bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Dopamine D2High receptors moderately elevated by sertindole
Authors: Seeman Philip
Published: February 2008

Because long‐term administration of antipsychotics can cause behavioral dopamine supersensitivity, this study examined whether the antipsychotic sertindole could elicit biochemical changes indicative of dopamine supersensitivity. In rats, behavioral dopamine supersensitivity is consistently associated with an increased proportion of dopamine receptors that have high affinity for dopamine, namely D2High, in homogenized striata. Nine days of subcutaneously injected sertindole (1.25 mg/kg/day) increased the proportion of D2High receptors between 186% and 215%, although the total population of D2 receptors did not change. Although the findings suggest that rats or patients treated with sertindole might exhibit behavioral dopamine supersensitivity, the drug‐induced increase in D2High receptors was less than that previously found with haloperidol. Synapse 62:389–393, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Distinct patterns of ΔFosB induction in brain by drugs of abuse
Authors: Perrotti L.I. , Weaver R.R. , Robison B. , Renthal W. , Maze I. , Yazdani S. , Elmore R.G. , Knapp D.J. , Selley D.E. , Martin B.R. , Sim‐Selley L. , Bachtell R.K. , Self D.W. , Nestler E.J.
Published: February 2008

The transcription factor ΔFosB accumulates and persists in brain in response to chronic stimulation. This accumulation after chronic exposure to drugs of abuse has been demonstrated previously by Western blot most dramatically in striatal regions, including dorsal striatum (caudate/putamen) and nucleus accumbens. In the present study, we used immunohistochemistry to define with greater anatomical precision the induction of ΔFosB throughout the rodent brain after chronic drug treatment. We also extended previous research involving cocaine, morphine, and nicotine to two additional drugs of abuse, ethanol and Δ9‐tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9‐THC, the active ingredient in marijuana). We show here that chronic, but not acute, administration of each of four drugs of abuse, cocaine, morphine, ethanol, and Δ9‐THC, robustly induces ΔFosB in nucleus accumbens, although different patterns in the core vs. shell subregions of this nucleus were apparent for the different drugs. The drugs also differed in their degree of ΔFosB induction in dorsal striatum. In addition, all four drugs induced ΔFosB in prefrontal cortex, with the greatest effects observed with cocaine and ethanol, and all of the drugs induced ΔFosB to a small extent in amygdala. Furthermore, all drugs induced ΔFosB in the hippocampus, and, with the exception of ethanol, most of this induction was seen in the dentate. Lower levels of ΔFosB induction were seen in other brain areas in response to a particular drug treatment. These findings provide further evidence that induction of ΔFosB in nucleus accumbens is a common action of virtually all drugs of abuse and that, beyond nucleus accumbens, each drug induces ΔFosB in a region‐specific manner in brain. Synapse 358–369, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Domoic acid induces direct DNA damage and apoptosis in Caco‐2 cells: Recent advances
Authors: Carvalho Pinto‐Silva C. R. , Moukha S. , Matias W. G. , Creppy E. E.
Published: February 2008

Domoic acid (DA) is a neurotoxin produced by sea‐water phytoplankton. Shellfish feeding on the phytoplankton can bioconcentrate DA, leading to a potentially serious health hazard for people consuming the contaminated shellfish. DA is the principal toxin responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP). The toxic mechanism of DA is believed to be mediated at the level of the mitochondria, where uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation decreases membrane permeability, causing cell swelling and ultimately lysis. Literature is poor concerning data on the possible genotoxicity and cytotoxicity of DA. In the present study, we have evaluated the cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of DA on a human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line (Caco‐2). Our results clearly demonstrate that DA decreased cell viability (IC50 about 70 ng/mL), induced direct DNA damage from 15 ng/mL, and apoptosis in Caco‐2 cells at 100 ng/mL. This apoptosis is likely bax‐dependent and occurred only at high concentrations of DA, while lower concentrations upregulated both bax and bcl‐2 at an apparent constant ratio until a sudden decrease of bcl‐2 at 100 ng/mL and increase of bax. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol, 2008.
Biased competition through variations in amplitude of γ-oscillations
Authors: Zeitler Magteld , Fries Pascal , Gielen Stan
Published: February 2008

Experiments in visual cortex have shown that the firing rate of a neuron in response to the simultaneous presentation of a preferred and non-preferred stimulus within the receptive field is intermediate between that for the two stimuli alone (stimulus competition). Attention directed to one of the stimuli drives the response towards the response induced by the attended stimulus alone (selective attention). This study shows that a simple feedforward model with fixed synaptic conductance values can reproduce these two phenomena using synchronization in the gamma-frequency range to increase the effective synaptic gain for the responses to the attended stimulus. The performance of the model is robust to changes in the parameter values. The model predicts that the phase locking between presynaptic input and output spikes increases with attention.
Up‐regulation of heme oxygenase‐1 expression through the Rac1/NADPH oxidase/ROS/p38 signaling cascade mediates the anti‐inflammatory effect of 15‐deoxy‐Δ12,14‐prostaglandin J2 in murine macrophages
Authors: Hong Hye-Young , Jeon Woo-Kwang , Kim Byung-Chul
Published: February 2008

