German History

The vast majority of Holocaust victims and survivors were Ashkenazim. Their main language was Yiddish. Yiddish is very close to German, the main difference being that the former is written in Hebrew letters, while the latter in Latin ones. Postwar Europe' s moral foundation is Holocaust remembrance. But this remembrance to be effective, it must be active in the absence of Holocaust survivors. A way to ensure that could be the novel school and university subject of Yiddish for reading purposes. As a result, researchers and interested Europeans would start reading documents and books in Yiddish again. Germany' s premiere cultural organization, Goethe-Institut, is uniquely well-placed and morally obligated to facilitate the relaunch, popularization and cultivation of the skill to read Yiddish-language sources and publications for both the sake of research and for pleasure.

While the book mainly deals with questions of German Jews, who escaped to Japan and Korea during the 1930s and early 40s, my contribution covers the history of the German East Asiatic Society (OAG) from its foundation in 1873 to 1945, focusing mostly on the 1930s and early 40s.

Clausewitz è celeberrimo per la sua opera Vom Kriege (Della Guerra), unanimemente considerato uno dei classici imprescindibili dell'arte militare, ma pochi sanno che il Vom Kriege raccoglie solo i primi tre volumi dei lavori incompiuti del generale prussiano (Hinterlassene Werke über Krieg und Kriegführung), gli altri, secondo il principio, caro all'autore, che gli historische Beispiele machen Alles klar (gli esempi storici rendono tutto chiaro), essendone il complemento ed il sussidio. Infatti, nei volumi successivi, il riferimento corre continuamente alle enunciazioni dei primi tre volumi, per dimostrarne la validità e discutere i rischi della mancata applicazione dei princìpi, talvolta per emendarli, migliorarli ed adattarli alle situazioni specifiche, senza in ogni caso mai discostarsene. Questa opera, il primo dei restanti volumi, il quarto in generale, dunque non è solo il resoconto talvolta impietoso degli accadimenti militari e politici, ma una dettagliata ed acuta analisi dei processi decisionali e delle opzioni tattiche, degli errori e delle scelte corrette di entrambi i contendenti della prima Campagna d'Italia (1796-97). È anche un riconoscimento, spesso intriso di spunti polemici e malcelato odio, delle capacità del giovane generale Bonaparte, che al suo primo comando indipendente, trasformò un esercito di straccioni, indisciplinati e demotivati, privi di vestiario, vettovaglie e armamento, in un formidabile strumento di guerra, che non solo inflisse continue e ripetute sconfitte a due eserciti alleati, ma impose trattati di pace - qui riprodotti - con pesanti condizioni in termini economici, politici e territoriali a tutti gli altri stati italiani, cancellandone persino uno dalla mappa geografica. Nomi come Montenotte, Millesimo, Dego, Lodi, Lonato, Castiglione, Rovereto, Bassano, La Favorita, San Giorgio, Arcole, Rivoli, Mantova, non furono altro che le principali tappe di una delle campagne più decisive della storia e sancirono il mito di Napoleone come generale abilissimo, fortunato ed invincibile e l'inizio della sua parabola stupefacente, mossa da un'ambizione senza più limiti che portò guerra e distruzione, ma anche il fuoco inestinguibile dei valori rivoluzionari, in tutta l'Europa nel corso dei successivi vent'anni. In appendice, ad opera del curatore, una esaustiva cronologia, dieci ordini di battaglia, un dizionario dei principali protagonisti della campagna, una raccolta di trattati e armistizi, una corposa bibliografia.

