The Joint Polish--German Commission for the Revision of School Textbooks and Polish Views of German History

The Joint Polish–German Commission for the Revision ofSchool Textbooks was set up in 1972, bringing together historiansfrom Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany in view of reopeninga scholarly dialogue after decades of almost complete noncommunication.Until the late 1980s, the commission played a prominent roleas a forum for cross-national discussions on Polish-German Beziehungsgeschichte,and most of the leading Polish experts in German history participatedin its proceedings. For the development of Polish historiographyon Germany the work of the commission seems to have been relevantin at least two respects. The commission's regular conferenceson controversial or methodologically complex issues of Polish-GermanBeziehungsgeschichte contributed, on the one hand, to defininga new agenda for Polish historiography on Germany. The interestin explicitly comparative approaches to German and Polish historyincreased, and the focus shifted from specifically ‘Polishinterests’ in German history to more general issues. Onthe other hand, these conferences provided Polish historianswith the opportunity to make their research more visible toGerman historians (even outside the field of specialised EastEuropeanists)—a fact that encouraged Polish historiographyon Germany to pursue more ambitious tasks.     

Screening The Social Face of Denmark to the Nazis

Looking into the state-sponsored creation and presentation of a German-language film on the Danish social state, this article discusses the complexities of Danish–German relations during the German occupation of Denmark, 1940–1945. The film, Das soziale Gesicht Dänemarks, was screened in Berlin to a full house, including a number of Nazi notables, and followed by a presentation by the Danish Minister of Labor and Social Affairs. Based on archival research and film analysis, the article argues that the screening in Berlin informs an understanding of an asymmetrical power relationship between occupiers and occupied, in which the promotion of the Danish social model countered the hegemony of the dominant Nazi state. It did so by seeking to assert Danish sovereignty on social policy in accordance with German intentions to respect Danish sovereignty as stated at the very beginning of the occupation; in other words, for the Danish state, social policy became a means for an intentional but subdued resistance – even a form of counter-power – to the power of the German occupier.     

The nuclear nation and the German question: an American reactor in West Berlin

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany.     

'Pomorze' or 'Preussen'? Polish Perspectives on Early Modern Prussian History

The attitudes of Polish historical scholarship towards the historyof early modern Prussia has been deeply marked by the partitionsof Poland and the anti-Polish coalition between Prussia, Russiaand Austria, which denied Poland its own statehood for wellover a century. In contrast to nineteenth-century German ‘Landesgeschichte’,which focused on local research and archival resources, historiansfrom Poland have usually opted to stay more within patternsof national history-writing. When the Polish state was reconstitutedafter the First World War, hostilities built up between Germanand Polish historical schools on Prussia, expressed in the NationalDemocratic-influenced myl zachodnia (Western thought) on thePolish side, and a not less expansionist Ostforschung on theother side of the border. It was only after the catastropheof the Second World War, the redrawing of national borders ineast central Europe, and under the influence of Marxist historicalconcepts in the People's Republic of Poland that nationalistapproaches as well as the ‘black legend’ of thePrussia's past were temporarily suppressed and finally replacedby a more research-led scholarship. During the second half ofthe twentieth century, Polish historiography was in fact muchquicker and more thorough than its German counterpart to forgethe history of Prussia into a major academic subject. Sincethe 1980s, if not earlier, an extremely fruitful dialogue hasdeveloped between scholars—a dialogue which does not alwayspenetrate journalistic and public awareness, as recent polemicssurrounding the controversially planned ‘Centre for Expulsions’in Berlin have shown.     

Emigrated neuroscientists from Berlin to North America

ABSTRACT

The highest number of German scholars and physicians, forced by the National Socialist regime to emigrate for “race” or political reasons, were from Berlin. Language and medical exams were requested differently in their new host country—the United States—leading to a concentration of immigrants in the New York and Boston areas. Very early Emergency Committees in Aid of German Scholars and Physicians were established. Undergraduate students (like F. A. Freyhan, H. Lehmann, and H.-L. Teuber) from Berlin seemed to integrate easily, in contrast to colleagues of more advanced age. Some of the former chiefs and senior assistants of Berlin’s neurological departments could achieve a successful resettlement (C. E. Benda, E. Haase, C. F. List, and F. Quadfasel) and some a minor degree of success (F. H. Lewy and K. Goldstein). A group of neuropsychiatrists from Bonhoeffer’s staff at the Berlin Charité Hospital could rely on the forceful intercession of their former chief. The impact of the émigré colleagues on North American neuroscience is traced in some cases. Apart from the influential field of psychoanalysis, a more diffuse infiltration of German and European neuropsychiatry may be assumed. The contribution to the postwar blossoming of neuropsychology by the émigré neuroscientists K. Goldstein, F. Quadfasel, and H.-L. Teuber is demonstrated in this article.     