We investigated the signaling pathway that leads to the expression of heme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1) in murine macrophages in response to 15‐deoxy‐Δ12,14‐prostaglandin J2 (15dPGJ2). 15dPGJ2 caused dose‐ and time‐dependent activation of Rac1, followed by a transient increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) via NADPH oxidase, which leads to downstream activation of p38 kinase. Inhibition of 15dPGJ2‐dependent HO‐1 expression significantly attenuated suppression by 15dPGJ2 of LPS‐induced iNOS expression and subsequent production of nitric oxide (NO). Our findings strongly suggest that 15dPGJ2 exerts its anti‐inflammatory activity through the Rac1‐NADPH oxidase‐ROS‐p38 signaling to the up‐regulation of HO‐1 in an in vitro inflammation model.
Metastasis tumor antigen 1 is involved in the resistance to heat stress‐induced testicular apoptosis
Authors: Li Wei , Bao Wei , Ma Jing , Liu Xinping , Xu Ruojun , Wang Rui-an , Zhang Yuanqiang
Published: February 2008

Our previous study documented the expression of Mta1 during spermatogenesis. Here, we present evidence for a possible involvement of Mta1 in the regulation of testicular function, possibly by interacting with p53. A notable decrease of Mta1 expression was revealed at postsurgical day 6, consistent with the previously reported upregualtion of p53 in mouse cryptorchidism. Furthermore, in vitro over‐expression of Mta1 could remarkably elevate the resistance capability of spermatogenic tumor cells against heat‐induced apoptosis with a marked impairment of p53 expression. These findings indicate that Mta1 may operate as a negative modifier of apoptosis by interacting with p53 during gametogenesis.
PKC and MEK pathways inhibit caspase‐9/‐3‐mediated cytotoxicity in differentiated cells
Authors: Yiang Giou-Teng , Yu Yung-Luen , Hu Sheng-Chuan , Chen Mark Hung-Chih , Wang Jaang-Jiun , Wei Chyou-Wei
Published: February 2008

Many studies have indicated that differentiated cells inhibit drug‐induced cytotoxicity but undifferentiated cells do not, though the mechanisms are unclear. Currently, HL‐60 cells are induced to differentiate into macrophage‐like cells with Phorbol‐12‐myristate‐13‐acetate (TPA) treatment (TPA‐differentiated cells). Our study shows that caspase‐9/‐3‐mediated cytotoxicity can be induced in undifferentiated HL‐60 cells but not in TPA‐differentiated HL‐60 cells. However, caspase‐9/‐3‐mediated cytotoxicity can be induced in TPA‐differentiated cells if they are pretreated with a protein kinase C (PKC) or a mitogen activated protein kinase (MEK) inhibitor. Taken together, this study demonstrates that TPA‐differentiated HL‐60 cells inhibit caspases‐9/‐3‐mediated cytotoxicity through the PKC and MEK signaling pathways.
Cyclic AMP‐dependent protein kinase controls energy interconversion during the catalytic cycle of the yeast copper‐ATPase
Authors: Valverde Rafael H.F. , Morin Isabelle , Lowe Jennifer , Mintz Elisabeth , Cuillel Martine , Vieyra Adalberto
Published: February 2008

The pathogenesis of human Menkes and Wilson diseases depends on alterations in copper transport. Some reports suggest that intracellular traffic of copper might be regulated by kinase‐mediated phosphorylation. However, there is no evidence showing the influence of kinase‐related processes in coupled ATP hydrolysis/copper transport cycles. Here, we show that cyclic AMP‐dependent protein kinase (PKA) regulates Ccc2p, the yeast Cu(I)‐ATPase, with PKA‐mediated phosphorylation of a conserved serine (Ser258) being crucial for catalysis. Long‐range intramolecular communication between Ser258 and Asp627 (at the catalytic site) modulates the key pumping event: the conversion of the high‐energy to the low‐energy phosphorylated intermediate associated with copper release.
Detection of filamentous tau inclusions by the fluorescent Congo red derivative FSB [(trans,trans)‐1‐fluoro‐2,5‐bis(3‐hydroxycarbonyl‐4‐hydroxy)styrylbenzene]
Authors: Velasco Ana , Fraser Graham , Delobel Patrice , Ghetti Bernardino , Lavenir Isabelle , Goedert Michel
Published: February 2008

