bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Reich Vocational Contest and Students of Higher Learning in Nazi Germany
Authors: Kater Michael H.
Published: December 2008

After an agreement between Nazi Labor Front Leader Dr. Robert Ley and Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach on December 8, 1993, providing the necessary organizational background, one of the most curious experiments in National Socialist educational policy was launched. The first Reichsberufswettkampf, or Reich Vocational Contest, brought more than half a million young people3 between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one together and encouraged them to compete against each other in fifteen professional fields, between April 9 and 14 of 1934. At the end of the month, fourteen boys and six girls were summoned to Berlin to be declared “Reich Victors,” in the presence of highest government and party plenipotentiaries.
Habsburg Policy and the Austrian War of 1809
Authors: Vann James Allen
Published: December 2008

In April 1809—less than four years after Austerlitz—Austria declared war on France and entered the field as the champion of a vanquished German Empire. In their analyses of the Habsburg bid to restore the old order in the Germanies, historians have stressed certain internal developments within the Austrian Empire that made war possible: a revitalized army, a strong feeling of German nationalism, an embittered émigré lobby, and a powerful war party. This article explores the importance of the factions within the imperial family in relation to these events and points up an irony in the Austrian decision. For while the emperor Francis viewed the war as a final effort to save the dynasty, Count Philipp Stadion, his chief minister and leader of the war party, capitalized on the divergent points of view within the family to attain his own ends. His principal concern was to restore the old political order, to reverse the terms of the Treaty of Pressburg (1805), and to reconstruct the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. By skillful manipulation of ideology and dynastic ambition, he won most of the imperial princes to his side. They, in turn, persuaded the emperor to commit himself to a foreign policy that jeopardized his monarchy for the sake of a war whose diplomatic goals interested him scarcely at all.
Peasants, Grain Tariffs, and Meat Quotas: Imperial German Protectionism Reexamined
Authors: Hunt James C.
Published: December 2008

The transportation of the nineteenth century; the opening of fertile virgin soil, farmed by extensive methods, in North America, Argentina, and Russia; the expansion of animal husbandry in the Americas and Australia; the development of refrigeration and canning; a chronic worldwide shortage of currency; and such natural catastrophes as the destruction of French vineyards by phylloxera, epidemics of hoof-and-mouth disease, and years of drought followed by years of excessive rain, produced a severe crisis for European farmers in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. European farmers found themselves in a squeeze between the cheap prices of their overseas competitors and their own high production costs, which were caused by intensive or antiquated methods. Two alternative policies confronted European of the high-cost areas.
German Socialsim and the Crisis of 1929–33
Authors: Gates Robert A.
Published: December 2008

This study of the economic proposals of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD,Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) and the German Free Trade Unions (ADGB,Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) during the years 1929–33 is not intended merely to revive a long-forgotten discussion of German economic policy.By exploring the complex interaction during the depression of economic theory, in the form of half-articulated assumptions as well as formal systems, and political ideology and behavior, it attempts to deepen our understanding of the fundamental political conflicts produced by modern economic crises. The Social Democratic Party and the Free Trade Unions had important political roles in the Weimar Republic. Their strong interest after 1929 in reviving the economy and in preventing the rise of a National Socialist regime makes them especially appropriate subjects to explore the relationship between economic theory and politics.
Woodrow Wilson and Germany's Membership in the League of Nations, 1918–19
Authors: Schwabe Klaus
Published: December 2008

On January 15, 1919, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, recently appointed foreign minister of the German Republic, concluded a press conference with the following appeal:

We demand a policy of reconciliation …, a policy which realizes a genuine … League of Nations. But we will be asked whom we are introducing into this League. Then we must be able to say: “We are introducing a united people that wants peace in the world and is willing to enter the lists for every progress of mankind. …”

With these words the German minister gave expression to an ideal that had inspired many left-wing liberals and pacifists in Germany during the war, and that had been taken up by the spokesmen of the newly proclaimed German Republic immediately after the armistice. To them, as well as to Brockdorff, the future League of Nations, in the way it was going to be constituted, was to become the test of the spirit in which the peace would be concluded. The crucial point was whether, and if so on what terms, it would include the new German Republic. If it admitted Germany on equal terms, it would thus demonstrate that it would be a universal organization, open to all democratic nations and in line with the aspirations of the moderate Left of Europe.
Militarism and the Development of Fascist Ideology: The Political Ideas of Colonel Max Bauer, 1916–18
Authors: Kitchen Martin
Published: December 2008

