Relegating Nazism to the Past: Expressions of German Guilt in 1945 and Beyond

This article builds on a research thesis that confronting moralfeelings is essential to an understanding of the catastrophicpolitical success of Nazism in Germany and the way Germany developedafter its defeat in 1945. This research into a ‘moralhistory’ of Nazi Germany and its postwar echoes is carriedout through an interdisciplinary approach that, in essence,combines historical with philosophical analysis. In the immediatepostwar period, Germany continued to be stamped by discussionscentred on moral guilt arising from its Nazi past and from theHolocaust in particular. The article analyses the differentways this guilt was discussed in 1945 and how these discussionsechoed what can be described as a form of Nazi morality. Thearticle uses three main sources to explore these issues: first,the writings and interrogations with the Nazi lawyer and Governor-Generalof Nazi-occupied Poland, Hans Frank; second, the memoirs ofHitler's secretary Traudl Junge; and third, the essay The Questionof German Guilt by Karl Jaspers.     

Review Article: Re-ordering Europe after 1945

ENNIO DI NOLFO, ed. Power in Europe?: II: Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy and the Origins of the EEC, 1952–1957. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992. Pp. viii, 598. DM 238.00;

ALAN S. MILWARD. The European Rescue of the Nation-State. London and New York: Roudedge, 1992. Pp. xv, 477. £35.00;

ALAN S. MILWARD et al. The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory, 1945–1992. London and New York: Roudedge, 1993. Pp. xi, 234. £40.00;

DAVID WEIGALL and PETER STIRK, eds. The Origins and Development of the European Community. Leicester and London: Leicester University Press, 1992. Pp. ix, 211. £11.95;

PETER DUIGNAN and L. H. GANN. The Rebirth of the West: The Americanization of the Democratic World, 1945–1958. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Pp. xii, 733. $69.50 (US);

FRANCIS H. HELLER and JOHN R. GILLINGHAM, eds. NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of Europe. London: Macmillan, 1992. Pp. ix, 470. £45.00;

WALTER LAQUEUR. Europe in Our Time: A History, 1945–1992. London: Viking, 1992. Pp. xxii, 617. £17.99.     

the Future of the Past: Historiographical Disputes and Competing Memories in Germany and Israel

During the last two decades, a surge of historical revisionism has commanded considerable attention in both academia and the public sphere, as historians have linked their understandings of the past to salient problems and identity crises of the present. Increasingly, the histories of nations have been problematized and have become the object of commemorative battles. Historiographical disputes thus reveal no less about contemporary political sensibilities than they do about a nation's history. This article situates the proliferation of historical revisionism within the context of ongoing negotiations regarding the meaning of the nation at the end of the twentieth century. Through a comparison of recent historians' disputes in Germany and Israel, I explore the relationship between revisionism and collective memory, and the ways in which both are reflective of and contribute to the reformation of national identification. While national identities are usually predicated on continuities with the past, new German and Israeli identities are being defined in opposition to the founding myths of their nation-states. Both are continuously reassessing their pasts, negotiating the balance between a commitment to universal (democratic) values and the persistence of particularistic (ethnic) traditions. To be sure, national pasts have been contested before, but until recently the primacy of the nation itself was not significantly challenged. I suggest understanding the ongoing phenomenon of national demystification in the context of changing state–society relations. States no longer enjoy the same hegemonic power over the means of collective commemoration. In contrast to the state-supportive role of historians during the formative phase of nationalism, collective memory has become an increasingly contested terrain. In both countries, revisionists from the left and right self-consciously struggle to provide historical narratives of their nation's past to suit their present political views of the future.     

Time Consuming: Women's Radio and the Reconstruction of National Narratives in Western Germany 1945-1948

The question of the proper place of women in German societywas one of the most pressing issues of the time immediatelyafter the Second World War. The sheer numerical disproportionof women to men in Germany, combined with the expanded publicroles many women had adopted during wartime, meant that therewas hardly a debate about postwar German society that was notin some way touched by this question. The expanded role andvisibility of women in the immediate postwar era coincided withthe unprecedented dominance of the radio, which had emergedfrom the war as the best preserved means of mass communication,information and cheap entertainment. This article shows theimportant role played by the radio, and in particular women'sprogrammes, in helping to shape the role and visions of womenin the developing West German society. Based on an analysisof the way women's programmes addressed the activity of womenin society, it is argued that in the years of scarcity beforethe 1948 currency reform, women's time gained unprecedentedvalue as a consumer ‘commodity’. In particular,the efforts of women's programmes to structure and disciplinewomen's use of time contributed significantly to the discourseof women as consumer citizens that developed dominance in thesocial market economy of the Federal Republic. The image ofthe female time consumer was combined in women's programmeswith essential notions of femininity to create new narrativesof German national identity. Within the broader context of thedebate on the role of women in society, radio programming ofthe immediate postwar years helped to embed certain discourseson femininity, consumption and Germanness that later developedin 1950s society.     

Celebrating 30 years of feminist geographies in the German-speaking countries Germany,Switzerland* and Austria

Abstract

In this paper, we present the development of feminist geographies in the three German-speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Since the emergence of feminist approaches in German-speaking geography in the 1980s, feminist geographers situated in these countries have worked closely together within the context of the Working Group “Geography and Gender”. The overview highlights cornerstones of the development of feminist geographies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as the Feminist Geography Newsletter (Feministisches GeoRundMail), the Doreen Massey Reading Weekends, the feminist geography student meetings (Feministisches Geograph_innentreffen) and the current DFG-research network “Feminist Geographies of the New Materialism”. By doing so, we try to appreciate both the historical development of feminist geographies and the current situation in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Highlighting both informal and institutionalized pillars of feminist geographies in these countries, we show how feminist geographies have moved from a marginalized position towards a vibrant field that gains more and more attention within the German-speaking geography community as a whole.     

Legislation and Liberalization: The Debate About Corporal Punishment in Schools in Postwar West Germany, 1945--1975

Between 1945 and 1975 West Germany became modernized and liberalized.School education was one of the key fields in which this processwas played out. Methods of school discipline, corporal punishmentin particular, were the subject of heated public debates, reflectingthe broader political and moral issues of West German postwarreconstruction. The article examines the debate and its conclusionin the 1970s by focusing on Hesse, the only Land that bannedcorporal punishment in schools completely in 1946, and Bavariaand North Rhine-Westphalia, which both allowed it under restrictions.Proponents of corporal punishment pointed to the problems withdeviant youth in the postwar years and declared the use of thistype of sanction to be a right given to teachers by customarylaw. Opponents, however, put forward pedagogical, psychological,political, and moral arguments and called for a clear breakwith authoritarian methods of the past as necessary for rebuildingdemocracy. The pace and character of change, however, was determinedin the field of law. While a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 supportedthe opponents' position, a 1957 ruling by another Chamber ofthe same court reaffirmed the traditional customary-law viewof a teacher's right to wield the cane. Customary law couldonly be superseded by written law, but when most Land governmentsfinally abolished corporal punishment in schools in the early1970s, they did so, following Hesse's example, by administrativedecree only. While teachers who violated the ban therefore werenot automatically subject to criminal proceedings, courts remainedreluctant to uphold the ban. The abolition of corporal punishmentin schools, which also came at the price of an increase in bureaucraticregulations about school discipline and school life, can thusbe seen as reflecting the ambivalence of modernization and liberalizationafter 1945.