Technological Change and the Archaeology of Emergent Colonialism in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i

Archaeologically informed history is vital for examining the consequences of emergent colonialism in the nineteenth century and earlier, since documentary sources are silent on many facets of everyday life. Interpretations of contact and colonialism in Oceania often highlight rapid changes in the technologies and practices of its traditional island societies. In Hawai‘i, the top-down imposition of indigenous elite power greatly influenced the rate and character of technological change, as commoner access to European and American goods was initially curtailed in this highly stratified society. Although indigenous elites purposively used imported goods and technologies to materialize their hybrid identity—and to expand their political and economic power—this phenomenon presaged the development of unrestrained colonialism by Euro-Americans in the late nineteenth century. This study illustrates the need to examine a range of cultural and historical contingencies in studies of technological change during periods of emergent colonialism.     

Death and the Making of West Berlin, 1948-1961

This essay traces shifts in attitudes towards death, practicesof burial, and rituals of mourning in West Berlin from the 1948currency reform to the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall.It shows that West Berliners in the years immediately followingthe Second World War maintained an arduous devotion to theirdead—particularly the war dead. Yet as the war becamea less immediate experience over the course of the 1950s, broadcultural shifts took shape, including a renewed sense of optimismand an emerging feeling that the suffering associated with thewar could be and was being redeemed. Meanwhile, a cult of thedead long venerated as part of the very foundation of Germanculture gradually became ‘less German’ and ‘moreWestern’ over that same period. In this way, it also becamea means of distinguishing West Berlin from its Communist neighbourto the East. By focusing on shifts in perceptions and practicessurrounding death, the essay reveals part of the process bywhich moral and ethical values were reconstructed after Nazism,and how the racist collectivism of the Third Reich graduallygave way to the broadly individualist, democratic-socialisthumanism that would form the basis of an expressly West Germanpolitics and society.     

A Duty to Forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49

In Soviet-occupied East Germany during the mid- to late 1940s,a remarkable but scarcely remarked-upon transition took place.Hundreds of thousands of young Germans who had previously beenmembers of the Nazi youth organizations, the Hitler Youth (HJ)and the League of German Girls (BDM) flocked to join the Communist-ledFree German Youth (FDJ), a unisex ‘united youth organization’founded under Soviet auspices in March 1946. This paper examinesthe experiences of this ‘twice betrayed’ generation,whose members rapidly—though with varying degrees of enthusiasm—switchedallegiance from Nazism to Communism after the Second World Warand ultimately exchanged life in one authoritarian youth organizationfor life in another. Drawing on archival and interview material,it first seeks to outline Communist attitudes towards denazificationamong the young in the postwar period, before going on to examinefrom a grass-roots perspective the experiences, motivations,and attitudes of those who exchanged their HJ or BDM membershipbooks for those of the FDJ. Despite, or perhaps because of,East Germany's strongly-espoused and rigidly dogmatic ‘anti-fascism’,open discussion of the Nazi past was—for a variety ofreasons—taboo during the immediate postwar period, particularlyamong the young. This paper concludes by discussing the reasonsbehind this ‘pact of silence’ between the Communistsand the ‘Hitler Youth generation’—and howit impacted upon subsequent generations of young people ‘borninto socialism’.     

The Shifting Fortunes of War: Patronage of the Wurttemberg Hofkapelle during the Thirty Years War

German courts have long been renowned for their support of music.How long could this support continue in times of war? This articleconsiders the fate of the Württemberg Hofkapelle duringthe Thirty Years War (1618-48), a conflict that forced manydistinguished Hofkapellen to close their doors for much of thewar's duration. The Hofkapelle (literally ‘court chapel’or music ensemble) was the focus of much music patronage atearly modern German courts, and typically consisted of an orchestraof strings, horns, and percussion, as well as adult male singersand a boys’ choir. Based on an analysis of church councilaccounts that list all expenditure for court music throughoutthe war, the article asserts that demand for music during religiousservices under both Protestant and Catholic control of the duchyremained relatively constant. This demand enabled the Hofkapelleto continue musical performances, despite the enormous constraintsthe war placed on court expenditure. Music patronage was significant in several ways. Payment forperformers and composers could be highly competitive among Germancourts, with the best musicians earning salaries often far exceedingthose of other officials. Foreign musicians were much in demandin Württemberg as elsewhere, such as English lutenist JohnPrice, who founded a group of English lutenists at the Württembergcourt in 1618 that lasted until the death of Duke Johann Friedricha decade later. While the hardship of wartime effectively endedthe payment of large salaries, forcing many top performers toleave, members of the court still called for music at church,even if they had to pay for performances themselves. A studyof music patronage during the Thirty Years War thus revealsnot only the extent to which the court sought to support thearts, but also how that support reflected the shifting fortunesof war.     