Of all the officers in the German High Command (OHL) during the First World War none played a more active political role than Colonel Max Bauer. Colonel Bauer's papers, which are preserved in the federal archives in Koblenz, contain numerous memoranda on a wide range of topics, which make it possible to present a coherent picture of his views. This paper will analyze Bauer's political thinking during the First World War, but it will not deal with the more complex questions of his political role and influence.
The Social Place of a German Renaissance Artist: Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545) at Strasbourg
Authors: Brady Thomas A.
Published: December 2008

In Jakob Burckhardt's classic vision of the emergence of a new, individualistic consciousness in Renaissance Italy, the artist took his place behind the tyrant as one of the early escapees from the crumbling prisons of medieval corporate institutions. Although the picture of his progress from craftsman to free professional is more nuanced and qualified in the recent literature, the Italian artist continues to enjoy his reputation as one of the few permanent beneficiaries of the Renaissance. As the Wittkowers have written: “But the new day came when artists began to revolt against the hierarchical order of which they were an integral part—a day when they regarded the organization meant to protect their interests as prison rather than shelter.”1At Florence, where artists first achieved a new self-consciousness as theorists and men of letters, private patronage supplied the wealth for a new level of status, higher than that of the craftsman, and weakened the ties of guild life. Not that Florentine artists of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries invariably became either successful businessmen or bohemians—though both types could be found there and elsewhere in Italy—nor did they revolt against corporate institutions altogether. But their new organization, the Accademia del Disegno, resembled the old guild structure only superficially and was, as its name suggests, a professional association uniting the artistic crafts rather than a type of guild.2If the sixteenth century Italian artist lacked the social prestige of the lawyer, the notary, or the physician, neither was he any longer lumped together with the cobbler, the stonemason, or the apothecary.
Hermann Neubacher and the Austrian Anschluss Movement, 1918–40
Authors: Ritter Harry R.
Published: December 2008

The Anschluss problem was one of the most vexing legacies of nineteenth-century nationalism and the peace settlement of 1919. Seen in broad perspective, the Anschluss movement belongs to the final chapter in the history of the idea of Grossdeutschland, a dream born in 1848 and shared after 1867 by German-Austrians of the most varied cultural backgrounds and political opinions. Support for German union intensified following the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, but was frustrated by the restrictions placed upon union by the treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain. After 1919 sympathy for Anschluss transcended party lines in the infant Austrian republic, and grew more rapidly than within Germany itself. For many members of the “front generation,” young men who had served in the Habsburg army and who felt the humiliation of defeat with special intensity, the cause of Anschluss became a life-shaping force. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the career of Hermann Neubacher
Feminism and Female Emancipation in Germany 1870–1945: Sources, Methods, and Problems of Research
Authors: Evans Richard J.
Published: December 2008

Until very recently, almost no serious research into the history of feminism and female emancipation in modern Germany has been published. This neglect is indeed far deeper than that from which women's history in Britain, France, or the United States has suffered. In some measure, it is connected with the reasons for the general neglect of social history in modern Germany—the concern of German historians with questions of political power, foreign policy, and intellectual development, the perversion of historical studies in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, and the dominance in West German historiography of a close professional elite whose intellectual roots went back to the period before 1933. This situation is now changing, and there is growing interest in both West and East Germany in women's role in the German past. Yet, so far at any rate, this interest has not inspired in Germany any major work of research or synthesis. Even more surprising is the fact that the numerous recent American discussions of women and modernization in Europe almost entirely fail to discuss Germany, confining themselves instead to taking examples from Britain and France. In view of the centrality of the German model to more general discussions such as that in Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, it seems astonishing that so little has been done to investigate the German dimension of women's history.
The Politics of Working—Class Women in the Weimar Republic
Authors: Peterson Brian
Published: December 2008

Working—Class women in the Weimar Republic faced a complex and disorienting political situation. The revolutionary government granted women the right to vote in November 1918, but then ousted many women from their wartime jobs with the assistance of the trade unions and factory councils. The growing radicalism of working women during the latter phases of the First World War, marked especially by heavy female participation in the general strike of January 1918 in the munitions industry, was checked by the expulsion of women from exactly those sectors of employment which were most conducive to radicalism, the large plants in the metal industry. In other sectors, however, there was a large expansion of union membership among women during there volutionary period from November 1918 until May 1919, and many women in light industry and rural areas simultaneously joined unions and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Urban women working in large plants who might have supported the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) or the Communist Party (KPD) were fired to make room for returning war veterans, and this led to an eclipse of female radicalism from 1919 until 1923. The inflation of 1923 again activated many women who were attracted to the Communist Party by its neighborhood price control committees, and women took an active part in pressuring food shops to keep prices down and joined in plundering shops or stealing from the fields of landlords and peasants when hunger left them no alternative. The economic chaos of 1923 pushed even women in light industry to the left, and textile workers in Berlin, Saxony, and Thuringia gave the Communists a majority in union elections.
The Common Penny (1495–99) as a Source of German Social and Demographic History
Authors: Rowan Steven W.
Published: December 2008

