuals facing the lack of immediate measures and policies of the FRG's government towards exile and human rights violation victims in Chile. This article offers a cartography that traces key locations of such solidarity network: places where solidarity events took place, where the subjects involved reside, and their transits; with a special but not exclusive focus on the state of Baden-Württemberg, in the federal south. Considering the historical moment when this took place – Cold War scenario: Germany divided between the two ruling blocks – the cartography shows how this movement was a way of subverting that geopolitical order. This work, therefore, is a new contribution to the studies of solidarity and, at the same time, it links those studies with the field of STS, by presenting a cartography as a visual dispositif that documents the imbrications of solidarity, affections, politics, culture, Germans, and Chileans on a given territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), the literary breakthrough of one of the most successful novelists of our time, is a Cold War classic that changed the direction of spy fiction, and has gone far to redefining it. The story is compelling, bleak and without heroes: that causes are betrayed is no surprise, but here institutions betray their own men. Reviewers took the novel to be credible and realistic, qualities assumed even by some recent political and cultural studies of the Cold War; the author had, after all, served the British Foreign Office in Germany, and though he denied it for decades, he was from the first suspected to have been a spy. The novel's authenticity grew with le Carré's denials, reinforced by his published story of how he wrote it: it was an immediate and intensely personal reaction to seeing the Berlin Wall being built, written in a great rush within five or six weeks. The novel itself, however, tells a different story, which no competent intelligence officer could ever have believed. Its chronologies are variously impossible, both internally and in their historical anchorage. It assumes the existence of the Wall from the outset, but parts must have been composed before the Wall was built: as will appear, the story is composite, and it marches to contradictory calendars. The textual archaeology thus indicated is confirmed by some of le Carré's own correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the end of World War II, Germany began a long period of political system reconstruction and cultural adaptation. Meanwhile, popular musicians reshaped the German popular music style based on a new understanding of classical music. The evolution of German popular music, influenced by the American and British music of the military occupation of Germany, prompted German popular musicians to change their content and style. However, during the Cold War, Germany inevitably incorporated political attributes such as national consciousness and war patterns into music. When the “Iron Curtain” of the Cold War divided Germany into East Germany and West Germany, the capitalist cultural model of West Germany created a free creative environment for Western and domestic popular musicians; while East Germany imitated the cultural model of the Soviet government, It began to strictly censor popular music from the West and domestic popular music. In response to the cultural struggle behind the “Iron Curtain”, popular musicians in West and East Germany made efforts in coping with cultural blockades, challenging the dIFferences in social systems, and fighting for freedom by composing political music. In response to the tensions of the Cold War, Many East and West Germans used music to send political, social and cultural messages against the Iron Curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bifurcation of Germany during the Cold War induced the two German states to compete around the world over German cultural sovereignty, as they offered rival conceptions of what it meant to be German. The contest over this matter was fueled not only by the division of Germany but also by the military occupation. With restrictions imposed on both governments in their foreign policy activities during the early Cold War, foreign cultural diplomacy (auswärtige Kulturpolitik), a form of proxy diplomacy developed in the interwar period, became a crucial means of forging ties with countries outside Europe. This article traces how the two German governments sent language teachers, artists, academics, musicians, and exchange students to Asia as cultural ambassadors in a bid to reestablish a German presence. Divided countries along the Bamboo Curtain, especially the People's Republic of China, became the most important battlegrounds in the competition for hegemony in representing Germany in Asia. The need to engage in foreign cultural diplomacy also brought Asian ideological conflicts home to Germany. Exchange visitors and their governments tried to achieve their own interests by steering a middle course between the two German states. Foreign cultural diplomacy thus was an essential—and complicated—part of "soft power" for both German governments in trying to win over foreign audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Bauhaus modernism was generally taboo in the GDR until the 1970s, many former Bauhaus members at the same time remained committed to Bauhaus design practice and principles. Graph Graph Graph Graph The Bauhaus was never just a school, but was also subject to various forms of instrumentalization, politicization, and, at the same time, depoliticization in the process of its reception. Consequently, it is no surprise that an outstanding number of former Bauhaus members, many of them largely forgotten after thirteen years of dictatorship, were represented in the early documentas: seventeen Bauhaus members were to be seen with almost 300 works in the first three exhibitions, and the visual appearance of the catalogues of the first few decades was also very close in style to Bauhaus typography. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Journal of Global Economics / Revista de Economie Mondială is the property of Institute for World Economy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