Filamentous inclusions made of the microtubule‐associated protein tau in a hyperphosphorylated state are a defining feature of a large number of human neurodegenerative diseases. Here we show that (trans,trans)‐1‐fluoro‐2,5‐bis(3‐hydroxycarbonyl‐4‐hydroxy)styrylbenzene (FSB), a fluorescent Congo red derivative, labels tau inclusions in tissue sections from a mouse line transgenic for human P301S tau and in cases of familial frontotemporal dementia and sporadic Pick's disease. Labelling by FSB required the presence of tau filaments. More importantly, tau inclusions in the spinal cord of human P301S tau transgenic mice were labelled following a single intravenous injection of FSB. These findings indicate that FSB can be used to detect filamentous tau in vivo.
Activation of pro‐BDNF by the pericellular serine protease plasmin
Authors: Gray Kelly , Ellis Vincent
Published: February 2008

Brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is secreted as either a mature furin‐processed form or an unprocessed pro‐form. Here, we characterise the extracellular processing of pro‐BDNF by the serine protease plasmin. Using recombinant BDNF, maintained in the pro‐form by site‐directed mutagenesis or inhibition of furin, we demonstrate that plasmin (but not related proteases) is a specific and efficient activator of pro‐BDNF. The proteolytic cleavage site is identified as Arg125‐Val, within the consensus furin‐cleavage motif (RVRR), generating an active form that stimulated neurite outgrowth on TrkB‐transfected PC12 cells. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this processing can also occur in the pericellular environment by the action of cell‐associated plasminogen activators.
History, Politics, and East German Film: The Thomas Müntzer (1956) Socialist Epic
Authors: Walinski-Kiehl Robert
Published: February 2008

Historians in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), unlike their western counterparts, could never allow themselves the luxury of studying the past for its own sake because, in this Marxist-Leninist state, history and politics were always inextricably linked. The GDR's leaders were committed communists who had long recognized history's apparent political power. They were convinced that, for the new “Workers' and Peasants' State” to acquire legitimacy among its own people, a German historical narrative, based on the ascertainable “scientific” laws of Marxism, was an essential requirement. East German citizens had endured twelve years of anti-communist Nazi rule and, consequently, the task of integrating them into a republic, where an entirely different set of political values predominated, was a fairly daunting undertaking.
Creating an Oriental Feindbild
Authors: Paddock Troy
Published: February 2008

One of the first things that Hans Castorp, the protagonist of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, learned upon his arrival at Berghof Sanitarium in Davos, was that there was a “good” Russian table and a “bad” Russian table. The bad Russians were characterized as barbarians, more or less uncivilized. Even the good Russians, while more polite, were considered to be an exotic and alien presence, quite different from anything that Castorp, the model of the German bourgeois class, had ever experienced. As Larry Wolff has noted, Russia was a place connected to the rest of Europe by postal routes, but which few Germans ever visited.
African Resistance and Center Party Recalcitrance in the Reichstag Colonial Debates of 1905/06
Authors: Lowry John S.
Published: February 2008

On May 26, 1906, as German chancellor Bernhard von Bülow rested on the North Sea coast recuperating from a recent physical collapse, his administration suffered a resounding triple defeat in the Reichstag at the hands of his hitherto indispensable Catholic political partners in the Center party. In the course of a single day, the Centrists rejected the military justification for a railroad in wartorn Southwest Africa, ruled out further government compensation for settler losses in the Herero and Nama Uprisings, and then blocked the elevation of the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office to the status of an independent imperial office. Moreover, the intense interest of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the passage of each of these colonial measures rendered the Center's decisive contribution to the rout acutely embarrassing for the chancellor. Faced seven months later with a similar Centrist refusal to authorize more than twenty of the latest twenty-nine million marks toward suppression of the Nama, Bülow would then dissolve the Reichstag, putting a definitive end to nearly a decade of government-Center parliamentary cooperation.
Fritz Ringer, 1934–2006
Authors: McCole John
Published: February 2008

Fritz Ringer, Emeritus Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, died on February 3, 2006, of a chronic pulmonary illness with which he had been struggling for several years. With his death we lost one of our most distinctive and recognizable voices in modern European intellectual history. He leaves us a distinguished body of scholarship that reflects an unusually unified, lifelong, intellectual project as well as an example of active, principled conduct in defense of the ethical ideals of the university. Both will remain challenges to us now and in the future.
A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761-1891
Authors: Head Randolph C.
Published: February 2008

Studies of national identity and nationalism have experienced a high conjuncture during the last decade, and recently Switzerland (after a typical delay) is taking its place among them. In this rich but somewhat sprawling study, Oliver Zimmer traces the shifting contours of national sentiment in Switzerland—a project that always gave historical arguments a central place in the origins of Swissness—and seeks to show how a national identity could be constrained by embedded traditions and take shape out of the very debates over meaning of “the nation.”
History and Memory in the Carolingian World. By Rosamond McKitterick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. xvi+337. $70.00 (hardback), $27.99 (paperback). ISBN 0-521-82717-5. The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula canonicorum in the Eighth Century. By M. A. Claussen. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, 61. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 2005. Pp. xii+342. $80 (hardback). ISBN 0-521-83931-9.
Authors: Hummer Hans
Published: February 2008

