bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Politics of Humor: Adolph Glassbrenner and the Rediscovery of the PrussianVormärz(1815–48)
Authors: Townsend Mary Lee
Published: December 2008

In the postwar search for German national heroes, preferably committed democrats, scholars have rediscovered the Berlin wit and journalist Adolph Glassbrenner (1810–76). In the series of exhibitions about Prussia which flooded West Berlin in 1981 Glassbrenner's memorabilia surfaced with regularity. He even merited a small exhibition of his own and a biography in the seriesPreussische Köpfe. Berlin enthusiasts and aficionados of German folk culture praise him as a quaint, local humorist while others, primarily academic Germanists and historians, point to his activities as a liberal opponent of the Prussian state before the revolution of 1848. None of these many admirers would argue, however, that Glassbrenner was a major literary talent or a particularly original political thinker.
Orpheus in Berlin: A Reappraisal of Johann Georg Sulzer's Theory of the Polite Arts
Authors: van der Zande Johan
Published: December 2008

In1771 Johann Georg Sulzer, a well-established member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres, published the first volume of his long awaited lexiconA General Theory of the Polite Arts (Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste). Although the work sold well, not many critics were convinced of its major tenet that the production and enjoyment of works of art should serve to promote the civic awareness of the citizenry of the modern state. And while Sulzer's influence on the aesthetic theories of Kant and Schiller is generally recognized and he consequently has kept a relatively high profile in histories of aesthetics, his lexicon did not survive the century in which it was written.
Red Song: Social Democratic Music and Radicalism at the End of the Weimar Republic
Authors: Bodek Richard
Published: December 2008

Germany's interwar Social Democratic movement was anything but the monolithic structure often presented in the literature. Indeed, the standard teleology—which portrays the movement as conservative and petit bourgeois, doing its best to fend off Nazism, but ultimately not up to the task—obscures more than it illuminates. It imposes a top-down frame on the Social Democratic Party (SPD), that characterizes it and its affiliates as an undifferentiated mass, making a nuanced analysis difficult. As is true of most political movements, interwar German Social Democracy presented multiple faces to the world. While its core was a political party that worked to win elections, the SPD also formed the heart of an alternative culture, one that allowed its largely working-class membership to take part in cultural and social functions, as well as in political meetings to express class solidarity.
Talking about Efficiency: Politics and the Industrial Rationalization Movement in the Weimar Republic
Authors: Shearer J. Ronald
Published: December 2008

Atthe end of 1918, Harry Graf Kessler, the astute German observer of domestic and international affairs, summarized the essential conflicts that Germany would face in the years following World War I. Considering the demands of the German revolution along with the urgency of economic recovery from the war, Kessler responded to his compatriot, Hermann Graf Keyserling, that “The crucial point is how we are to combine broad social measures without reducing production. If we can solve this problem, we really shall be ahead of the rest of the world. What Kessler perceptively anticipated in the dying days of the last year of the Great War would be Weimar's effort to create a social welfare state predicated on private sector economic recovery and prosperity. Germany after the First World War was the first industrial nation in the twentieth century to broach this agenda, one which would become more familiar and successful following the Second World War.
From Emigration to Immigration: The German Experience in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Authors: Bade Klaus J.
Published: December 2008

UnitedGermany has become more ethnically divers and, to a certain extent, more “multicultural” with a growing minority of immigrants and temporary migrants living within its borders. There are labor migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe with restricted work permits, immigrants coming out of the former “guest worker” population, and ethnic Germants from Eastern Europe as well as various groups of asylum seekers and other refugees.
Interdenominationalism, Clericalism, Pluralism: The Zentrumsstreit and the Dilemma of Catholicism in Wilhelmine Germany
Authors: Anderson Margaret Lavinia
Published: December 2008

In April 1909 Emil Schüler, a Jew of Lippstadt, a small town in Catholic Westphalia, died. The passing of this otherwise unremarkable man was noted in a number of newspapers because Schüler was known to be both a good “Israelite” and a loyal supporter of the Center Party—a party denounced as “ultramontane” by its enemies and acknowledged even by its friends to have a constituency almost entirely Catholic. The Jüdische Rundschau commented, however, that it considered this Lippstadt Jew's political allegiance “absolutely worth considering,” opining that recent proceedings in the Reichstag had shown that at least the religious interests of Jews found better representation within the Center than with, for example, either Liberalism or Social Democracy.
The Role of Media in Democratizing Germany: United States Occupation Policy 1945–1949
Authors: Hartenian Larry
Published: December 2008

The Allied defeat of the German Wehrmacht in May 1945 brought the military struggle against fascism in Europe to an end. Yet with the occupation of Germany the struggle against fascism was to continue on other fronts. Germany was to be “demilitarized,” the economy “decartelized,” and the society “denazified. ” Ultimately Germany was to be “democratized.” The newly established media were to play a major role in the transformation of German attitudes, in this attempt to “reeducate” the Germans.
The Catholic Enlightenment and Popular Education in the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, 1765–95
Authors: Doney John Christopher
Published: December 2008