Im Gegensatz zu den Aktivitäten der Einsatzgruppen, die nach dem
Angriff auf die Sowjetunion am 22. Juni 1941 in Hunderten von Orten
Massenerschießungen von Juden durchgeführt haben, ist die Geschichte
der bereits im September 1939, nach dem Angriff auf Polen, operierenden Einsatzgruppen weniger bekannt. Die Herausgeber dieses Bandes versuchen, das zu ändern, indem sie sämtliche Berichte dieser Einheiten in einem durchaus gut edierten Band präsentieren. Damit zeigen sie unter anderem, dass beim Angriff auf Polen die Juden nicht das einzige Hauptziel des Terrors der Deutschen waren, sondern in etwa demselben Maße wie diese Polen und andere nichtdeutsche Zivilisten verfolgt und ermordet wurden. Die Angreifer haben sich besonders vor den polnischen Nationalisten und der katholischen Kirche gefürchtet.
Durch das Studium dieser Dokumente wird auch deutlich, dass der Judenmord erst nach einigen Monaten zur Hauptaufgabe der Besatzungspolitik geworden ist, wobei man den Einfluss des rassistischen Antisemitismus auf die Wahrnehmung des Kriegsgeschehens und das Handeln der Einheiten bereits im Herbst 1939 nicht unterschätzen sollte. Die Zahl der nach dem Angriff auf Polen ermordeten Zivilisten war zwar deutlich geringer als jener, die knapp zwei Jahre später von den in den sowjetischen Gebieten operierenden Einsatzgruppen erschossen wurden, sie war jedoch trotzdem erschreckend hoch. Die Herausgeber gehen davon aus, dass bis Frühjahr 1940 über 60.000 Personen im besetzen Polen ermordet wurden und dass die in sieben Einsatzgruppen hinter der Wehrmacht wirkenden etwa 2.700 Funktionäre an diesem Mord maßgeblich beteiligt waren.

Dorothee Wein, Volker Mall und Harald Roth dokumentieren 62 Jahre nach Ende der NS-Barbarei erstmals den Bau des Militärflughafens bei Hailfingen/Tailfingen, auf dessen Gelände später das Außenlager des KZ Natzweiler im Elsass errichtet wurde. Doch sie zeigen noch mehr. Sie folgen den Spuren von 1945 bis heute und beschreiben den Umgang der Justiz und der Bevölkerung mit den Verbrechen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Bau des Flugplatzes und im KZ-Hailfingen/Tailfingen passierten.

The significance of the German philosopher and social thinker, Georg Simmel (1858–1918), is only now being recognised by intellectual historians. Through penetrating readings of Simmel's thought, taken as a series of reflections on the essence of modernity and modern civilisation, Efraim Podoksik places his ideas within the context of intellectual life in Germany, and especially Berlin, under the Kaiserreich. Modernity, characterised by the growing differentiation and fragmentation of culture and society, was a fundamental issue during Simmel's life, underpinning central intellectual debates in Imperial Germany. Simmel's thought is depicted here as an attempt at transforming the complexity of these debates into a coherent worldview that can serve as an effective guide to understanding their main parameters. Paying particular attention to the genealogy and usage of the concepts of Bildung, culture and civilisation in Germany, this study offers contextual analyses of Simmel's philosophies of culture, society, art, religion and the feminine, as well as his interpretations of Dante, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Goethe and Rembrandt.

Danish-German Summer University "101 Years of German-Danish
Friendship? (Staging of) Remembrance in a Border Region" a cooperation between the University of Southern Denmark, the Europauniversität Flensburg, Christian-Albrechts Universität Kiel, University Marburg, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Danish Central Library in Flensburg and the German Minority in North Slesvig.

This piece consists of two parts and deals with three German East Asia experts that cooperated more or less with the National-Socialist regime during the 1930s: Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Hack, Prof. Dr. Karl Haushofer and Dr. Hermann von Raumer. Here, your find part one.

Researchers have long questioned how debunked myths such as the blood libel – the notion that Jews used Christian blood in their ceremonies – were able to persist for so long. This essay explains the social function of such myths in one context by presenting a public debate on Judaism carried out in the pages of the two leading Christian periodicals of the early eighteenth century in Germany. One journal put forth the orthodox Lutheran viewpoint, the other that of “Pietist” reformers. Through these journals, a battle took place for control of the Lutheran church, and thus for much of public life in Protestant Germany. Because Pietists believed Jews to hold a special place in God’s plan, they sought to rehabilitate Jews to their Christian readers and to argue for better conditions for Jewish communities. Orthodox Lutheran leaders quickly identified Pietists’ “Jew-friendly” policies as an Achilles’ heel. To attack Pietists, the orthodoxy dredged up and re-publicized centuries-old anti-Judaic propaganda, negative images that the orthodoxy linked to Pietists. Representatives of the Lutheran orthodoxy thus deployed anti-Judaic stereotypes in order to shore up their own church-political hegemony. Through this media manipulation, the Lutheran state church was able to seed fear among Christian readers and to argue that Pietist reformers and Jews were pollutants that needed to be cleansed from church and society.

The purpose of this essay is to reconstruct the comics controversy in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, paying special attention to the debate over effects, which was paramount. A guiding principle of this investigation is to relate the arguments of the comics debate to a broader political, social, and cultural context. The main source of information are selected articles published in the German press at that time.