One of Rosamond McKitterick's laudable contributions to medieval studies has been the attention she has focused on the importance of manuscript evidence as a fundamental and fruitful source for doing history. Another has been the imagination, creativity, and enthusiasm she has brought to that evidence, most famously in her provocative work on literacy. In this manifesto, McKitterick turns her interest to another topic that has received much attention in the last decade and a half, memory, and joined it to the larger issue of the writing and reading of history in Carolingian times. Here again we see McKitterick daring to get behind the critical editions by going to the manuscripts themselves and thus introducing us to the vibrancy of Carolingian historical culture too often cloaked by the published sources. It is her underlying contention that the particular Carolingian emphasis on chronology, as the means by which Christian, Frankish, Roman, and local histories were united and brought into a synthesis, contributed fundamentally to the development of a European identity.
The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche. By George S. Williamson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pp. 376. $55.00 (cloth); $24 (paper). ISBN 0-226-89945-4 (cloth); 0-226-89946-2 (paper).
Authors: Levinger Matthew
Published: February 2008

“Christianity has emptied Walhalla, felled the sacred groves, extirpated the national imagery as a shameful superstition, as a devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation whose climate, laws, culture, and interests are strange to us and whose history has no connection whatever with our own” (p. 72). The young Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel voiced this lament in 1796, while working as a private tutor in Berne.
Germany at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas
Authors: Penny H. Glenn
Published: February 2008

This is a fascinating book, partly because of the excellent contributions, and partly because of the ways in which the editors have chosen to engage the topic and organize their volume. Marchand and Lindenfeld open the collection with a loaded question: Was there a German fin de siècle? Did Germans, in other words, share the kinds of reactions to modernity that have so fascinated historians of Austria and France? Their answer is yes and no. Many German intellectuals embraced the modernist currents Carl Schorske identified more than forty years ago in his work on fin de siècle Vienna, reacting to the depressing problems of modernization in ways similar to their Austrian counterparts. And yet much of the German population was largely unbowed by their putatively perplexing condition. As the editors argue, despite the worries of many an intellectual, “the later Wilhelmine world was characterized by enormous ambition and optimism, booming industries and bustling new urban spaces, cultural and political activism on a new scale, and the promise, if not the immediate realization, of a ‘place in the sun’ on the world stage” (p. 1). That optimism is the perplexing bit, because many of us, schooled in the dark side of Weimar culture and its intellectual antecedents, have learned to imagine Germans at the end of the nineteenth century (or at least our favorite representatives) as people caught up in a pessimistic, existential, Nietzschean funk. Indeed, the editors themselves have not avoided that position entirely.
From Darwin to Hitler. Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany
Authors: Smith Helmut Walser
Published: February 2008

“Darwinism was a necessary, but not sufficient, cause for Nazi ideology.” This is the thesis of Richart Weikart's important, scholarly, controversial, but narrowly conceived book. Put more strongly, but within the parameters of Weikert's argument: No Darwin, no Hitler.
Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, 1880-1933. By Margaret Steig Dalton. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2005. Pp. xii+378. $35.00. ISBN 0-268-02567-3.
Authors: Gross Michael B.
Published: February 2008

The growth of research on religious topics from different conceptual perspectives in the past several years represents what one scholar has now called the “religious turn” in modern German historical study. With Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, Margaret Steig Dalton has made another important contribution to this historiography with a study of Catholic cultural criticism from the Wilhelmine period through the Weimar Republic. Her focus is on what she calls the “Catholic cultural movement,” and by cultural movement she means production in the arts broadly understood from literature to film and radio.
The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945
Authors: Robinson Paul
Published: February 2008

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholarly interest in the inter-war Russian emigration has increased significantly, and numerous works on émigré life, culture, and politics have been published. Given the limited influence that émigrés had on the world around them, much of this work has inevitably been rather introspective, of little interest to scholars outside this narrow field. Michael Kellogg's new book, The Russian Roots of Nazism, is rather different. He argues that one group of White Russian exiles had a decisive influence on the development of the Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler in the early 1920s. His account makes an important contribution not only to the history of the Russian emigration, but also to that of German politics.
The German Communist Party in Saxony, 1924-1933
Authors: Lapp Benjamin
Published: February 2008

Norman LaPorte's The German Communist Party in Saxony, 1924-1933 contributes new and important material to the major debates on the history of German Communism during the Weimar Republic. Laporte distinguishes between an older historiography, which focused on the top-down imposition of a Stalinist model, with a post-1960s revisionist “history from below.” The revisionist historians explained Communist behavior “as a response to a range of social and economic conditions that influenced the mentality of party members and the choices of the party leadership” (p. 22). LaPorte sees his own work as a step beyond both schools. Following Weber, he argues that policy was indeed formulated from above, and he suggests that the revisionists have downplayed the significance of the “top-down system of control” in the KPD. At the same time, the party leaderships' directives were interpreted and responded to in specific political contexts. The rank-and-file could not be easily forced to carry out policies that “failed to account for the realities of their own specific political environment,” and the attempt of the party leadership to impose ideological uniformity, Laporte argues, “destabilized” the relationship between the party and its membership. Hence, he views his work as an attempt to fuse history “from above and below” (p. 31).
Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: The Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim
Authors: Baranowski Shelley
Published: February 2008