In the last decades of the eighteenth century the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) flourished in Catholic Germany, developing a distinctive character there. Nothing lay more at the heart of enlightened interests than the reform of pedagogy, and in particular the education of children in parish schools and catechetical classes. This article focuses on the reform of popular education in the Prince-Bishopric (Hochstift) of Würzburg between 1765 and 1795 both to help in defining the goals and policies of the Catholic Enlightenment and to evaluate the extent of its success.
The Persecution of Witches as Restoration of Order: The Case of Germany, 1590s–1650s
Authors: Lehmann Hartmut
Published: December 2008

From the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century many of the territories and cities in Central Europe were the scene of witchcraft trials. As recent research shows, it was especially in the years around 1590, 1610, and 1630, and again in the 1650s, that many parts of Germany were overwhelmed by what might be called a tidal wave of witch-hunting, with thousands upon thousands of victims: women mostly, yet also men and children. So far, despite a large number of detailed studies, there is no convincing explanation of why witch-hunting should have played such a prominent role in Germany from the 1590s to the 1650s.
In Search of the (Rural) Catholic Bourgeoisie: TheBürgertumof South Germany
Authors: Heilbronner Oded
Published: December 2008

Theintensive involvement with the German bourgeoisie (Bürgertum) during the past decade has found scholars busy pasting labels on a social group that they sweepingly termed the “bourgeoisie.” Yet, the studies of a number of German and Anglo-American scholars have focused mainly on the urban Protestant bourgeoisie, while the rural (small towns and villages with less than 5,000 inhabitants) bourgeoisie and the Catholic bourgeoisie have received little attention. Considering the fact that rural society still comprised one of the main features of the European landscape, and that Catholics were approximately one third of the population during the second half of nineteenth-century Germany, the neglect of this group becomes even more surprising. Is it possible to write the history of the German bourgeoisie without its countryside elements (Bürgertum auf dem Lande) and without its Catholic bourgeoisie? Can so prominent a sector of German society be this casually dismissed? This article seeks to examine the issue from a number of different perspectives. Using a regional survey, it will show the existence of a Catholic bourgeois stratum in southern Germany (largely in the rural areas) and, through the presentation of a regional model, it will also attempt to sketch, albeit in broad strokes, some of the more pertinent aspects of the German Catholic bourgeoisie.
Overcoming Nazism: Big Business, Public Relations, and the Politics of Memory, 1945–50
Authors: Wiesen S. Jonathan
Published: December 2008

In1973 Yad Vashem, the international organization commemorating Holocaust martyrs and heroes, extended its highest honors to one of Germany's most influential business leaders. Berthold Beitz, head of the Krupp Foundation in Essen, was declared one of “the righteous among the nations” and was inducted into a very small group of individuals who had risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Third Reich. As a young manager in German-occupied Galicia, Beitz had been considered a rising star in the firm of Karpaten Öl. A trustee acting on behalf of the board of directors, Beitz was in a key position to witness the brutality of the SS in occupied Poland. In 1943, as he began to suspect his government's murderous intentions, Beits grew determined to risk his career, and possibly his life, to protect Jews from a tragic fate. Through various means of trickery and bargaining with the SS, Beitz took under his wing both young and old, skilled and unskilled, and employed them in scattered oil installations in eastern Galicia, ultimately protecting many of them from deportation and probable death in Belzec.
Hitler's Hometown under Nazi Rule: Linz, Austria, 1938–45
Authors: Bukey Evan B.
Published: December 2008

Nearlyfour decades have passed since the collapse of the Greater German Reich, but the subject of Nazi rule in Hitler's homeland of Austria still remains something of a mystery. While the appearance of pioneering works by Karl Stadler, Radomir Luža, Gerhard Botz, and John Bernbaum, among others, has illuminated the landscape of what until recently wasterra incognita, a great many dark valleys and ravines still remain. The purpose of this essay is to examine Nazi control in the Upper Austrian city of Linz as a means of addressing certain unresolved issues of Central European history such as the degree of Austrian participation, support, or acceptance of the Hitler regime, the role of the Roman Catholic Church, the extent of German penetration of Austrian institutions after 1938, and the impact of fascist industrialization in transforming and modernizing Austrian society. Linz should make a particularly interesting test case since it has long mirrored the currents and ambiguities of Central European history. The boyhood home of Hitler, Eichmann, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, it was a center of German Nationalist agitation before World War I, a model of democratic propriety during the 1920s, and a major battlefield of the Austrian Civil War of 1934. Rapidly evolving from a bastion of Social Democracy into a stronghold of National Socialism, it was a focus of the Anschluss in 1938 and the recipient of lavish aid from its Führer-son thereafter. What occurred in the Danubian city between 1938 and 1945 foreshadowed something of Hitler's intentions, not simply for Austria but also for much of the Greater German Reich.
The Banality of Evil Reconsidered: SS Mid-Level Managers of Extermination Through Work
Authors: Allen Michael Thad
Published: December 2008