During the 1970s and 1980s, the pastors of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren regularly received cars as gifts from their partners in the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland. This was a form of aid that Protestants in Czechoslovakia received from their West German partners. However, the transfers had to be approved by representatives of the Secretariat for Church Affairs. Through analyzing the selection of the pastors who received the cars and the process of approving of the foreign donations, we can show how the disciplination by the state authorities was carried out. It can also shed a light on how the pastors themselves were disciplined by their ecclesiastical superiors. The research further shows that the car deliveries during the Cold War were made possible by the long-standing relationship between Protestants from Czech and German countries that goes back well into the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, which examines the fundamental transformation points in German foreign policy from 1871 to the present, deals with the factors that are effective in the political transformation of Europe's most populous, richest and most politically influential country. Most important topics of this study are nation building, basic political goals in the First and Second World Wars, and Germany‟s foreign policy orientations during and after the Cold War, which has an important place in the political and economic history of Europe. This study was written in order to evaluate the consequences of major social changes on foreign policy and to provide an overview of German foreign policy rather than a theoretical analysis in the context of German political history. In addition, the political roles of Germany in international politics before and after the Second World War are analyzed in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tracks the reactions of British and U.S. officials to a wave of anti-rearmament protests in West Germany in the early 1950s. The conversations that these protests encouraged were significant in that they represented the beginning of a gradual change in the reputation of the German people - whereas in 1945 the Germans were widely considered a militaristic and aggressive people, by the end of the Cold War they were seen as largely pacifist. This change speaks to the power of social movements to drive new trends in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration debates have emphasized migrants' (in)ability to integrate into European societies. Accordingly, historians have viewed the mass post-1945 postcolonial and labor migration as a European story, a unidirectional path whose consequences manifested within host country borders. Such has been the portrayal of Turkish migrants, who came to West Germany as guest workers in 1961 and now constitute Germany's largest ethnic minority. This article complicates this narrative with a transnational approach. It argues that Turkish guest worker families were highly mobile border crossers who traveled throughout Western Europe and took annual vacations to their homeland. These seasonal remigrations, undertaken by virtually every family, entailed a treacherous three-day car ride across Central Europe and the Balkans at the height of the cold war. The drive traversed an international highway (Europastraße 5) extending from West Germany to Turkey through neutral Austria, socialist Yugoslavia, and communist Bulgaria. Migrants' unsavory experiences on this highway confirmed their perceptions of East/West divides and demonstrated the Iron Curtain's porosity. Moreover, the cars and "Western" consumer goods they transported reshaped their identities, fueling the development of the derogatory moniker Almancı , a Turkish term connoting emigrants' cultural estrangement and "Germanization." The notion that a migrant could become German demonstrates that those in the homeland could intervene from afar in debates about German identity amid rising xenophobia: although many derided Turks as unable to integrate, they had integrated enough to be considered "Germanized" and to encounter difficulties reintegrating into Turkey. This mundane act of vacation travel carried international, national, and personal implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contributes to the growing debate on parliamentary war powers and shows how parliaments matter in shaping both force deployment and force employment. Through original analysis of the Italian and German decision-making on military interventions after the Cold War, the article illustrates how formal and informal constraints shape the opportunity structures faced by executives that are willing to undertake military interventions. Revisiting, and building on, the great deal of research recently emerged on institutional constraints to the use of force, the article details the types of costs – namely, transaction and audience costs – linked to involvement of legislatives in the decision-making and provides empirical support for theories based on parliamentary war