The returns of a tax called the common penny (gemeiner Pfennig) survive in considerable number, and when they are fully exploited they will help to make pre-Reformation Germany much more intimately known than ever before. Registers of this levy are likely to turn up in archives where they might not be expected. It is important, as a result, to know how to recognize and use these materials, most of which still remain to be identified. I will briefly review the common penny and its collection, and then I will demonstrate its potential as a resource for the study of social and demographic history.
Courting the Catholic Vote: The Center Party in Baden, 1903–13
Authors: Zangerl Carl H. E.
Published: December 2008

Surveying the German political situation in the spring of 1913, the chairman of the National Liberal Party in Baden, Edmund Rebmann, could only see “black,” the adjective commonly used to describe the Catholic Center Party. The Center was systematically tightening its grip on the states of south Germany: Bavaria had already fallen under its domination; Württemberg and Alsace-Lorraine were wavering; even Baden, the last stronghold of liberalism south of the Main, was threatened. Rebmann was deeply concerned. “A united south Germany with purely black governments,” he warned a meeting of National Liberal leaders in Karlsruhe, Baden's capital, “would be an enormous prize for the Center” and might ultimately undermine the unity of the German empire. His assessment was shared by other political observers who had witnessed at first hand the way in which the Center Party had insinuated itself into a virtually impregnable position in German politics. While there is no evidence of a conspiracy to break up the empire, the Center, with its solid block of votes in the Reichstag, its growing representation in the Landtage of south Germany, and its famous tactical flexibility, was able to exert considerable influence over government policy both nationally and regionally in the decade before World War I. The party once designated by Bismarck as an enemy of the Reich had become a conservative friend of the status quo.
The Potempa Murder
Authors: Bessel Richard
Published: December 2008

I recall a remarkable statement made by Hitler to some visitors, of whom I was one, at Obersalzburg in 1932. The death sentence had just been pronounced on the murderers at Potempa, and the unforgotten declaration of solidarity with the murderers made by the leader of the Party had just become publicly known. A nation—so ran the declaration—may overlook and forget anything in so disturbed a time as the present, if it happens in an open conflict between holders of opposed views. If the Storm Troopers were given a free hand, if it came to street fighting and twenty to thirty thousand Germans lost their lives, the nation would be able to recover from that. The wound would heal. It would be like fighting in the field. But a miscarriage of justice, a death sentence pronounced after cool deliberation, and pronounced and carried out against the people's unerring sense of justice, an execution of men who had acted in national passion, like those who had been sentenced at Potempa as common murderers —that would never be forgotten. —Hermann Rauschning

From my point of view it is certain that the whole affair [Potempa] must be regarded less as a political but much more as a criminal one, even taking as a basis the yardstick that any fighter for the movement takes in view of the events of that time. —TheKreisleiterof the NSDAP in Rosenberg, Upper Silesia
The Imperial Knights in Post-Westphalian Mainz: A Case Study of Corporatism in the Old Reich
Authors: Glas-Hochstettler Thomas J.
Published: December 2008

Recent German scholarship on the old Reich underscores the strength of the corporate loyalties at work within the ranks of the imperial knights. The carefully drawn analyses of Gerhard Pfeiffer and Dieter Hellstern, to name but two examples, point up the success which attended these sovereign aristocratic families as they worked aggressively through a well-organized system of circles (Kreise) to combat the persistent threat of encroachment by their more powerful neighbors. This emphasis on the success of the knights is squarely on target. The imperial barons do survive, their rights more or less intact, right down to the dissolution of the empire. This essay seeks to draw attention to yet another dimension of this success, to document some of the tensions arising within the corps of knights and to demonstrate the knights' determination to contain these pressures and to prevent them from shattering their corporate unity. In the case of theReichsritterschaft, not only did corporatism provide the occasion for rivalry among various groups within the corps. It also defined the outer limits to which internal rivalries could safely be pursued.
Weimar Republic and Nazi Era in East German Perspective
Authors: Dorpalen Andreas
Published: December 2008