The role of Herman Hoppe of Cincinnati in the initial clinical recognition of myasthenia gravis

One of the earliest papers describing a case of what came to be known as myasthenia gravis was written in 1892 in the German language by an American, Herman Hoppe, who at the time was an assistant in the Berlin polyclinic of the prominent German neurologist. Hermann Oppenheim. At Oppenheim's instigation, Hoppe published the pathology of a case that Oppenheim had diagnosed during life; he collected all the reported similar cases and tried to establish a symptom-complex, for which he was given credit in Oppenheim's great neurology textbook of 1894. Upon his return to Cincinnati, Ohio, Hoppe's European experience qualified him as a specialist in nervous and mental diseases. His private practice of "neuropsychiatry" was his main occupation, but he also volunteered to teach as Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases at the University of Cincinnati. In 1901 Oppenheim published the first monograph about what he called "Die Myasthenische Paralyse (Bulbarparalyse ohne anatomischen Befund)", summarizing 60 cases described in the medical literature up to that time. Hoppe, on the other hand, wrote on myasthenia gravis only once again, a review article in 1914 in a Cincinnati weekly, giving Oppenheim credit for the establishment of the disease as a clinical entity.     

The Medieval Colonization of Central Europe as a Problem of World History and Historiography

The author of this article asks two main questions. First, whatwas the nature of the so-called medieval colonization in theeastern half of central Europe? Secondly, which factors decidedthat in the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentiethcentury, during the era of a rising modern nationalism and imperialism,colonization became the—not always conscious—toolof manipulation in the fight for so-called ‘historic rights’in certain territories and the battle for the ‘forgingof nations’. In particular, in German historiography themyth of medieval colonization was born, which had very littlein common with medieval reality. Even German peasants were supposedto have marched East, not in order to seek out better livingconditions, as one Flemish song went, but to subject for Germany‘empty space’ in the barbaric East. At the sametime, the author presents the thesis that several ideas aboutthe topic of medieval colonization developed under the influenceof the colonization of North America, especially in California—contemporaryto many of these German scholars. This found its expressionin the terminology used, in numerous comparisons, and even inthe fundamental suggestion that German law legitimized the Germanclaim for almost the whole of central and eastern Europe. Thebasic conviction among German historians and politicians wasthat these territories should belong to the Empire under thesame conditions as India ‘belonged’ to the English,and Algeria to the French.     

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

Indicting Auschwitz? The Paradox of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

During the late 1950s, the German authorities in the publicprosecutor's office of the state of Hesse in Frankfurt beganto organize what would become the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial1963–5 of twenty people alleged to have been responsiblefor some of the worst crimes at the Auschwitz concentrationcamp. The trial opened with a seven-hundred-page indictment,an extraordinary document that included the testimony of twohundred and fifty-two witnesses (both survivors and former SSofficers) and a two-hundred-page history of the camp writtenby experts. In the mind of its principal organizer, the trialwas to put the entire ‘Auschwitz Complex’ beforethe court. This concept, ‘Auschwitz on trial’, isat the core of German public confrontation with the Nazi pastin the 1960s. But legal constraints, I argue, created the paradoxical situationin which the prosecution initially attempted to put Auschwitzon trial, but instead had to use some of the conventions ofthe Nazi regime in order to show the personal initiative ofthe defendants and convict them of perpetrating murder. By elucidatingthe origins and exigencies of the West German penal code, andby examining both the historical background section and thecharges against the suspects in the 1963 indictment, I showthat the decision to use the German penal code for prosecutingNazi crimes created a paradoxical situation for the state attorney'soffice in Frankfurt: they had to use Nazi orders and regulationsto show that the defendants had acted above and beyond the ordersof the SS in Berlin.     