At first glance, Andrew Bergerson's Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times appears to be another local study about the rise and legitimation of Nazism, one more addition to an already impressive list of similar undertakings. What distinguishes this work is the author's effort, through ethnography and oral history, to link the everyday neighborly practices of ordinary Germans in the Hannoverian town of Hildesheim to Nazi criminality. The result is an insightful and often provocative analysis of informal and unexceptional social behavior that paradoxically masked the more formal commitments of class, religion, and ideology in the name of civility, while simultaneously deepening those very same divisions.
Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler's Berlin
Authors: Connelly John
Published: February 2008

This absorbing and well-researched book presents the story of Berlin's Catholic Church during the Nazi era from the perspective of a deeply committed believer. Professor Kevin Spicer is also Father Kevin Spicer. As such, it offers critics a chance to test their arguments against a serious voice from within the Church. But it also affords more neutral observers a chance to ponder the assumptions behind debates on the churches in the Third Reich, in particular, what acts can be considered oppositional and what drove certain religious believers into resistance.
Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Politisierung, Vernichtung, Überleben. Edited by Jörg Echternkamp. Band 9, Halbband 1, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Edited by Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. 2004. Pp. xi+993. €49.80. ISBN 3-421-06236-6. Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung. Edited by Jörg Echternkamp. Band 9, Halbband 2, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Edited by Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. 2005. Pp. xiii+1112. €49.80. ISBN 3-421-06528-4.
Authors: Moeller Robert G.
Published: February 2008

During the Second World War, Germans fought a “two-front war.” A “community of fate” bound together Germans at home and Germans in uniform who carried the war beyond Germany's borders. “Between 1939 and 1945, there was no doubt that civilians were no longer excluded from the fighting; they found themselves right in the middle of it—as actors, as observers, and as those who bore the suffering” (part 1, p. 2) of the war. The Nazi leadership knew this from the start, and only days after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Hermann Göring was exhorting a factory workforce to remember: “We are now all fighters at the front!”(part 1, p. 8). Jörg Echternkamp reminds us of this in his introduction to this massive two-part volume, the latest installment in the history of Germany in the Second World War that has occupied historians of the Military History Research Office (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, or MGFA) for the last twenty-five years. Echternkamp is the editor, and he deserves enormous credit for pulling together a collection of twenty essays—some of which could easily stand on their own as monographs, all of which are grounded in staggering amounts of original research—that not only summarize what we know about the impact of the war on the homefront in Germany, but also add considerably to that knowledge. Previous volumes in the MGFA series (seven of which are available from Oxford University Press in English translation) have focused primarily on the military planning, the war at the front, and the organization of the war economy at home. In the more than 2,000 pages of this two-part volume, contributors turn their attention to the impact of the war on German society. The results are extremely impressive, and what Echternkamp has brought together will be the starting point for anyone who wants to understand the war at home in Germany.
Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion, 1941-1943
Authors: Black Peter
Published: February 2008

Andrej Angrick's definitive work on Einsatzgruppe D is more than a history of the mobile killing unit, for the latter did not operate in a vacuum, but cooperated with the German military authorities to realize Nazi occupation policy in the south Ukraine and the Caucasus. In Angrick's words, Einsatzgruppe D was the “first and most radical instrument for the formation of the to-be-conquered Lebensraum” (p. 732). German determination to recast the ethnic composition of the U.S.S.R. was no “desk fantasy,” as reflected in the priority placed on settlement planning, which required the disappearance of Soviet Jews. Unlike Jewish communities in the western U.S.S.R., where survival of some was guaranteed by the need for labor, survivors in areas “worked” by Einsatzgruppe D were “minutely few”(p. 733). Angrick notes that his work is “perpetrator history”: his perpetrators permitted few victims to survive; and those who did were primarily peasants and Red Army soldiers whose stories were not told after the war. Nevertheless, postwar statements of the perpetrators assist the historian to “reconstruct … the internal history of the unit, down to the individual,” although cautions about judicial and historical “truth” should be well taken.
Wegbereiter der Shoah. Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939–1945. By Martin Cüppers. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 2005. Pp. 464. €59.90. ISBN 3-534-16022-3.
Authors: Gerlach Christian
Published: February 2008