Communist countries are notably history-minded. Since they see mankind as advancing toward socialism and communism as part of a law-determined historical process, they base their legitimacy in large part on historical antecedents. East Germany, being faced with the opposing claims of West Germany, has been particularly concerned with establishing its historical legitimacy. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) traces its roots back into a distant past, along a road on which medieval peasant risings, socioreligious upheavals, Reformation and Peasants' War, the War of Liberation against Napoleon I, and the revolutions of 1848 and 1918 stand as significant milestones. Perhaps no Communist leadership ever did its homework in history more thoroughly prior to its assumption of power than did the East German leaders. From the mid-1930s on, in their Moscow exile, they devoted considerable attention to the exploration of historical questions from the Marxist perspective; later, Marxist historians and Communist party officials began drawing up plans for historical study programs, textbooks, and monographs in preparation for the day when they would be able to take over power in Germany. They knew it would be important to prepare the way “historically,” too, for the transformation of Germany from a capitalist into a socialist society.
The Myths of Reparations
Authors: Marks Sally
Published: December 2008

Reparations after World War I can be divided into two categories: non-German reparations, which remain largelyterra incognitato the historian, and German reparations, an excruciatingly tangled thicket into which only a few intrepid explorers have ventured. Understandably, most students of twentieth-century history have preferred to sidestep the perils of travel on territory of extreme financial complexity and, as a consequence, a number of misconceptions about the history of German reparations remain in circulation. This brief summary is not addressed to those few brave trailblazers, whose work it indeed salutes, but rather to those many who have assiduously avoided the subject and to the myths about reparations which still adorn studies of the Weimar Republic and interwar history.
The National Socialist Schülerbund and the Hitler Youth, 1929–1933
Authors: Horn Daniel
Published: December 2008

Among the organizations of the National Socialist Party the Hitler Youth has long been regarded as unique because of its large working-class membership, estimated as high as seventy percent, its egalitarianism, and its espousal of social revolutionary doctrines. The NSDAP, we know, was overwhelmingly a lower Mittelstand entity, being composed principally of small shopkeepers, craftsmen, peasants, lower civil servants, and white-collar workers. With the onset of the depression there occurred a fairly large influx of new members from the upper Mittelstand, consisting of independent businessmen and executives, middle and higher ranking civil servants, and members of the academically trained free professions. The arrival of these groups gave the party a somewhat more conservative but also considerably more respectable complexion and contributed much to bring Hitler to power.
Roman Catholicism and the Prussian State in the Early 1850s
Authors: Hyde Simon
Published: December 2008

The relationship between the Roman Catholic church and the state in nineteenth-century German history appears to have been plagued by discord and mistrust. From the secularization of church lands and the dissolution of sovereign ecclesiastical territories at the beginning of the century to theKulturkampfof the 1870s, church and state found themselves repeatedly at loggerheads. One thinks of the negotiations between Prussia and Rome on a concordat after 1815, the Cologne mixed marriage controversy of 1837, the Frankfurt Parliament's debates on Article III of the Reich Constitution in 1848, and the hostility aroused by the Raumer decrees of 1852. In a recent article on the Catholic church in Westphalia during the 1850s and his book on popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany, Jonathan Sperber has challenged the validity of this picture of conflict between church and state.
The Business Elites of Hamburg and Berlin
Authors: Augustine Dolores L.
Published: December 2008

In many respects, Hamburg and Berlin represent two societal models at work in Wilhelmian Germany. Hamburg and the other Hanseatic cities, Lübeck and Bremen, have traditionally been thought to represent bourgeois society as it might have been in Germany as a whole: self-assured, liberal, and antiaristocratic. Historians are generally in agreement with Richard J. Evans in his assertion that “neither the economic activity nor the social world nor finally the political beliefs and actions of the Hamburg merchants corresponded to anything that has ever been defined, however remotely, as ‘feudal.’” Berlin, on the other hand, was dominated by the imperial court and the aristocracy, which, it is said, seduced and fatally weakened not only the business elite of the capital, but in fact the most influential segment of the German bourgeoisie as a whole.
“Modifying the Traditional for the Good of the Whole”: Commentary on State-Building and Bureaucracy in Nassau, Baden, and Saxony in the Early Nineteenth Century
Authors: Gray Marion W.
Published: December 2008

The three articles of this symposium contribute to a vital debate about the nature of modern German politics. The works by Barbara Anderson, Loyd Lee, and Lawrence Flockerzie discuss the political culture upon which the post-Napoleonic reconstruction of Germany rested. This political culture transcended the conventional concepts “liberal” and “conservative.” It was based on bourgeois ideals.
Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History
Authors: Friedrichs Christopher R.
Published: December 2008

