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Even after one hundred years, the Armenian genocide continues to be a difficult and controversial topic. Turkey’s denial of the genocide has had important repercussions for remembrance and historio...

Ihrig explores the debate concerning the history and identity of the Republic of Moldova that has been ongoing since independence in 1991 and is part of the broader question as to the legitimacy of a Moldovan state separate from Romania. The political split between ‘Romanianists’ and proponents of ‘Moldovanism’ is explored with regard to ramifications in educational policy as well as the role of international organisations such as the Georg Eckert Institute in textbook review. The stalemate between the two political and historiographical camps has not yet been resolved, although Ihrig notes that pragmatism and moderation hold the key for a de-politicisation of the major issues. Whether either group succeeds in securing a mandate from the majority of the population for their model remains unclear.

This article excavates one of the stranger episodes that took place in the transnational microcosm of the German expatriate world in Ankara and Istanbul during the Second World War. ‘Professor’ Herbert Melzig's story, the ‘Melzig affair’, illustrates how this microcosm, with its very different constituent members - Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazism, German pro-Nazi expatriates, and an extensive embassy and Nazi Party network - acted as a conduit in German–Turkish relations, albeit one that produced unexpected results. This ‘Melzig affair’ sheds new light on the German presence in Second World War Turkey as well as the so-called German ‘exile on the Bosporus’ as it has been (re-)constructed and used in recent years; it also contributes to our understanding of Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War, especially regarding Turkey's reluctance to join the war on Hitler's side. At the end of the Melzig affair stood the ‘leaking’ of an internal Ministry of Propaganda memorandum. It prepared t...

The Armenian genocide of 1915–1916 is linked to German history in a variety of ways. It is much more important to the course of German history than often acknowledged and needs to be perceived as an integral part of it. This importance stems not only from the alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire during World War I, but also from how political and public Germany perceived and decided to perceive the whole ‘Armenian question’ — the question as to how accommodate Armenian political aspirations within or outside of the Ottoman Empire — from the time of Imperial Germany up until the Third Reich. The Armenian genocide is important for German history because this was a genocide that was committed right under German noses — with German officers serving in all the key Ottoman armed services and German diplomats recording the genocide as it happened — 25 years before the Holocaust.