17th century is the critical period for Ottoman Empire when great wars and major territory losses have taken place. My study focuses on the manuscript which is attributed to Tımışvarlı Osman Ağa as a result of his important role in Ottoman History and Literature with regard to his memoir of captivity which reflects its period.
The manuscript which is incomplete thematically and registered with no:220 at Süleymaniye Library, Hacı Ahmet Paşa Collection involves the years between AD 800-1662. The writing mentions Austria and German History until 1500s, and in the following years it mentions Ottoman-Austria relations in addition to German History. In this study the manuscript is transcribed into Latin alphabet, evaluated in terms of its content and source value -both its importance for Turkish History and credibility- and critically examined with its periods’ contemporary chronicles by comparing them.
Although it doesn’t give extensive knowledge, it sheds light on the first period German History and gives information about 17th Century Ottoman-Austria and Ottoman-German relations when major events occurred, which makes it a valued writing.
NOTE: For full access, please visit YÖK National Thesis Center.
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17. yüzyıl, Osmanlı Devleti için büyük savaşların ve önemli toprak kayıplarının vuku bulduğu kritik bir dönemdir. Bu dönemde yaşamış ve bu dönemi yansıtan bir esaretnameye sahip olması bakımından, Osmanlı tarihi ve edebiyatında önemli bir konuma sahip olan Tımışvarlı Osman Ağa’ya atfedilen yazma, araştırmamızın konusunu teşkil etmektedir. Süleymaniye Yazma Eserler Kütüphanesi, Hacı Ahmed Paşa koleksiyonu, nr. 220’de kayıtlı olan ve konu olarak tamamlanmamış eser, miladi 800-1662 yılları arasını kapsar. 1500’lü yıllara kadar Avusturya ve Alman Tarihi, sonraki kısmında ise Alman tarihine ek olarak Avusturya-Osmanlı ilişkilerine değinen eser, transkribe edilerek muhteva ve kaynak değeri yönünden değerlendirilmiş ve de dönemin çağdaş kronikleriyle mukayeseli karşılaştırılması yapılarak eleştirel yönden incelenmiştir.
Geniş bilgilere yer vermese de ilk dönem Almanya tarihini aydınlatması ve önemli gelişmelerin meydana geldiği 17. yüzyıl Osmanlı-Avusturya (Nemçe/Beç) ve Osmanlı-Almanya ilişkileri hakkında bilgi vermesi bakımından kıymetli bir eserdir.
NOT: Tam erişim için lütfen YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezini ziyaret ediniz.

In the first half of 1944, tens of thousand Ukrainians left their country together with the withdrawing German occupiers in order to avoid confrontation with the approaching Red Army and the Soviet authorities. Between the summer of 1941 and their time of departure, all of these Ukrainians had had some kind of experience with the Holocaust, either as observers, as rescuers or as perpetrators. In the second half of the 1940s they were relocated from DP camps to various western countries such as Australia, Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom, while some remained in West Germany and Austria. In their newspapers and numerous memoirs they frequently described and discussed the Second World War, but they either did not mention the Holocaust at all or portrayed it as a crime committed only by the Nazis and a small group of unpatriotic Ukrainians. The participation of the Ukrainian police, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and various types of ordinary local Ukrainians did not appear in these memoirs and historical discourses. On the contrary, some of these actors, in particular the members of the OUN and the partisans of the UPA, were commemorated as freedom fighters and national heroes. Concentrating on western Ukraine, this article explores how, during the Cold War, the Ukrainian Diaspora forgot the annihilation of the Jews, turned Holocaust perpetrators and war criminals into heroes of Ukraine, and argued that survivors from eastern Galicia and Volhynia, who mentioned Ukrainians as perpetrators, were Soviet propagandists and Jewish chauvinists.

Final draft – published as Christine Winter, ‘Lingering Legacies of German Colonialism: the ‘Mixed Race’ Identities in Oceania,  Farida Fozdar & Kirsten McGavin (Eds), Mixed Race Identities in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (Routledge Studies in Anthropology), 2017, pp. 147-161.