Something important happened in the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main between 1612 and 1616. Nobody doubts that. The Fettmilch Uprising, as it is generally known, involved a complex and turbulent series of events which culminated in the dramatic execution of the ringleader, Vincenz Fettmilch, and six of his comrades. But why exactly were they executed—and what was the uprising all about? This depends on what you read. It is a commonplace, of course, that historical events are subject to different interpretations, but here a much deeper problem of historical perception seems to be at stake. For we come across descriptions of the uprising so different in substance as to make one question whether they even refer to the same event. And the differences between these accounts are generally related to one of the most sensitive and troubling aspects of German history: the status and treatment of the Jews. In fact the Fettmilch Uprising illustrates with disturbing clarity the difficulties that both Germans and Jews have long experienced—and continue to experience—in attempting to understand and give meaning to some important aspects of their common past.
Reparations Reconsidered: A Reminder
Authors: Marks Sally
Published: December 2008

At a session of the December 1968 annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Professor Gerhard Weinberg Suggested during the discussion that the entire history of German reparations needs to be restudied. He further remarked that the key question is not how much but, rather, who paid. Professor Weinberg is of course right on both counts but perhaps a brief second look should also be given to the question of how much. Both the world in general and the historians in particular have tended to be mesmerized by the figure of 132 billion marks. The assumption has been that this sum, by definition outrageous, was brutally imposed at gunpoint upon a prostrate Germany by greedy and vengeful victors. The fact that the 1921 Schedule of Payments soon collapsed and was revised downward by the Dawes Plan is often presented as proof of the unreasonableness of die Allied powers and of their Schedule of Payments. It is not surprising diat world opinion has never penetrated the arcane mysteries of Reparations Commission prose, particularly since die public was meant to be fooled, but there is no excuse for the historians. The relevant documents, memoirs, and monographic studies have been available for thirty and forty years. A close examination of them clearly indicates that Germany was never in fact asked to pay anydiing remotely resembling 132 billion marks and that, in actuality, the London Schedule of Payments of May 1921 constituted a tremendous German victory.
The Disgrace and Fall of Carl Peters: Morality, Politics, and Staatsräson in the Time of Wilhelm II
Authors: Reuss Martin
Published: December 2008

As the founder of German East Africa, Carl Peters exercised a continuing hold on the German imagination in the 1890s despite the growth of a general “colonial-weariness” (Kolonialmüdigkeit) in the population. Among a group of colonial adventurers which had failed to produce any man of truly heroic proportions, he still seemed to many a man of unusual mettle, and the entire colonial effort was closely associated with his name. Knowing this, the Colonial Division for four years kept hidden from the public the story of Peters' misbehavior on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in 1891 and 1892. The Division did not simply refuse to pursue the case expeditiously but refused to admit the facts at all. It was a dangerous game, but one which the government felt it had to play in order to preserve the integrity of the colonial movement. The unfortunate result was that when the story did break in 1896 as a consequence of Social Democratic revelations, the Colonial Division found itself as much on the defense as Peters himself. Not only had a person of Peters's stature violated basic human rights, but the government had put itself in the position of implicitly condoning the brutal suppression of a colonial people. The “civilizing mission,” no one could deny, had been misused for private gain and pleasure, and the Social Democratic attacks on colonialism gained a new moral credibility which could be used to strengthen the party's popularity, much to the chagrin of government officials.
Dimensions of Social Conflict in the Great War: The View From the German Countryside
Authors: Moeller Robert G.
Published: December 2008

Since the early 1960s, social and economic historians of modern Germany have increasingly turned their attention to the study of the First World War and the postwar revolution. Yet of all the ink that has flowed extremely little has trickled down to the peasantry. Excellent monographs examine the wartime experience of several cities. Historians looking for the origins of proletarian radicalism in the revolution of 1918–19 have carefully scrutinized workers of all sorts, and those in pursuit of the birth or perhaps adolescent crisis of “Organized Capitalism” have studied industrialists and the changing role of the state. But no one has looked very closely at the country cousin. When historians have turned to the agricultural sector, they have with few exceptions focused on estate owners and their workers east of the Elbe.
Industrialists, Bankers, and the Problem of Unemployment in the Weimar Republic
Authors: Feldman Gerald D.
Published: December 2008

During the past decade and a half there has been considerable interest shown by economic and social historians in the problems of unemployment in the Weimar Republic, although we still await a work with the comprehensiveness and mastery of W. R. Garside'sBritish Unemployment 1919–1939. Much of the literature on Germany has been devoted to the controversy over government studies of unemployment insurance and business and trade union attitudes toward work creation schemes. Social historians have engaged in a good deal of history from below and history of everyday life dealing with the unemployed themselves and have demonstrated, among other things, the devastating consequences of long-term unemployment and the welfare system on labor solidarity. Such historians are understandably more inclined to work on, and sympathize with, those who are fired rather than with those who do the firing, and are unlikely to lose much sleep about the effects of bad business conditions on capitalist behavior and solidarity. Nevertheless, I would argue that the everyday problems and decisions of Germany's bankers and industrialists have suffered from undeserved neglect.
Multiple Restorations: German Political Traditions and the Interpretation of Nazism, 1945–1946
Authors: Herf Jeffrey
Published: December 2008