To date, debates about the identity and motives of perpetrators of German extermination policies have focused on the Einsatzgruppen (mobile squads of the Security Police and the Security Service), concentration camp personnel, and the Order Police. Martin Cüppers now presents the first systematic study of one of the best documented, yet least publicized set of units that participated in the murder of European Jews. He explores three Waffen-SS brigades and some smaller units under the Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS. In some respects, the book's title is misleading. It does not cover the military wing of the SS as a whole and, if anything, it demonstrates that the Kommandostab was of minor importance since it was never really in command of anything. Serving as a transmitter of information and as an organizational tool, it further declined in importance after early 1942. In addition, just as with other perpetrator units, the Waffen-SS brigades did not murder only Jews; the book does deal with the brigades' other victims though the book title does not suggest it.
Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. By Gerhard L. Weinberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Pp. xxiv+292. $28.00. ISBN 978-0-521-85254-8.
Authors: Bischof Günter
Published: February 2008

Weinberg pursues a simple question: What “visions” of the postwar world did the principal leaders of the major belligerent powers develop during the war? Weinberg's unsurpassed mastery of World War II as a global war allows him to pen eight compelling portraits of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt and their ideas for the future positions of their country. Each essay constitutes a minor masterpiece of concision and erudition in and of itself. My only quibble is that Weinberg exclusively concentrates on the top leadership and ignores the lower working levels of postwar planning—there may have been less “vision” there but most of the “grunt” work was done by those planners. Much information in these portraits is known to specialists, but there are some surprising insights, too.
Kampf um die Akten. Die Westalliierten und die Rückgabe von deutschem Archivgut nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg
Authors: Van Hook James C.
Published: February 2008

Astrid Eckert undertook a daunting task when she began to research and write Kampf um die Akten. The field of post-war German history has become increasingly crowded in recent years with many excellent books on politics, diplomacy, economics, culture, and memory. One might have wondered how well an exhaustive study on the fate of captured German documents would fare in such an environment. Yet precisely for this reason, Eckert's achievement with this book is all the more impressive. This is a study of profound importance to the historiography on twentieth-century Germany.
The Nuremberg Medical Trial: The Holocaust and the Origin of the Nuremberg Medical Code. By Horst H. Freyhofer. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 2004. Pp. 209. Paperback, $35.95. ISBN 0-8204-6797-9.
Authors: Wittmann Rebecca
Published: February 2008

In his examination of the Nuremberg Medical Trial conducted by the American Military Tribunal in 1946, Horst H. Freyhofer has not, in fact, written a book about an important war crimes trial; this is rather a book that ponders whether we can “comprehend” the crimes of Nazi doctors engaged in some of the most heinous medical experiments in history. This is a short volume that tries to cover too much: the Hippocratic oath; the history of human experimentation by doctors; the ethical implications of medical crimes from the beginning of “Western Civilization” to the present; and a theoretical analysis of medical ethics from Goldhagen, to Socrates, to Darwin, to Nietzsche, to Hegel. Freyhofer fails to provide a contextual examination of the medical trial or of Nazi trials in general. The book would have benefited greatly from an examination of the important literature on war crimes trials (Gary Bass, Belinda Cooper, Ian Buruma, Lawrence Douglas, Jörg Friedrich, Michael Marrus, and Mark Osiel, to name but a few). These scholars address key questions about the trope of the trial as a forum for the teaching of history lessons, as a political event, and for its success and failure in seeking justice in cases of mass atrocity. Freyhofer does not explore any of these avenues. Instead, the author's main thesis is that the trial “symbolizes a break, not so much with the image physicians have of themselves, but with the image patients have of themselves” (p. 11). Freyhofer argues that the trial made patients conscious—for the first time—that doctors did not always have their best interests at heart. While this is an interesting observation, it does not suffice to keep the reader engaged in the history of the trial.
A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past
Authors: Biess Frank
Published: February 2008

In this useful and informative study, Matthew Hockenos examines German Protestants' confrontations with the Nazi past in the early postwar period. Following an entire series of recent studies on postwar memory, Hockenos, too, disproves the long-held assumption that postwar Germans simply repressed the past. Instead, Hockenos unearths a comprehensive and often controversial Protestant discourse about the Nazi past. To be sure, Protestant memory, as this study makes clear, did not entail an “honest, open postwar discussion of the church's complacency and complicity in the face of Nazis' illegal, inhumane, and unchristian policies” (p. 10). Yet the significance of this book does not primarily consist of exposing rather unsurprising deficiencies of Protestant memories. More importantly, it reveals the considerable internal disagreements of a “divided Church” about the Nazi past, and it demonstrates the crucial significance of long-standing theological and doctrinal differences for shaping Protestant responses to the Nazi past.
The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar West Germany, 1945-1965
Authors: Griech-Polelle Beth A.
Published: February 2008