So what about identity politics in the Pacific? When I meet Pacific Islanders who cheerfully refer to themselves and others as ‘mixed-bloods’ or ‘halfies’, does this mean that the legacies of colonialism have vanished? That the battles over legitimacy and belonging are over, and these terms, often ascribed to people in the past by others in order to denigrate can now be embraced? What history and what purposes do such identity assertions have? In this article I am examining assertions of identity of German-Pacific Islanders of multiple heritage during and after the end of the German colonial empire in the Pacific in order to see how mixed heritage was expressed in different political situations. My case studies focus on families of Samoan and German descent. This is not to say that these families and individuals did and do not have more diverse heritage, including Tongan, Swedish, Japanese, Filipino, Danish, Fijian or French. I am limiting this chapter, however, to an historical exploration how two specific building blocks of identity were used, German and Samoan.

In particular I build on and explore L.  Wildenthal's analysis of gendered responses to mixedness further, analysing the differences of male and female responses and identity desires for their children.

"The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist" is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe illuminates the life of a mythologized personality and scrutinizes the history of the most violent twentieth-century Ukrainian nationalist movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Elucidating the circumstances in which Bandera and his movement emerged and functioned, Rossolinski-Liebe explains how fascism and racism impacted on Ukrainian revolutionary and genocidal nationalism. The book shows why Bandera and his followers failed—despite their ideological similarity to the Croatian Ustaša and the Slovak Hlinka Party—to establish a collaborationist state under the auspices of Nazi Germany and examines the involvement of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and other atrocities during and after the Second World War. The author brings to light some of the darkest elements of modern Ukrainian history and demonstrates its complexity, paying special attention to the Soviet terror in Ukraine and the entanglement between Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, German, and Soviet history. The monograph also charts the creation and growth of the Bandera cult before the Second World War, its vivid revivals during the Cold War among the Ukrainian diaspora, and in Bandera's native eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Education in Nazi Germany examines how Nazism took shape both in the schools, in particular through curricular and textbook changes, and in the youth groups, in which German boys and girls were socialized in accordance with the regime's ideological aims. Offering a compelling new analysis of Nazi Educational policy, this book brings to the forefront an often-overlooked aspect of the Third Reich

Mary Fulbrook’un Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi’nden 2018 yılında yayımlanan Almanya’nın Kısa Tarihi (A Concise History of Germany) isimli kitabı, Roma İmparatorluğu’nun çöküşünden sonra oluşan siyasi boşluktan Berlin duvarının çöküşüne kadar geçen sürede, Alman prensliklerini, devletlerini, krallıklarını ve imparatorluklarını siyasi, iktisadi ve askeri açıdan inceleyerek okuyucuya sunmaktadır. Alman tarihinin kronolojik olarak anlatılması ve gerçekleşen sosyal, ekonomik, siyasi değişikliklerin nedenleri ve sonuçlarının bir bütünlük içinde gösterilmesi açısından kitap orijinalliğe sahiptir. Kitap Alman Devleti’nin tarihi gelişimi bağlamında bir yandan tarihsel kırılmalara ve savrulmalara ışık tutarak Alman Devleti tarihinin önemli dönüşümlerine ve bu dönüşümlerin nedenleri ve sonuçlarına ışık tutarken bir diğer yandan da Alman tarih yazıcılığının bu tarihi kaleme alırken içine düştüğü problemli yönlere ışık tutması açısından orijinallikler taşımaktadır. Bir başka katkı, Alman tarihi bağlamında aslında Alman Devleti’nin ilişki içinde bulunduğu devlet ve coğrafyaların tarihine de ışık tutması olarak tespit edilebilir. Kitap içerisine yerleştirilen 41 adet görsel ve 13 adet harita sürekli değişen sınırların ve tarihi atmosferin zihinde somutlaştırılmasını kolaylaştırmakta, önsözden sonra oluşturulan dokuz ana başlığın her birisi anlatılan tarih aralığını alt başlıklara ayırmakta ve bu ayrım ile okuyucunun spesifik olayları görmesi sağlanmaktadır.

At the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was publicly excluded from the European ‘civilizing mission’. The victorious Allies stripped Germany of its overseas empire. The German colonies were awarded to other imperial powers as mandates under the League of Nations. This action was justified by citing colonial atrocities, such as the German campaign against the Herero, which were used to label Germans as ‘exceptionally
cruel colonial masters’ and ‘unfit imperialists’. Yet, during the tenure of the League’s mandate system, several former German colonial officials rose to prominence in the League of Nations as ‘imperial experts’.
The involvement of German colonial officials in League agencies and events suggests that, although no longer part of an imperial power and officially ostracized from the ‘work of civilization’, Germans remained
adaptive contributors to international discourses on empire. In order to determine how individual Germans and lobbying interests were able to make use of the spirit of internationalism to minimize their association
with ‘unfit imperialists’ and re-establish themselves as ‘fellow civilizers’, this paper focuses on the interwar careers and interactions of two colonial officials: Dr Ludwig Kastl and Dr Julius Ruppel—former bureaucrats who had served in the African colonies, each of whom became German members on the PMC.

