The Prosecution of Informers in Eastern Germany, 1945–51

This work is an examination of the practices and experiences of administering transitional justice in post-war eastern Germany after 1945, examining the adjudication of informers as indirect perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Allied occupation law allowed for the prosecution of informers retroactively in the German courts through legislation specifically enacted for the purpose of prosecuting crimes against humanity. The implementation of the law and the prosecution of informers in the Soviet occupation zone under the auspices of the military government administration, and then later in the early years of German Democratic Republic of Germany is examined. This work also addresses the theoretical and practical problems associated with the implementation of the law, and the lessons to be drawn from this historically significant attempt to call individuals to account for their crimes against humanity after they had occurred through the use of retroactive legislation.     

Jüdischer alltag in Deutschland, 1933–1945

While discussions of the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg over ‘secularisation’ focus primarily on the methodological utility of the concept, the difference between them was also one of the philosophical commitments and substantive claims about modernity. This difference is not always obvious. One way of bringing it out is to address the different contexts in which they produced their most famous statements about secularisation. But another, and one that will be pursued here, is to consider the critical dialogue that both thinkers engaged in with Nietzsche. Put briefly, while Löwith thought that Nietzsche misunderstood the ancients, Blumenberg thought that he misunderstood the moderns. For Löwith, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return is not Greek, but an aggressive countergospel that owes much to the Christian culture it seeks to oppose; for Blumenberg, Nietzsche assumes, wrongly, that the self-belittlement of man by theology has been succeeded by the self-belittlement of man by science. In addition, Blumenberg – unlike both Nietzsche and Löwith – thinks that he can mount a robust defence of both modern science and progress.