Historians have mostly, and with good reason, examined the industrial exploitation of concentration-camp prisoners from the standpoint of its injustice. Studies have covered either the politics which led to forced labor, the involvement of individual factories where prisoners suffered starvation and death, or the harrowing experience of the Victims. Yet few have considered forced labor as the perpetrators saw it: coldly, as a colossal managerial problem. A surprisingly small number, no more than 200 top and mid-level bureaucrats within the Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt of the SS (WVHA), brokered prisoners to labor sites across the Reich, and, after 1941, across the breadth of Europe. Of course, many more German managers were involved in the execution of forced labor programs, and an examination of the WVHA can by no means capture the whole picture.
The Unknown Weininger: Science, Philosophy, and Cultural Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Authors: Sengoopta Chandak
Published: December 2008

OttoWeininger (1880–1903) is a notorious figure in European history.1A Jewish intellectual of Vienna, Weininger committed suicide at the age of 23 after publishing a single book based on his doctoral dissertation,Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character, 1903). The work was admired by some of the greatest intellects of our century—Franz Kafka, Ludwig Wittgenstein, James Joyce, Karl Kraus, August Strindberg. More recently, it has attained virtually legendary status among scholars as an exemplary text of European misogyny and antisemitism. WhileGeschlecht und Charakteris certainly unrivaled as a compendium of turn-of-the-century prejudices, stereotypes, and anxieties, it is not simply a deranged thinker's chronicle of personal nightmares. This fact has been obscured due to the failure of recent scholars to situate Weininger and his work in the intellectual and cultural contexts of fin-de-siècle Central Europe. This paper demonstrates thatGeschlecht und Charakteris an intensely personal analysis of intellectual, political, and cultural themes that were of central importance to contemporary Viennese intellectuals.
The Rise and Fall of the “Third Weimar”: Harry Graf Kessler and the Aesthetic State in Wilhelmian Germany, 1902–1906
Authors: Easton Laird
Published: December 2008

InAugust 1891, shortly before his graduation from the University of Leipzig and his subsequent departure on a trip around the world, Harry Graf Kessler visited the city that had become an icon of German culture in the nineteenth century. Weimar, vegetating in the long twilight years of Carl Alexander's reign, made an unfavorable impression on the young aesthete. At the church cemetery, thinking no doubt of the way England and France honored their great writers, he remarked, “I do not find the idea that the coffins of our two greatest poets should serve as the antechamber for all the princely nullities of the house of Weimar especially worthy—it reminds one a little too strongly of theGeheimen Hofrat.”
The Holocaust and the Modernization of Gender: A Historiographical Essay
Authors: Allen Ann Taylor
Published: December 2008

Zygmunt Bauman's book, Modernity and the Holocaust, argues that the Holocaust was not an aberration from modernity, but rather the most extreme symptom of a distinctively modern pathology. Women are conspicuously absent from this indictment of modernity; Bauman, a socilogist, mentions neither gender as an issue nor women as individuals. This gap in Bauman's text is in fact full of meaning, for the absence of women as persons does not preclude the hidden presence of gender as a category of analysis. I shall use the absence and presence of gender in Bauman's text as a starting point for an examination of the historiography of women and gender and its relevance for our understanding of the Holocaust. First, I will tease out the hidden, gendered implications of Bauman's theory; second, I will look at the ways in which recent feminist scholarship has approached the question of women's responsibility for the Holocaust. Finally, I shall suggest that a consideration of the cultural construction of gender, as explored by recent scholarship in many fields, is necessary to our understanding of the historical and ethical concerns that Bauman and others have raised.
Bismarck's Fortune
Authors: Vagts Alfred
Published: December 2008

The private fortunes of great men form a subject usually neglected by their biographers. The more idolizing the biographer, the less apt he is to consider it, as if such a hero's fortune were a partie honteuse in his life. In Bismarck's case, the forms and size of his fortune and the ways he acquired it, matters about which he himself was never reticent, were the object of hostile contemporary pamphleteering and much gossip then and later among friends and foes, high and low, princes and underlings.
Emil Kirdorf and the Nazi Party
Authors: Turner Henry Ashby
Published: December 2008

The extent to which German big business aided Hitler in his rise to power is still a matter of controversy. For Marxists, or at least those who follow the Moscow line, there is no problem, since they regard Nazism as a manifestation of the monopoly stage of capitalism. Non-Marxists, however, are widely divided. Some have reached conclusions similar to those of the Marxists; others have exonerated the capitalists. Most have concluded that big business gave some support to the Nazis but have not specified its extent or significance. In part, this wide range of opinion is the result of ideological differences. But just as importantly, the evidence on which existing studies of the subject rest is scanty, sometimes ambiguous, and often of questionable validity. Few aspects of National Socialism have been so inadequately researched. Even the most basic facts remain in doubt, and before any further general interpretations can usefully be put forward toward a resolution of the controversy, it is necessary to return to the fundamental task of setting the record straight. A great deal more evidence is available for this purpose than is generally recognized, enough, in fact, to clear up many disputed issues and produce more than a few surprises. A case in point is that of Emil Kirdorf, long universally regarded as an early and loyal backer of Hitler and National Socialism in the camp of big business.
Germany, 1890–1918: A Survey of Recent Research
Authors: Sheehan James J.
Published: December 2008