This paper takes a new look at Catholic reactions to the revolutions of 1848 in the German territories, and argues that they were decisive for a radical rethinking of Catholic identity and politics in systematic terms. Set against a growing revival movement, Catholic reactions to the revolutions helped radicalize Catholic self-understanding. Indeed, they helped galvanize Catholics in their resolve that Catholicism offered a distinctly contemporary option for articulating a range of political, social and cultural interests. Intended primarily as a re-conceptualization of our categories for understanding Catholicism in “modern” history, this paper is based primarily on a careful analysis of the first Meeting of Catholic Societies held in Mainz in September/October 1848.

The author Julia Warth was awarded the Gerhard-Ritter-Preis for her biography of Walther von Seydlitz-Kurtzbach. Taken prisoner after surrendering in Stalingrad, the general, descended from a famous military family, came forward as the leader of the "Bund Deutscher Offiziere" and vice-president of the "Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland"  founded in September resp. July 1943 in the POW camp Lunyovo near Moscow. Aside from certain unsubstantiated value judgements concerning Seydlitz´ patriotic motives this detailed biography conveys an objective portrait of the ill-fated Prussian-German officer who fell out with Hitler when attemtping to save his country from total demise.

Dieses Buch berücksichtigt explizit in drei wissenschaftlichen Beiträgen  die Formen der Frömmigkeit in Chemnitz zwischen dem 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, die Geschichte von Kirchen und Kapellen im Raum Chemnitz vor der Reformation und der kirchlichen Organisation der Chemnitzer Region vom Ende des 14. bis in die erste Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts sowie die Geschichte der Chemnitzer Saigerhütte zwischen 1470 und 1560.

[Quellle: https://chemnitz.de/chemnitz/de/aktuell/publikationen/broschueren/spaetmittelalter_fruehe_neuzeit.itl]

De veertien jaren tussen de val van het Keizerrijk en de overname van de macht door Hitler zijn een bewogen tijd van politiek extremisme, economische crisis, een sterke behoefte aan afleiding en vermaak, maar ook van een merkwaardige culturele bloei. We zien een veelheid aan stijlen, maar de stromingen van Expressionisme en Nieuwe Zakelijkheid domineren in de beeldende kunst en in de literatuur. Het openbare leven wordt radicaal gepolitiseerd. Voor het eerst manifesteert zich de commerciële massacultuur in de nieuwe massamedia: geïllustreerde tijdschriften, grammofoonplaten, radio en vooral: de bioscoop. De door heftige conflicten verscheurde maatschappij van het Interbellum lijdt onder de posttraumatische stress van de Eerste Wereldoorlog, terwijl de Tweede oorlog zijn schaduwen al vooruit werpt.
Het is mijn bedoeling een beeld te schetsen van het verhitte klimaat van deze "goldenen zwanziger Jahre" aan de hand van een aantal representatieve literaire werken uit die periode van Heinrich Mann, Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Kurt Tucholsky en Erich Kästner.

Die deutschen Übersetzungen der lateinischen Hedwigslegende lassen sich fast ausnahmslos in den Kontext der Legitimation deutscher und österreichischer Adelshäuser stellen. Der Beitrag zeichnet diese Zusammenhänge nach und konzentriert sich dabei besonders auf die bislang wenig untersuchte Schleusinger Hedwigslegende.

Es war wie das gleichsam letzte Aufflackern des "roten Jahrzehnts" der 1970er Jahre, als in den Jahren 1983 und 1984, vor nun einem Vierteljahrhundert, zwei Aufsatz-Bände des politischen Psychologen und Theoretikers Peter Brückner im Westberliner Wagenbach-Verlag erschienen. Die dort versammelten Aufsätze und Artikel bilden einen nicht unwesentlichen Teil des denkerischen Nachlasses des 1982, kurz vor seinem 60.Geburtstag viel zu früh verstorbenen Vordenker der westdeutschen Neuen Linken.