Inthe longer continuity of German history, the year 1945 will always, in part, represent the “Stunde Null” (zero hour), of catastrophic military defeat and complete moral disgrace and bankruptcy following Nazism and the Holocaust.1The term “Stunde Null” evokes the need for a new beginning, a moral and political break with disastrous and ultimately criminal national traditions. Yet, because the Third Reich lasted only twelve years, and because there were non- and anti-Nazi traditions and leaders that survived in inner and external emigration, the postwar rejection of Nazism took the form ofmultiple restorationsof these still extant German political traditions. In the first postwar years, the turn away from Nazism in both Germanies, as well as the break with totalitarian dictatorship in general in Western Germany, was taken by political leaders who had been active in Weimar politics and who returned to take center stage in German politics after 1945.2To be sure, they were all deeply affected in their lives and thinking by the Third Reich. But what changes it did bring about in their political views amounted to rearrangements and different emphases of long-held convictions rather than to wholly new beginnings.
Frau im Haus und Girl imSpiegel: Discourse on Women in the Interregnum Period of 1945–1949 and the Question of German Identity
Authors: Höhn Maria
Published: December 2008

Defeatafter the Second World War was complete for Germany, and life for the civilian population was grim. In one of Erich Kästner's poems, read at a 1947 theater production, a war widow laments that “ganz Deutschland ist ein Wartesaal mit Millionen von Frauen.” Indeed, in 1945 there were approximately seven million more women in Germany than men. More than three million German soldiers were killed in the war. Seven million German soldiers were still prisoners of war, leaving their wives and families to fend for themselves in the rubble heaps of the German cities. Adding to the hardship of the rural areas were the twelve million refugees who had been expelled from the territories conquered by the Soviet army and then had streamed into the American and British zones of occupation to resettle. Defeated Germany was split into four zones of occupation ruled by military governments. German men who had been promised the conquest of the world returned from the war and found their treasured patriarchy undermined in the home and in the state.
The Cultural Historian Karl Lamprecht: Practitioner and Progenitor of Art History
Authors: Brush Kathryn
Published: December 2008

KarlLamprecht (1856–1915), the most prominent cultural historian in late-nineteenth-century Germany, has not figured in the annals of art history. Remembered principally as the author of theDeutsche Geschichte(1891–1909) and three-volumeDeutsches Wirtschaftsleben im Mittelalter(1885–86), Lamprecht and his scholarly writings have been studied exclusively by historians. In his own day, however, Lamprecht made considerable forays into art history while constructing the theoretical scaffolding for his cultural historical program. He undertook these art historical studies during the 1880s—remarkably, the very years in which art history was first being shaped as a discipline at German universities. Though Lamprecht scholars have long acknowledged the art historical component in hisKulturgeschichte, they have not considered that Lamprecht's art historical endeavors may have affected the professional development of art history. Art historians, on the other hand, have forgotten Lamprecht's art historical work, associating cultural history in the second half of the nineteenth century almost exclusively with the towering figure of Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97). Yet close study of Lamprecht's art historical publications and of related archival materials suggests that Lamprecht's vision, in the 1880s, of an interactive dynamics between art and culture had a formative impact on art history comparable to that of his older contemporary Burckhardt. In certain respects it may have been more directly relevant for art history's later development.
Rethinking the Categories of the German Revolution of 1848: The Emergence of Popular Conservatism in Bavaria
Authors: Harris James F.
Published: December 2008

The revolution that began in March 1848 continues to fascinate historains, becoming a two-way lens used to examine later as well as earlier German history. It has become central to the “emplotment” of the broader historical narrative of German history. Historians commonly describe the ultimate failure of the revolution as reflecting the unhealthy and anachronistic hold of premodern society over the state in nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany and, therefore, see it as a cornerstone of theSonderwegthesis. Because the revolution is used to explain later acts in the German historical drama, it is necessary to be as clear as possible about what actually happended in 1848 and 1849.
The Future of the German Past Transatlantic Reflections for the 1990s
Authors: Geyer Michael , Jarausch Konrad H.
Published: December 2008

Althoughit seems ages ago, it was only in October 1989 that a group of historians, who teach at North American universities, gathered for a conference on postmodern challenges to German History. The symposium was meant to reflect on the changing tempers of the Germans and their (re)appropriations of the German past and on the temperament of those who make German history their living on this side of the Atlantic. What appeared to be a good idea back then, proves to be an even better one after the events of November 1989. German history is being remade and, with it, interpreters as well as their interpretations on both sides of the Atlantic. The call for the conference was a testament to the fact that tremors of this impending earthquake could be felt for some time, although none of the conference participants had any particular foresight into the unfolding events. Already then it seemed that the past had begun to change much faster than historians could remake the written record. History had come unstuck from all sorts of framing devices that historians had devised in order to nail it down.
Feminist and Gender History Through the Literary Looking Glass: German Historiography in Postmodern Times
Authors: Hull Isabel V.
Published: December 2008