On New Year's Eve 1890 Hildegard, Baroness von Spitzemberg recorded these reflections in her diary:

The end of 1890: the year in which Bismarck left the global stage, not called by death but dismissed against his will. That in itself would be sufficient to make this year unforgettable; who knows if this experience, this past year will become a milestone in German history.… We confront the last decade of the century under the banner of a new generation which rushes with full sail into the heavy sea of time, its impetuous emperor prematurely in command. Towards what? That we may know all too soon—or better all too late—when the reefs rise threateningly before us and there is no experienced mariner at the helm.
Lay Community and Church Instituions of the Lahngau in the Late Middle ages
Authors: Brodek Theodor
Published: December 2008

The relationship of the lay community to clerical institutions during the Middle Ages and especially in the pre–Reformation Era has long been a subject of methodical investigation. It has, however, proven extremely difficult to gain reliable evidence regarding subjective attitudes towards the clergy. Once the basic literary sources have been culled, further elucidation of the development of attitudes on the part of the majority of the people tends to become vague and hesitant or to rely on post hoc explanations. In this brief study, I have experimented with a statistical approach to the problem by tabulating the records of donations to three church institutions of the Lahngau in order to be able to trace, if at all possible, the evolution of attitudes which they reflect. I have, furthermore, attempted to test the hypothesis that the subjective attitudes of a social class towards a church institution are partially conditioned by the effective power exercised on the institution in question at the local level by the donor group.
Money, Morals, and the Pillars of Bismarck's Society
Authors: Stern Fritz
Published: December 2008

Perhaps one of Europe's more remarkable achievements has been the creation of a flourishing bourgeois civilization that has never been free from the most penetrating bourgeois criticism. “Épater le bourgeois” was a great pastime of the last century and the sport still seems to be alive. Ibsen'sPillars of Society, published in 1877, was a radical analysis of the moral pretensions and the moral burden of bourgeois society. The pillars of that society were rotten; the life of the protagonist was a lie violating his own nature and that of his fellowmen. It is as if Ibsen had written a dramatic commentary on theCommunist Manifestowithout indulging in the comforting hope that a social revolution would create a new man in a newly virtuous society. In the play, salvation came through an improbable act of contrition and self-purgation; at his most revolutionary, Ibsen thought that the feminine slamming of doors sufficed for human improvement.
Note on Hajo Holborn's Unfinished Business
Authors: Krieger Leonard
Published: December 2008

One of the perquisites of the scholarly profession is the gradual leave-taking of our friends and colleagues which eases the pain of good-by. Despite the approximate conjunction of Hajo Holborn's death with the completion of his great History of Modern Germany, a conjunction which seemed to seal the finality of the abrupt stillness, he actually had in hand several lines of unfinished business which will keep his inimitable and indispensable historical spirit with us still during the coming months. These enterprises, which represented Hajo Holborn's integration of the variegated concerns in his wide-ranging career and his definitive settling of accounts with them, included two kinds of projects: on the one hand, collections and editions of his own writings and, on the other, interpretive essays prefacing new editions of other historians and of their historical works on themes with which he had long associated himself. He left these enterprises in various stages of execution, ranging from books ready for the printing to unrealized designs which can testify only to his mature intentions but which, at least, are being carried through to publication in his spirit by those who have been close to him.
“Moro”: The Resupply of German Submarines in Spain, 1939–1942
Authors: Burdick Charles B.
Published: December 2008

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 manifestly occasioned fundamental adjustments in European strategic considerations. While few powers had given serious thought to Spain's diplomatic, military, or even geographical importance, the rising produced numerous useful opportunities for Germany. It created a potential friend on France's southern frontier, drew the senior, more aggressive dictator, Benito Mussolini, closer to the more recently arrived Adolf Hitler, threatened Great Britain's control of the Mediterranean at Gibraltar, and redirected the focus of international diplomacy. In order to obtain a position of greater influence within the unstable vector of forces created by the new situation the two dictators had dispatched socalled volunteer military and air formations in support of the rising. While these troops and their equipment were of fundamental value to the Nationalists, their presence forced the participating military high commands to reevaluate carefully their positions and intentions.
Prussia's English Policy after the Seven Years' War
Authors: Dippel Horst
Published: December 2008