powers, adding new dimensions of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature highlights the importance of financial literacy in affecting household choices. However, much fewer studies focus on understanding the determinants of different levels of financial literacy. Our paper contributes to filling this gap by analyzing a specific determinant, i. e., the educational system, to explain the heterogeneity of financial literacy scores across Germany. The results suggest that the lower financial literacy observed in East Germany can be partially attributed to the different institutional framework experienced during the Cold War, more specifically, to the socialist educational system experienced in East Germany, which affected specific cohorts of individuals. By exploiting the unique set-up of the German reunification, we identify education as a channel through which institutions and financial literacy are related in the German context. In support of this hypothesis, we find that individuals exposed to the Eastern educational system exhibit 12 % 12\hspace{0.1667em}\% to 21 % 21\hspace{0.1667em}\% lower financial literacy scores compared with the households in the control group, not exposed to such system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eugen Kogon (1903–87) was one of the most important German intellectuals of the late 1940s. His writings on the concentration camps and on the nature of fascism were crucial to West Germany's fledgling transition from dictatorship to democracy. Previous scholars of Kogon have focused on his leftist Catholicism, which differentiated him from the mainstream. This article takes a different approach, asking instead how Kogon, a recovering fascist himself, came to have so much in common with his peers in West Germany and in the Cold War West. By 1948, he fluently spoke the new language of Cold War liberalism, pondering how human rights and liberal democracy could be saved from totalitarianism. He did not do so, the article argues, because he had decided to abandon his principles and embrace a militarized anti-Communist cause. Instead, he transitioned to Cold War liberalism because it provided a congenial home for a deeply Catholic thinker, committed to a carceral understanding of Europe's fascist past and a federalist vision for its future. The analysis helps us to see how European Catholics made the Cold War their own – an important phenomenon, given that Christian Democrats held power almost everywhere on the continent that was not controlled by Communists. The analysis reveals a different portrait of Cold War liberalism than we usually see: less a smokescreen for American interests, and more a vessel for emancipatory projects and ideals that was strategically employed by diverse actors across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between German civilian workers and the United States Army in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War. Using archival and published sources, the article offers an entangled history of 'local national' employees and their role in maintaining the American presence in Central Europe. Beginning in the late 1960s, German labour unions began to challenge American labour policy. In doing so, they consistently argued for a more forceful assertion of German sovereignty. This labour relationship was therefore important for both the military history of the Cold War and for the development of German democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows the story of the first African students in the German Democratic Republic, 11 Nigerians who arrived in 1951. Thousands of other African students followed them in the years leading up to the GDR's dissolution in 1990. My work is the first to chronicle the Nigerians' story, and how East Germans received and reacted to these Africans living among them. I focus on what each side hoped to gain from the exchange. East German government officials and university administrators were intent on using the Nigerian students to promote socialism as an alternative in a British colony quickly moving towards independence. Meanwhile, the students wanted scientific educations to help boost their economic standing and class status when they returned to Nigeria. Although Nigeria would never become aligned with the Soviet Bloc after decolonization, in the 1950s East Germans imagined that a socialist future was possible. Drawing on their country's sizable scientific expertise, officials argued that the GDR offered the ideal blend of technological and Marxist knowledge to attract exchange students like the Nigerians into the communist orbit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why to go back to 1985 to discuss present-day key concerns of international relations from the perspective of World War II history during the Cold War? The May 5, 1985 Bitburg cemetery celebrations, when US president altogether with German chancellor (Helmut Kohl) paid tribute to WWII veterans (of both sides of the conflict) was an example of the Ronald Reagan administration's public relations fiasco: the "Great Communicator" failed to refer to WWII history in a manner that would save him from harsh criticism. Importantly, the 1985 debate concerning the Bitburg ceremony and the moral aspects of a homage to German (Axis) WWII soldiers gave an incentive to "Historikerstreit" in Germany, a dispute regarding WWII history in a manner comparable to Holocaust responsibility as a collective burden carried by Germans. The Bitburg cemetery, since the 1930s a monument (Kolmeshöhe Ehrenfriedhof) to WWI German military victims, and then to their younger colleagues during WWII (Wehrmacht and, controversially, Waffen-SS) remained a broadly commented upon focal point of Cold War disputes, allowing such questions that might bring about a possibility of ground-breaking change in present-day political rivalries caused by failed (or successful) Cold War propaganda related to WWII choices. The Bitburg case presents itself as a particularly illustrative one and could also shed more light on the post-Soviet Russian effort to increase its influence by relying on the myths of the "Great Patriotic War". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Security: Theory & Practice / Bezpieczeństwo.Teoria i Praktyka is the property of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University, AFM Publishing Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article compares the legal regimes of land restitution that were enacted in Germany, after World War II and again after the Cold War, with those enacted in Colombia after a decades-long armed conflict, in which many people lost their land. Many parallels can be drawn between these experiences: both countries decided to restitute land in an effective manner but also excluded groups of victims - which was accepted by both countries' constitutional courts. Important differences emerge regarding the function of restitution for the resolution of the conflict and in its implementation in practice. These differences are owed to the different origins and causes of the conflicts, and to different circumstances prevailing at the time of restitution. It can be clearly shown that post-conflict restitution of land is very context-sensitive. Neither in Germany nor in Colombia were the objectives of the restitution regimes, individual justice and further policy aims, fully achieved. Nevertheless, the considerable extent to which justice was indeed attained by restitution should not be talked down or diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Erciyes Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Erciyes Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ankara Review of European Studies (ARES) / Ankara Avrupa Çalışmaları Dergisi (AAÇD) is the property of Ankara University European Union Research Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Drawing on classic articles on the field, approaches of New Area Studies and primary research on journals and study programmes, this article discusses the current state of Southeast Asian studies from a German perspective. Southeast Asian studies has transformed from a field informed by particular political interests into a container category subsuming various different scholarly programmes. Some of these are closely connected to various disciplines, others are trans- or interdisciplinary; some are in close contact with Southeast Asian policy-makers, for instance by educating their future bureaucrats and politicians, and others remain at a distance. Thirty years after the Cold War formally ended, Southeast Asian studies programmes differ vastly in their respective characteristics and outlooks. This article maps some of these and explores their similarities and differences as well as their relationships to the established disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past five years, I have been grappling with the fallout from the predatory wars of annihilation waged by the Germans during the Second World War. The history of the Nazi dictatorship and of German-controlled Europe has been one of my most important research topics for decades. But the true extent of the enormous material destruction and humanitarian devastation caused by these wars has only now become apparent to me. Whoever addresses this issue from a contemporary perspective inevitably also comes across the related issue of reparations and compensation that arose from these wars and that still affects Europe today. At the same time, studying this topic involves entering a risky 'No Go Area' of historical research, because reparations discourse has certainly not been confined to history: the as-of-yet unpaid debts of the Second World War are grouped together like in a concave mirror. The research findings we have presented so far therefore only represent a beginning. In what follows, I will first present the results of my case studies of Poland and Greece, since they cover the historical framework of German occupation policy during World War II and the current conflicts over reparations. This will be followed by reflections on the economic-historical context of the Cold War and the failure of Allied reparations policy. Finally, I will critically engage with the latest arguments against a final settlement of the reparations problem and present in detail the ambivalence at the heart of the German culture of remembrance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For forty years, Germany was cut in two, its internal border a legacy of the Second World War and ground zero of the Cold War. But the border region, shaped for decades by demographic and economic decline, became an ecological refuge for many of Germany's endangered plant and animal species. When the wall fell in 1989, conservationists launched an effort to protect the former borderlands and convert them into an ecological corridor called the Green Belt. This paper explores the novel ecosystems along the Green Belt: one a restoration and rewilding project, the other aimed at maintaining the imprint of the Cold War landscape. It shows how conservation of novel ecosystems in Germany and beyond requires a long-range approach that emphasizes opportunism, multifunctionality, experimentation, a flexible interpretation of historical fidelity, and respect for both emergent ecosystems and the deep layers of human history and memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military training areas (MTAs) host high numbers of endangered habitats and species due to their large area, generally low fertilizer and biocide exposure, and a high dynamic of disturbances caused by military training activities. Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, thousands of former military properties have been closed due to international disarmament agreements. Based on a literature review, we present the importance of decommissioned MTAs in Germany for nature conservation, their number, area, and status, as well as the German approaches and experiences managing these sites. More than 119,000 ha of former military areas of high conservation value were transferred by the Federal Government to German Federal States, the German Federal Environmental Foundation, and other nature conservation organizations as part of the so-called National Nature Heritage (NNH), and an additional 60,000 ha were saved in other ways. It is a big challenge in nature conservation to establish appropriate management systems to maintain the endangered habitats and species on these sites, most of which are contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO). Several projects have been implemented in Germany to develop strategies to deal with UXO contamination. We discuss management options, from prescribed burning on UXO contaminated sites to the establishment of wilderness, in the light of the requirements of the European Union's Natura 2000 network of protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares the history of educational change in West Germany and France in the post-World War II period between 1945 and 1968. It considers how German education embraced the idea of authority and authoritarianism as opposed to more democratic ideals of other Western nations. Topics include the protests of 1968, student-teacher relationships, public debated over the function of secondary education, democracy and education, and the Cold War.

After World War II, the geological community in Germany was severely disrupted. Nevertheless, there were also first attempts to mend severed professional ties by contacting colleagues within Germany and outside. As far as logistically possible under the difficult circumstances of the time, publications and maps, paleontological specimens and geological information were exchanged, e.g., between East-Berlin (Soviet Sector of the divided city) and Hannover (within the British Occupation Area) or Tübingen (within the French Occupation Area), and vice versa. Over the next couple of years, however, matters of logistics did not become easier—to the contrary. Berlin colleagues reported increasing political pressure and many left eastern Germany to seek employment in the west. Those that remained were forced to abandon professional bonds with the western zones. Whereas it seemed comparatively harmless, when one had sent a few fossil corals from Berlin on loan to Tübingen, those that had sent information on petroleum and ore deposits suddenly found themselves charged with espionage and high treason, facing imprisonment and potentially worse. As a consequence, letters crossing the border became less and less frequent and geologists like everybody else settled into two different worlds separated by the 'Iron Curtain'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

More than 30 years after the "Wende" [the "Turn"], a review of the social anthropology and ethnographic museums of the GRD and FRG as parallel, contemporaneous, closely entangled and yet equally "system competing" disciplines and research groups is long overdue. For, after the "post-Wendeera" - as a still rather blurred transition period of relative curiosity about each other and emerging opportunities - the current acute ignorance about the GDR is all too obvious. It has resulted in a new sovereignty of interpretation about the discipline having become commonplace, one which knows very little about the institutions, publications and achievements, and which ignores witnesses from the time. Cold War figures of speech of times about "the east" are reproduced without thought, whereas archival research, knowledge about the GDR and FRG's scientific landscapes, of the science policies and the actors and actresses at institutes and museums, and therewith competences of understanding publications and exhibitions and the remaining academic potentials, would shed new light on social anthropology's theory and research lines. The authors aim - along the counterfactual question of which social anthropologies could have encountered each other in 1989 - to undertake a positioning of the ethnographic institutes and museums in their contemporaneous parallelisms, which acknowledges today's simultaneity of disciplinary and museum competences, and which keeps it visible for future researchers, as well as for projects and debates today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's experience during the invasion of Poland by Germany led by Adolf Hitler which started the World War II in 1939. The author said that during the tragedy in Poland the nation seemed to be a great cemetery where three million Jews with his family were buried. Due to Poland's tragedy, he returned to his native country in Canada which possessed characteristics of decency, dullness, sadness, and depression. This terrible experience lead the author to suggest that if people are aiming to give freedom to their children and free mankind from injustices, they must work together for disarmament to end the cold war.