The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar West Germany offers readers an elegantly written analysis of German Catholic subculture, or “milieu.” Ruff examines how it once successfully operated in the mid-nineteenth century and then explores why the same strategies failed to win the continued support of young Catholics in the postwar era of the Federal Republic. Ruff modifies the standard interpretation of the 1950s as a static time in German history, examines the impact of consumer culture on the Catholic subculture, and offers his own contribution to the theories of secularization.
Germany and the Baltic Problem after the Cold War: The Development of a New Ostpolitik 1989–2000. By Kristina Spohr Readman. London: Routledge.2004. Pp. xx + 264. $95.00. ISBN 0-7146-5515-5.
Authors: Sarotte Mary Elise
Published: February 2008

Kristina Spohr Readman's book, Germany and the Baltic Problem after the Cold War, serves as a fine example of what historians can achieve in the field of contemporary history. Her study provides a detailed account of the political process of German unification and its consequences for its neighbors. By drawing on archival sources that have, for various reasons, become available before the usual closure period has expired, along with interviews, memoirs, and published documents, she has provided a painstaking, scholarly analysis of the manifold transitions in European relations that took place in the wake of the unexpected events of 1989.
Revolutionary Moment: Interpreting the Peasants' War in the Third Reich and in the German Democratic Republic
Authors: Müller Laurenz
Published: February 2008

History textbooks speak of an American, an English, a French, and a Russian revolution, but historians do not recognize a “German Revolution.” For this reason the formation of a German national state was long described as an aspect of a German “divergent path” (Sonderweg) or exceptionalism. While this concept established itself in post-1945 West Germany, German historical scholarship had even earlier insisted on a uniquely German transition from the Old Regime to the modern state, fundamentally different from what took place in the other western European countries. Still earlier, German idealist thinkers had declared the national state (Reich) to be the German people's historical objective. Around 1900 the Reich was understood to be not a rational community based on a contract between independent individuals, as were France and England, but a national community of destiny. The German ideal was not a republic split up into political parties but an organic community between the Reich's people and its rulers. This is why German history had never known a successful revolution from below. During the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, this alleged unity was seen in a positive light, but after 1945 it inspired an explanation, which quickly became canonical, of why German history had led to a catastrophe. German exceptionalism was now understood, especially by German social historians, as a one-way street toward the National Socialist regime.
Urban Order and Religious Coexistence in the German Imperial City: Augsburg and Donauwörth, 1548–1608
Authors: Dixon C. Scott
Published: February 2008

In the writing of the German Reformation, there has long been a strong association between urban history and the evangelical movement. The sentiment has been around since the days of Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), but it was the publication of Bernd Moeller's Imperial Cities and the Reformation (1962) that turned the rather casual notion into a research paradigm. Moeller imagined the Reformation in terms of the medieval cityscape. “It is important to recognize,” he wrote, “that the Reformation was introduced almost everywhere according to the forms prescribed by the city constitution, and that it had its foundation in the city's communal mentality.” Constitutionally, there was a clear filiation of development to account for the later Protestant church. Throughout the medieval period urban communes had been securing rights and privileges extending the claims and functions of local sovereignty, from the regulation of the immediate economy, the control of taxation, and the administration of lesser jurisdiction, to the guardianship of parish religion. In a similar manner, when Moeller spoke of the collective mentality of the German city, he did so in order to draw attention to the norms and values of urban governance and the similar reserve of norms preached in early evangelical theology. In its origins, the Imperial city was characterized as a political association, bound by oath, joined by common will, created in order to preserve the peace. The urban values underwriting this myth of community were those that placed collective welfare above the interests of the individual—concord, unity, justice, love, peace, and the common good (Gemeinnutz). Further legitimation of the communal ideal was provided by the medieval affinity to imagine the city in terms of a sacral corporation (corpus Christianum), with the religious standing of each member of the union bearing upon collective salvation. Little separates this cast of mind from evangelical theology and its stress on brotherly love, peace, and the community of believers. God's Word, to use the phrasing of the town clerk of Nördlingen, heals the divisions of the commune as it heals the divisions of the soul.
The German Princes' Responses to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525
Authors: Sea Thomas F.
Published: February 2008

The German Peasants' Revolt of 1525 represented an unprecedented challenge to the princes and other petty political rulers of the areas involved. While localized uprisings had occurred with increasing frequency in the decades prior to the 1525 revolt and an uneasy awareness of growing levels of peasant discontent was widespread among most rulers of southern and central German lands, the extent of the major rebellion that developed in early 1525 took everyone by surprise. No one was prepared to respond, either militarily or through more peaceful means. Even the Swabian League, the peacekeeping alliance of Imperial princes, prelates, nobility, and cities that eventually assumed primary responsibility for suppressing the revolt, did little to mobilize its resources for almost six months after the first appeals for help from its members against disobedient subjects reached it. When the League did mobilize, its decision created further problems for League members, since most sent their required contingents to the League's forces only to discover that they needed the troops badly themselves once the revolt spread to their own lands. Since the Council of the Swabian League adamantly refused to return any members' troops because this would hinder the League's own ability to suppress the peasant disorders, many members found themselves virtually defenseless against the rebels.
“A Dark, Impenetrable Wall of Complete Incomprehension”: The Impossibility of Heterosexual Love in Imperial Germany
Authors: Dickinson Edward Ross
Published: February 2008