Prussian-English relations pose one of the most interesting problems of Frederick II's foreign policy after the Seven Years' War, and one which has repeatedly drawn the attention of historians, especially in our century. Despite the impressive number of monographs, scholars are nevertheless surprisingly united on the key points. It has become a commonplace that relations between the two countries after 1763 were rather poor and that they were conditioned either by Frederick's dislike of England after the Seven Years' War, or by the apparent absence of any common interests, or by Prussian sympathy for the Americans struggling for their independence.
The German Revolutionary Student Movement, 1819–1833
Authors: Ray lutz Rolland
Published: December 2008

The archetype of the modern student movement is the German Burschenschaft of the Restoration era. Some events in the history of the Burschenschaft are well known: the Wartburgfest of 1817; the national federation of Burschenschaften in 1818; the assassination of August von Kotzebue by Karl Sand; and the resultant Karlsbad Decrees of 1819. Relatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the post-Karlsbad history of the Burschenschaft, which is the concern of this article. Emphasis will be given to the role which a network of secret, inner circles played in both the survival of the Burschenschaft and its continued involvement in revolutionary conspiracy. These inner circles contained not merely representatives of the normal four-year student classes, but also permanently radicalized Burschenschafter. In some cases such “old boys” did not participate directly but maintained informal ties with key members of the inner circles. Since many of the radical alumni became secondary school teachers, they became the source of a continuous supply of indoctrinated recruits. The Burschenschaft of the Restoration era owed both its survival and the continuity of its traditions to an exclusive, self-perpetuating group of radicals dominated by veteran revolutionaries.
Slovakia' Internal Policy and the Third Reich, August 1940–February 1941
Authors: Jelínek Yeshayahu
Published: December 2008

The Slovak State was the first satellite of the Third Reich. It came into existence on March 14, 1939, preceding by one day the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Berlin regarded independent Slovakia as die Visitenkarte Deutschlands almost from the beginning. Therefore the way the Nazis treated this tiny state could indicate their general line toward other clients in southeastern Europe, and perhaps also on the rest of the Continent.
Post-Mortem on Prussia: The East German Position
Authors: Dorpalen Andreas
Published: December 2008

In the East German Marxist-Leninist analysis of German history the role of Prussia, of the Prussian state and the Junkers, of Prussian militarism and agrarianism have received a great deal of attention. Since they are regarded as major causes of the catastrophes that subsequently befell Germany, this concern is of course not surprising. Moreover, class interests, special socio-economic configurations, the transition from feudal conditions to a capitalist-industrial system played so manifest a role in Prussia's rise that Marxist scholars, if only for that reason, were bound to turn to the investigation of these developments.
AdmiralsversusGenerals: The War Aims of the Imperial German Navy, 1914–1918
Authors: Herwig Holger H.
Published: December 2008

The recent controversy over Germany's war aims during World War I has centered primarily around the positions taken by the Kaiser, the Foreign Office, and the army high command. The views of the navy have been largely neglected. This is unfortunate because the navy was, in a way,thestatus symbol of the German Empire. It was not, like the various armies, a divisive, particularist force, but rather a national Reich institution—the “melting pot” of Germany. It flew the Imperial black-white-red banner, was funded by the Reichstag, had a state secretary in the Imperial cabinet under the chancellor, recruited its officer cadets from all the German states and cities, trained them in the national naval school at Mürwik, and swore an oath of allegiance to the German Kaiser. Yet as the junior service, the navy struggled to escape from the shadow of the Prussian army and to establish its own identity. The issue of war aims provided it with just such an opportunity.
Ebert and the German Crisis, 1917–1920
Authors: Buse D. K.
Published: December 2008

In April 1920 Friedrich Ebert admitted to a Swedish socialist that Social Democracy had failed to create a consolidated democratic republic for Germany. The president of the Weimar Republic noted that the social divisiveness which he and his colleagues had tried to overcome had increased. Though he left it unmentioned, he knew also that socialist democracy which he had outlined as the main goal during the German Revolution of 1918–19 had not been realized. However, in explaining why the army and administration still required reforming, why the universities remained “breeding stations of reaction,” Ebert blamed solely the Treaty of Versailles. He did not acknowledge that he and his party had contributed to the legacies left for the Weimar Republic by the critical period 1917–20.
The Betrayal of a Myth: National Socialism and the Financing of Middle-Class Socialism in the Sudetenland
Authors: Smelser Ronald M.
Published: December 2008