Thepurpose of this essay is not to provide a review of the extensive literature on women's history, gender history, or feminist scholarship, but to reflect on the implications that these three vantage points have for the practice of writing German history. The framework for these reflections is the charge of the conference at which an earlier version of this paper was presented, namely, to consider the interdisciplinary, theoretical, and methodological challenges to historiography raised by “postmodernism.” These challenges are roughly similar for all national historiographies, though Germany's historians, it could be argued, have distinguished themselves by their especially intense focus on state institutions, national events, aggregated socioeconomic structures, large organizations, and the theories and methods appropriate to these concerns. Such foci stand in particular danger of being dissolved by alternate historiographic interests, like feminist, women's, and gender history. When the center no longer holds, that is the “postmodern” condition; their part in dissolving the center is what links feminist, women's, and gender history to “postmodernism.” Rather than rehearsing specific examples of how, say, women's history has challenged the received picture of German history, and thereby implicitly to suggest methods of damage control, this essay instead attempts to discuss some of the broader theoretical and methodological issues that feminist scholarship poses to historians and to do so within the context of the “postmodern.” References to the specific German context are mostly in the footnotes.
Historical Fictions of Autonomy and the Europeanization of National History
Authors: Geyer Michael
Published: December 2008

Masterplotsof national history are now commonly criticized for the univocal and unilinear nature of their narratives.1Such narratives are increasingly seen as only one, and not necessarily even the most important, approach to understanding the modern European nation state. The study of the internal heterogeneity of nations as expression of a conflicting diversity of subnational identities, the emphasis on the peculiar place of nation-ness in the process of modern societalization (Vergesellschaftung), and the political role of integral nationalism as a contentious strategy of homogenizing difference and inequality—all this has supplanted nation- and state-centered approaches which treated the modern (nation-)state as allegorical subject.
Reflections on an Old “New History” Quantitative Social Science History in Postmodern Middle Age
Authors: Johnson Eric A.
Published: December 2008

Not very long ago quantitative historians were on the offensive. Only a decade back the eminent “Annales School” French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie stated in the English language translation of a work he had published a decade earlier in his native language that “tomorrow's historian will have to be able to program a computer in order to survive,” and that “history that is not quantifiable cannot claim to be scientific.” In America, where even more champions of quantitative work resided, several new journals were founded in the 1970s such as the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Historical Methods, and Social Science History which were explicitly devoted to new social scientific approaches to the study of history and above all to quantitative approaches. And even in Germany, which seemed the most immune to the quantitative contagion of all the major western lands, owing perhaps to its long entrenched historicist traditions and to its historians' preoccupations with the tragic happenings of its still recent past, the decade of the seventies saw the development of several new outlets for quantitative and social scientific historical research such as Geschichte und Gesellschaft and Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung. Hence to most professional historians, whether they liked it or not, quantitative history appeared to be the wave of the future, and ignoring the new possibilities offered by the computer appeared to risk being relegated to the proverbial dustbin.
Towards a Social History of Experience: Postmodern Predicaments in Theory and Interdisciplinarity
Authors: Jarausch Konrad H.
Published: December 2008

Duringthe last generation the writing of social history has taken an ironic turn. In the 1960s and much of the 1970s, it literally exploded across the scholarly landscape as the most dynamic and innovative form of historiography. Many competing conceptions including the FrenchAnnalesschool, the American quantitative social science history (QUASSH), the British Marxist history of society, and the emerging GermanGesellschaftsgeschichtecombined to overthrow the Rankean paradigm. These diverse programs, nevertheless, showed broad agreement in exploring the mute masses, expanding the scope of inquiry to new topics such as family and education, seeking a theoretical orientation, experimenting with fresh methods such as quantification or oral history, and supporting some form of progressive politics. This agenda was even reflected in T-shirt slogans such as “history from the bottom up,” showing a fat behind, or “bottoms-up history,” depicting raised beer steins. For many of the participants, there was an exciting sense of fresh departures and of camaraderie in an effort at once intellectually daring and politically committed.
The End of the Freebooter Tradition: The ForgottenFreikorpsMovement of 1944/45
Authors: Biddiscombe Perry
Published: December 2008