The article presents a report from a March 9-11, 2016 conference in Bochum, Germany on the history of German foreign economic relations and foreign policy during the Cold War. Topics of presentations delivered include West German economic relations with the People's Republic of China, West German development policy for Egypt in the 1970s, and the history of German-Turkish economic relations since 1948.

The Ministry for All-German Affairs held a special place among the government departments with a right to define public anticommunist counter-intelligence. At the height of the Cold War it concentrated on advancing the activities of private bodies, and as such had a significant influence on their anticommunist thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The division of Germany into two militarized blocs during the Cold War fundamentally shaped the lives of people living in both East and West. Yet, as recent scholarship has increasingly highlighted, there were also numerous areas of contact and interaction, whether in the cultural, political or social sphere. One largely overlooked aspect of these Cold War relations, which this article explores, is the environment. Focusing on the history of the shared German environment from the end of the Second World War through to the early 1970s, the article argues that on a local level, environmental problems helped to ensure the survival of cross-border relations. Despite their repeated efforts, the two states failed to divide the German landscape in half. Rivers, lakes and forests continually crossed the fortified border, while animals and plant life traversed from one side to the other too. In attempting to maintain this shared border landscape, East and West Germans were repeatedly forced into dialogue. Although relations gradually faded as the border regime was strengthened, it proved impossible for either side to escape fully the entangled German environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the continuity of film industry regulations and the types of films produced in Germany from the fascist Nazi dictatorship through post-war West Germany. Topics include the genre of Heimatfilm and the Nazi-era Ufa (Universum Film AG); the reinstallation of traditional elites and the termination of the denazification processes by the Allied Forces after the beginning of the Cold War in 1947; and the work of German directors who worked during the Nazi period and under the Allies, including Eduard von Borsody, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, and Carl Boese.

The article presents information on a conference entitled "Media and the Cold War, 1975-1991, held at Volda University College in Volda, Norway from November 20-21, 2014. Topics discussed at the conference include underground art exhibits, Cold War historiography, and East German television programs. Scholars participating in the conference included Pawel Jaworski, Paul Bjerke, and Laurin Blecha.

“Dear Papa! I have been conscripted into a living grave. . . .” So began a letter in the West Berlin newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat in March 1948. The young man had been sent to work in the Soviet occupation zone's uranium mines, near Aue in the Saxon Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), and had written to his parents in despair. The news article that accompanied the letter explained, “The uranium mines… are not in the Urals, but in the Erzgebirge. But reports from [the Erzgebirge] are as hard to come by as [ones] from the Urals.” Other newspapers in Germany's Western zones of occupation also published reports of “slave conditions,” and “forced labor” in the mines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Law became an important battleground in the Cold War between the two Germanys. In striving for international legitimacy, West Germany clung to ideas of legal continuity to the German Reich while the GDR bolstered the concept of an anti-fascist new beginning as its legal foundation. As national division continued, citizenship law became a tool for both German states in challenging the other Germany's authority over its respective citizenry. By the late 1960s, the GDR devised a citizenship law that effectively held East Germans hostage through the redefinition of citizenship. The GDR-citizenship law, moreover, repatriated former East Germans now living in the Federal Republic. The quest for legal supremacy thus profoundly affected ordinary Germans living east and west of the Iron Curtain. This article argues that the GDR government used citizenship and international law to its advantage in the attempt to pressure West Germany to recognize officially GDR sovereignty between 1967 and 1972. It demonstrates how the GDR forced the Federal Republic into action long before negotiations over Ostpolitik began in 1969. Citizenship law thus became a potent tool in the East German quest for international recognition and provoked intense responses in West German law-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]