One of the ideological appeals which the Nazis used to capture the petit-bourgeois and peasant vote in Germany was that of “middle-class socialism.” In this catchall term, the alienated “little man” in modern German industrial society saw an expression of both his strong anticapitalist feelings and his yearnings for economic independence. The concept also reflected a romantic proclivity for a preindustrial artisan economy. In directing themselves to these people who felt most ill at ease in modern industrial society, the Nazis promised low interest rates, curbs on big business, benefits to the small entrepreneur, and a return to a society free of large industry, department stores, and a vocal proletariat. The Nazis made this appeal partly for reasons of political expediency, partly because many of Hitler's followers took the tenets of middle-class socialism quite seriously. Several years in power, however, indicated to the more realistic Nazi leaders that it was quite impossible to reincarnate a utopian past in highly industrialized society gearing for war. As a result, after abortive attempts at realizing some of the ideas embodied in middle-class socialism, the Nazi regime made the necessary compromises with big business, and middle-class socialism became pretty much a dead letter. What is seldom realized, however, is that the Nazi regime betrayed middle-class socialism not once, but twice: initially, to economic exigency in the Reich, and then, once again, to political expansion among German ethnic groups outside Germany's borders.
Wilhelm Dilthey on the Self and History: Some Theoretical Roots of Geistesgeschichte
Authors: Kornberg Jacques
Published: December 2008

Intellectual history has always been a bit embattled in the English-speaking world, especially the sort of intellectual history that deals with cosmic moods and ideas. There always been those who have tried to place the practitioners of this kind of intellectual history on the defensive. However, the great masters of this discipline— a Dilthey or a Burckhardt or a Lovejoy—continue to cast their spell over many of us. Even in this most utilitarian and political of decades, their achievement remains breathtaking. But it is no use pretending that the approach to history that focuses on “Geistesgeschichte” has no “blind spots.” As with any human enterprise, it has its strengths and weaknessess, its keen insights, its narrowness of vision. This paper is an attempt to point to some of the sources of both the abiding greatness and the blind spots of this approach to history, and to explain why this sort of intellectual history still speaks to many of us.
Defender of Minorities: Germany in the League of Nations, 1926–1933
Authors: Fink Carole
Published: December 2008

Germany under the Weimar Republic played the role of champion of minorities in Europe. A combination of revisionist hopes, völkisch arrogance, and humanitarian concern for the fate of lost kin motivated the Minderheitenpolitik of the Reich. Most historians have interpreted this episode as a link between the imperialism of Wilhelmian Germany and that of the Third Reich, a refinement—dictated by weakness—of Berlin's continuing efforts to dominate Eastern Europe.
Shared Lordship, Authority, and Administration: The Exercise of Dominion in theGemeine Herrschaftenof the Swiss Confederation, 1417–1600
Authors: Head Randolph C.
Published: December 2008

Kaspar von Graffenried, theLandvogtor administrator in this polemic from ca. 1617, was a Bernese patrician serving for two years as highest authority in the Swiss subject territory known as the County (Grafschaft) of Baden. He acted as an agent not of the Bernese city-state that had appointed him, but of all eight of the cantons that shared possession of Baden and its surroundings; his tenure fit into a rotation of administrators from the other cantons according to a precisely determined two-year cycle that had been in place since the early fifteenth century. In many respects the SwissLandvogtof Baden therefore looked far different from the local feudal nobles who had served the Habsburgs as administrators back when William Tell was supposed to have lived—though this evidently contributed nothing to Graffenried's standing with the author of the verses above.
Kulturkampf and Unification: German Liberalism and the War Against the Jesuits
Authors: Gross Michael B.
Published: December 2008

In February 1872, little more than a year after the founding of the new Reich, theNational Zeitung, a leading National-Liberal newspaper, argued that Germans could no longer accept suppression at the Catholic Church. The German, the paper explained, will not tolerate a spirit that comes from Rome either among his people or in any of his churches. He does not want clerical rule andVolksverdummung. He wants, rather, enlightemnent, honest conscience [ehrlidzes Gewissen], and work.Attaining a new, as yet never achieved level of moral freedom, a morality arising from the people [eine volkstümliche Sittlichkeit] that is shared by Germany's churches and confessions, that is the task for this founding period of the new Reich.
Looking for the German Revolution in Weimar Films
Authors: Roper Katherine
Published: December 2008

“O Gott, o Gott—ist das Revolution?” a wide-eyed Frau Dreissiger asks her husband, her pearl necklaces rising and falling with her heaving bosom, as chants of the angry crowd of weavers penetrate the sequestered drawing room. In this scene in Friedrich Zelnik's 1927 film Die Weber, Frau Dreissiger's question is far less naive than the impatient look of her nervous husband suggests. It resounds, rather, with the fears and expectations of Germans of the 1920s, convinced they were living in an era of revolutionary transformation, yet besieged by a cacophony of arguments as to whether or how an actual German revolution would come about. Historians of the Weimar era have posed comparable questions about which upheavals and ideas constituted a German revolution. Spurred by debates over whether an authoritarian GermanSonderwegbypassed a bourgeois revolution, invigorated since unification by new perspectives on German democratization, and enriched by new approaches, they have considered an extraordinarily wide range of phenomena. The resulting studies have revealed myriad interactions between political ideologies, social groupings, economic practices, and external pressures.
Hans Rosenberg at Brooklyn College: A Communist Student's Recollections of the Classroom as War Zone
Authors: Genovese Eugene D.
Published: December 2008