In the years around the turn of the twentieth century, the “war between the sexes” was a major topic of public discussion and concern in Germany—in the daily press, in academic sexology journals and organizations, among medical and psychiatric professionals, in the women's movements, among conservative Christians, in art and music. Jacques Le Rider has even referred to the “obsessive leitmotif of male-female confrontation” in central European culture in this period. Much of what has been written about this topic in recent years posits a crisis of gender relations produced by the growth of the women's movement, and by the backlash against it. The idea that the feminist challenge generated hostility between men and women in this period was one that was also common at the time, particularly among anti-feminists. As Hedwig Dohm put it in 1913, “In all anti-feminist speeches and writings, the hostility between men and women is tirelessly denounced as a characteristic of the times, and a product of the women's movement.”
Tourist Landscapes and Regional Identities in Saxony, 1878–1938
Authors: Murdock Caitlin E.
Published: February 2008

The 1905Kalender für das Erzgebirge und Vogtlanddescribed an apparently spontaneous shift in the relationship between the German state of Saxony's mountainous southern borderlands and its rapidly urbanizing lowlands. Yet from the 1870s to the 1930s, theKalender, theErzgebirgsvereinthat published it, and a host of similarHeimat(homeland) and tourist organizations pushed, prodded, and cajoled lowlanders into visiting the borderlands. In the process, they repeatedly reframed the ways in which they portrayed the landscapes they championed, rethought their reasons for enticing travelers to the southern regions, and redirected their efforts to new audiences. SaxonHeimatlerand tourism promoters succeeded in defining southern Saxony's regions, and eventually Saxony as a whole, in terms of three important characteristics: the interplay of nature and industry in their landscapes; the diversity of those landscapes; and proximity to and interactions with Bohemia. So powerful were these themes that they continue to shape ideas about southern Saxony to the present.
Dismantling a Dystopia: On the Historiography of Music in the Third Reich
Authors: Potter Pamela M.
Published: February 2008

In 1981, the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, the official society of German musicologists, held its first formal session on the subject of “Music in the 1930s.” Rudolf Stephan, then president of the society, concluded his opening remarks with the following admonition
Of Basques, Greeks, and Germans: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Ancient Republican Tradition in the Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt
Authors: Vick Brian
Published: February 2008

The relationships between German intellectuals and politics at the turn of the nineteenth century have been much debated, with the nature of the German liberal tradition at the core of controversy, and with questions about the interconnections between liberalism, nationalism, and neohumanistBildungcircling not far beyond that core. Prominent in such discussions stands the figure of the Prussian scholar and statesman Wilhelm von Humboldt. Best known today variously for his part in overhauling the Prussian educational system during the “reform era” of Chancellors Stein and Hardenberg, or for helping to establish the disciplines of classical philology and comparative linguistics, Humboldt also authored one of the seminal texts in the European liberal tradition and was actively involved in the diplomacy, constitutional planning, and nationalist upheaval surrounding Napoleon's expulsion from Germany and the subsequent construction of the German Confederation.
Mathematical modelling in animal nutrition: a centenary review
Authors: DUMAS A. , DIJKSTRA J. , FRANCE J.
Published: February 2008

A centenary review presents an opportunity to ponder over the processes of concept development and give thought to future directions. The current review aims to ascertain the ontogeny of current concepts, underline the connection between ideas and people and pay tribute to those pioneers who have contributed significantly to modelling in animal nutrition. Firstly, the paper draws a brief portrait of the use of mathematics in agriculture and animal nutrition prior to 1925. Thereafter, attention turns towards the historical development of growth modelling, feed evaluation systems and animal response models. Introduction of the factorial and compartmental approaches into animal nutrition is noted along with the particular branches of mathematics encountered in various models. Furthermore, certain concepts, especially bioenergetics orthe heat doctrine, are challenged and alternatives are reviewed. The current state of knowledge of animal nutrition modelling results mostly from the discernment and unceasing efforts of our predecessors rather than serendipitous discoveries. The current review may stimulate those who wish for greater understanding and appreciation.
A novel approach to the management of acute tracheal tear
Authors: Creagh-Brown B , Sheth A , Crerar-Gilbert A , Madden B P
Published: February 2008

Objective:

We describe the emergency use of a covered, expandable, removable tracheal stent in a patient who developed a large posterior tracheal tear complicating endobronchial therapy for large airway obstruction.

Method:

Case report and review of the literature concerning management of acute tracheal tear.

Results and conclusion:

Our patient demonstrates that endotracheal stenting is an option for managing acute large airway tear. Moreover, the use of a removable stent allows not only for rapid closure of the defect but also removal once the defect has healed, thus avoiding long-term complications of stent deployment.