Oneof the difficulties in thinking about postwar German history comes in trying to explain the apparent absence of a paramilitary effervescence accompanying the collapse of the Third Reich. Independent military formations—Freikorps—had played a role during the 1806–1813 period, and such units had appeared again during the stormy years from 1918 to 1923, so the seeming absence of such formations in 1944/45 is quite noticeable. Charles Maier called it one of the major surprises of postwar European politics. To some extent, this perception is illusory; in truth, there were a number ofFreikorpslaunched in 1944/45, although they failed to make a military or political impact and were therefore quickly forgotten. Considering the integral connection between previousFreikorpsand the development of modern German nationalism, their relative absence in 1944/45 warrants the historian’s attention.
Foreigners in the Prussian Army, 1713–56: Some Statistical and Interpretive Problems
Authors: Fann Willerd R.
Published: December 2008

Itis often assumed, especially in the Anglo-American literature, that Frederick William I (1713–40), by establishing the “canton System” in 1733, lessened his need to rely on foreign mercenaries for military manpower and moved in the direction of a national, conscript army. As put by Robert Ergang: “The establishment of this so-called ‘canton system’ not only assured… a large permanent supply of recruits; it was also a long step toward making the Prussian army a national one. Recruiting abroad was still continued, but it was only supplementary. Native recruits now formed the backbone of the Prussian army.” This persistent assumption, stated in different ways by different authors, has even penetrated the textbook literature. A closely related assumption holds that Frederick the Great after 1740, by increasing the proportion of foreign manpower to as much as two-thirds of the total, “reversed” the trend toward making the army more national in character. The purpose of this essay will be to demonstrate that both of the above-mentioned assumptions are false; they depend on a misunderstanding of the real trends in Prussian recruiting bolstered, in the latter case, by faulty statistics.
George L. Mosse 1919–1999: An Appreciation
Authors: Rabinbach Anson
Published: December 2008

I first met George Mosse in late August 1967. That summer I carried my worn copy of his book on the roots of Nazi ideology, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (1964), with Hubert Lanzinger's bizarre painting of Hider as a German knight on the cover, to Salzburg where I studied German before going on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. Though I admired the book, it did not prepare me for meeting the man. In 1967 I drove out to the Midwest from New York in my VW bug. To my surprise, as soon as I arrived in Madison, someone pointed him out, sitting on the Terrace of the Wisconsin Memorial Union in his short sleeve shirt, smoking his pipe, and arguing intensely with a group of students who were planning to sit in to block the Dow Chemical Company campus recruiter in the Fall (Dow was chosen because the company was manufacturing napalm).
From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early Modern Bavaria
Authors: Blickle Renate
Published: December 2008

Subsistence and property. ”This paper looks at an enduring subject from a Central European perspective. It is an historiographical variation of an old matter of dispute: to whom do the goods of the world legitimately belong, to those who need them, or to those who possess them legally, but do not need them? In this paper “subsistence” stands for the legitimizing power of the idea of “need,” and “property” for justification through an appeal to freedom. In theory more than two thousand years ago the question was already answered in favor of the primacy of property.
“What Is to Be Done?” The Red Specter, Franchise Questions, and the Crisis of Conservative Hegemony in Saxony, 1896–1909
Authors: Retallack James
Published: December 2008

Wecould be more liberal if we had no social democrats.” This was one axiom of German electoral politics with which the overwhelming mass of non-socialist (bürgerlich) German voters agreed unrservedly, wrote Lothar Schücking, a liberal critic of Prussian officialdom, in 1908. Nevertheless, continued Schücking, the aims and ideals of the social democratic movement were completely unfamiliar to most educated Germans. “One knows a few slogans,” wrote Schucking: “‘free love,’ ‘religion a private matter,’ ‘impoverishment of the masses,’… ‘republic.’” Everything else was subsumed under the specter of the “red international.” Disapprovingly, Schucking concluded that “the burgerlich parties have gradually come to recognize only ‘national questions.’”
The Successful German Center-Left: Joseph Hess and the Prussian Center Party, 1908–32
Authors: Kohler Eric D.
Published: December 2008

Giventhe Weimar Republic's collapse into dictatorship, its political historiography has stressed its many failures. To that pattern the Catholic Center Party, or Zentrum, which participated in all of the Republic's cabinets but one, has been no exception. Programmatically vague, the party was subject to bitter divisions between an authoritarian monarchist right and a vocal republican left. This trend was already obvious after the June 1920 Reichstag elections in which the party lost four million votes, mostly from the Catholic working class. Thereafter the Center remained unable to extend its appeal beyond a fixed, socially conservative base. Accordingly, the Center's record, culminating in the controversial chancellorship of Heinrich Brüning, has been presented as one replete with failure, if not desperation.