I shall teach this course as a stiff graduate course, and if you don't like it, get out now. The words came with a pronounced German accent, which somehow made them all the scarier to a college junior. Having taken two semesters of European economic histry with this professer, I had no illusions. He meant what he said. For those of us who had naively considered his “baby” courses in economic history draconian, his words were all the more frightening. What the devil were we in for on this round? Whether anyone “did not like it,” I have no idea, but no one dropped.
Hans Rosenberg as a Teacher: A Few Personal Notes
Authors: Volkov Shulamit
Published: December 2008

When I returned from a long summer in Israel, following the Six Days War of June 1967, Berkeley seemed to belong to an altogether different universe. Things that had been upper-most in my mind, indeed in everyone's mind, during those months in Jerusalem were of marginal interest to the bustling students and respectable faculty members on campus. In comparison with the hectic atmosphere in Israel at that time, even the most politically involved campus in the United States appeared like the proverbial ivory tower. After a brief hiatus during which everyone had breathlessly observed the events of the war in the Middle East, these events quickly receded into the background, and on the shores of the Pacific other issues seemed far more important. While activists were busily preparing an attack on United States government policy in Vietnam, everyone else, secluded in the innumerable Berkeley classrooms, seemed concerned with purely academic matters.
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Kaiserreich
Authors: Barkin Kenneth
Published: December 2008

W. E. B. Du Bois(1868–1963) was the most influential Afro-American intellectual of the twentieth century. His accomplishments in journalism and the academic disciplines of history and sociology were pioneering, and have only recently come to be fully appreciated. His more than twenty books and over 1,000 articles should qualify him to be considered one of America’s major scholars, and certainly the leading interpreter of race relations in the U.S., although he was never offered a professorship at a major American university. In the past two decades, Du Bois has experienced a renaissance of interest in his scholarship as well as in his Pan-African politics. Although he wrote three autobiographics in his lifetime and submitted to a 180 page oral history in 1960 at Columbia University, Du Bois’s life and thought have become the subject of innumerable books and articles by historians—a cottage industry in and of itself. Du Bois’s early writings merit the attention of historians and social scientists because of their freshness even after a century and because of his openness to ideas and methods that one would not expect from his later writings.
The Present Condition of German Politics (1893)
Authors: Du Bios W. E. B.
Published: December 2008

It is the omnipresent soldiery of Berlin that first catches the American visitors’s attention. The whole city seems to have a half military stride, all Prussia rushes pell-mell to the window to see the ever-passing regiment, and German ideals from king to lover appear at first sight to be clad in spurs and shoulder-strap. The military spirit appears not to be confined to the army, but largely to permeate society. The American sees it in the stiff bow of the students, in the perfect rage for uniforms in all classes, which enables both footman and chancellor to carry their histories on their backs; above all this spirit pervades the political state. The all-pervading government works about and around the new-comer, with a military precision and careful attention to trifles which is calculated to make a Bostonian uncomfortable, and take a New Yorker's breath away.
Culture and Anarchy in the Empire, 1540–1680
Authors: Evans R. J. W.
Published: December 2008

Drawingsfrom the Holy Roman Empire 1540–1680must have appeared to the untutored eye as a fairly miscellaneous exhibition of drawings, themselves a very miscellaneous genre. Perhaps their only common ground lies in that even more ineffable geographical expression: the Holy Roman Empire. Yet for all the accidental quality of its provenance, the show possessed a certain logic. Let us note two crude facts about it: firstly the threefold and almost equal division between religious and classical subjects and a third group of “modern” topics, landscape and genre—what might be called the new “inquisitive eye”; secondly the clear focus on the years around 1600 and the area of southern Germany and Bohemia. To both of these aspects I shall return in due course.
The World of the Polyhistors: Humanism and Encyclopedism
Authors: Grafton Anthony
Published: December 2008

In 1713 and 1715 Johann Burkhard Mencke subjected the scholars of the Holy Roman Empire to a searching examination. They failed it. His two speeches “On the Charlatanry of the Learned”—best sellers wherever they were not banned—ridiculed the minds and the mores of the polyhistors with equal zest. Mencke anatomized their love for overblown titles:

Today … you see many demanding to be called Clarissimus who are absolutely unknown outside the walls of their city; Magnificus, who have scarcely any dignity at home; Consultissimus, who have little or no advice to give: and Excellentissimus, who do not know as much about anything worth knowing as the veriest tyro.
The “False French Alarm”: Revolutionary Panic in Baden, 1848
Authors: Canevali Ralph C.
Published: December 2008

Periods of great unrest are often characterized by the spread of wild rumors. In the excitement real dangers are magnified and completely new ones conjured up out of thin air. People, in their unbearable thirst for information, seem willing—or better, compelled—to believe almost anything they hear. Most often these conditions lead to amorphous feelings of dread and unease. But occasionally sensibilities become strained to the breaking point, and apprehension gives way to outright panic. Fear, no longer a disembodied and shapeless cloud, now finds a receptacle. The panic begins with an avalanche of terrible rumors, all testifying to the immediacy of a specific danger. Fear travels in well-defined currents, engulfing whole communities and regions in its path.
War and the Working Class: The Case of Düsseldorf 1914–1918
Authors: Tobin Elizabeth H.
Published: December 2008

Thecauses of any revolution are notoriously hard to discover. Despite years of effort, historians still disagree about the relative importance of the short-term and long-term causes of the German revolution in 1918–19. Some describe the “events” at the end of the war as a largely unrevolutionary desire for peace and food, brought about by the privations of the war years; others explain them as the culmination of decades of escalating class conflicts, which the conditions of war sharply exposed. One problem with this whole debate has been an insufficient knowledge of exactly what happened to Germany's workers during the war. Although most historians agree that money wages went up, real wages declined and most people ate less, few have been able to gauge the extent or importance of the change in wages or determine whether workers were simply somewhat hungry, malnourished, or starving. Furthermore there is not enough known about the composition of the work force during the war and the different hardships endured by skilled and unskilled workers.
Doctor Leonardo Conti and His Nemesis: The Failure of Centralized Medicine in the Third Reich
Authors: Kater Michael H.
Published: December 2008

Thisarticle has a twofold aim. First, it intends to present a portrait of the National Socialist physician and functionary Dr. Leonardo Conti, in the context of German health administration during the Third Reich. Second, it proposes to cast more light on the workings of the National Socialist bureaucracy by examining Conti's place in the hierarchical chain of command and by concentrating on his peculiar relationship with the supreme leader.
Official Reform inVormärzPrussia: The Ecclesiastical Dimension
Authors: Jensen Gwendolyn Evans
Published: December 2008

Every state church has a two-sided history. On the one hand, as a religious institution it contributes to and is influenced by currents of theology and modes of ecclesiastical organization transcending national boundaries. On the other hand, as part of the constituted authority of a particular state, the church is affected and even controlled by secular and national policies having little or nothing to do with mankind's earthly pursuit of divine purpose.
Government by Procrastination: Chancellor Hohenlohe and Kaiser William II, 1894–1900
Authors: Fraley J. David
Published: December 2008

In the political system of imperial Germany, the personal interplay between the Kaiser and the chancellor was the single most important factor in the formulation of policy within the government; and this seems especially true during the reign of Kaiser William II, whose vivid personality lent distinctive nuances to the form and manner of Germany's domestic and foreign policies. This paper will attempt to analyze the relationship between William and Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe, German chancellor from 1894 to 1900, and the effects of that relationship on three major issues of policy: antisocialist legislation, naval expansion, and reform of court-martial procedures in the German army and navy.
The National Consensus in German Economic History
Authors: Tipton Frank B.
Published: December 2008

The beginning student of German economic history, should he happen to read more than one text, may be pardoned a certain sense of confusion. General texts agree that Germany became an industrial power, but there remains a remarkable uncertainty as to when this occurred. “During the period from 1870 to 1914 Germany was transformed from a predominantly agrarian to a predominantly industrial state,” asserts Koppel Pinson. He explicitly dismisses the 1850's as a “prelude,” but Ralph Flenley insists that “the real ‘foundation time’ came earlier, most markedly in the fifties….Not the railways alone but the whole economic framework of modern Germany arose during the periodbefore1870.” In a recent short synthesis of German economic history, Knut Borchardt warns that “experts still disagree” over the beginning date of the “foreward leap.”
Liberal Constitutionalism as Administrative Reform: The Baden Constitution of 1818
Authors: Lee Loyd E.
Published: December 2008

Constitution-Reading is a stony road to travel.This is doubly true of early nineteenth-century German constitutions. Workingin camera, their authors provided little public justification of their efforts, and consequently historians lack even the great recorded debates of a constituent assembly on which to base their interpretations. And because these constitutions wereoktroyierte Verfassungen, handed down, as it were, by gracious princes, interpretations of their provisions rest on the observer's views concerning the fortunes of German constitutional development as a whole.
German Women and the Communist International: The Case of the Independent Social Democrats
Authors: Wheeler Robert F.
Published: December 2008

At no time during the past century has European society been closer to major revolutionary upheaval than at the close of World War I. That in the end the Russian Revolution was contained and “world revolution” averted has been related by historians to any number of factors. Yet one of the most important reasons for the ebbing of the revolutionary tide has generally been overlooked or passed over lightly. This was the failure of the revolutionary movement, except in Russia, to secure really significant support from a particular segment of the working classes, namely women. A more classic case of the historian's tendency to accept sex as a constant, i.e., to operate in general as if only one sex—the male sex—exists, would be difficult to find. In fact an individual's sex can be an important variable in political behavior and like age, occupation, religion, and a variety of other social, economic, and cultural factors, something which needs to be considered much more carefully in order to arrive at a better understanding of the past.