The Role of Herman Hoppe of Cincinnati in the Initial Clinical Recognition of Myasthenia Gravis

One of the earliest papers describing a case of what came to be known as myasthenia gravis was written in 1892 in the German language by an American, Herman Hoppe, who at the time was an assistant in the Berlin polyclinic of the prominent German neurologist, Hermann Oppenheim. At Oppenheim’s instigation, Hoppe published the pathology of a case that Oppenheim had diagnosed during life; he collected all the reported similar cases and tried to establish a symptom-complex, for which he was given credit in Oppenheim’s great neurology textbook of 1894. Upon his return to Cincinnati, Ohio, Hoppe’s European experience qualified him as a specialist in nervous and mental diseases. His private practice of “neuropsychiatry” was his main occupation, but he also volunteered to teach as Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases at the University of Cincinnati. In 1901 Oppenheim published the first monograph about what he called “ Die Myasthenische Paralyse (Bulbarparalyse ohne anatomischen Befund) ”, summarizing 60 cases described in the medical literature up to that time. Hoppe, on the other hand, wrote on myasthenia gravis only once again, a review article in 1914 in a Cincinnati weekly, giving Oppenheim credit for the establishment of the disease as a clinical entity.     

J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and intellectual history

ABSTRACT

Recent thinking about Intellectual History has moved beyond studying only verbal texts, to encompass other kinds of visual and aural texts that can be vehicles for generative thought. Where might music fit into this expanded conception? If ideas are defined purely as concepts that can be expressed in words, music can be no more than an “epiphenomenon”, a consequence or representation of ideas that lie behind it, but not capable of embodying those ideas in itself. Yet to many musicians, it seems obvious that music can function as a way in which ideas are developed and worked out. What kinds of knowledge might be embodied in music, then, and how do its meanings change over time? In this paper, I examine some of these issues through consideration of one of the key texts of Western art music, J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, exploring how it was conceived in a liturgical context in Bach’s time, how its meaning changed when transposed to the very different milieus of concert performance in nineteenth-century Berlin and colonial Sydney, and as it has been re-imagined in a variety of recent staged and recorded versions.     

Value chains, networks and clusters: reframing the global automotive industry

In this article, we apply global value chain (GVC) analysisto recent trends in the global automotive industry, with specialattention paid to the case of North America. We use the threemain elements of the GVC framework—firm-level chain governance,power and institutions—to highlight some of the definingcharacteristics of this important industry. First, nationalpolitical institutions create pressure for local content, whichdrives production close to end markets, where it tends to beorganized nationally or regionally. Second, in terms of GVCgovernance, rising product complexity combined with low codifiabilityand a paucity of industry-level standards has driven buyer–supplierlinkages toward the relational form, a governance mode thatis more compatible with Japanese than American supplier relations.The outsourcing boom of the 1990s exacerbated this situation.As work shifted to the supply base, lead firms and supplierswere forced to develop relational linkages to support the exchangeof complex uncodified information and tacit knowledge. Finally,the small number of hugely powerful lead firms that drive theautomotive industry helps to explain why it has been so difficultto develop and set the industry-level standards that could underpina more loosely articulated spatial architecture. This case studyunderlines the need for an open, scalable approach to the studyof global industries.     

The Production and Display of Domestic Interiors in Wilhelmine Germany, 1900-1914

In the opening years of the twentieth century, the German homeassumed new cultural meanings and symbolic significance as asite of economic, political, artistic, and social intervention.This article investigates a range of Wilhelmine institutions—fromthe Wertheim department store and the Prussian Commerce Ministry,to the Applied Arts Movement and the Movement for Art Education—toillustrate the variety of German approaches to promoting newconceptions of the home. Examining the ways in which Wilhelmineprivate and state reformers turned the topic of how one livedand dwelled into a topic of pressing significance, the articleargues that private, commercial efforts and state-driven policyinitiatives interpenetrated to a degree previously underappreciatedin Wilhelmine historical studies. These private and state initiativeswere, in turn, closely tied to the cultivation of German consumeridentities, and to larger efforts on the part of Wilhelmineinstitutions to adapt to the dizzying conditions of twentieth-centurycapitalist modernity. As a result of these developments, specialexhibitions of artistic home interiors originated in premierGerman department stores as well as in the halls of the statebureaucracy; historical ornaments termed ‘modern’in one decade were denigrated as barbaric in another; and generationsof craftsmen battled one another for a legitimacy conferred,to a significant degree, by private commissions, generous statesubsidies, and admission into prestigious exhibitions.     

Diagnosis versus Dialogue: Oral Testimony and the Study of Pediatric Pain

Abstract: Through the perspectives of the children, this essayexamines the communication between pediatric pain patients andtheir doctors. Based upon the oral history responses of thirty-twopatients with chronic pain present for evaluation at the PediatricPain Clinic at UCLA, oral testimony was employed to uncovera wide range of topics related to a child's experience withpain such as family dynamics, how and when pain became a life-changingfactor, coping strategies, and external sources that contributeto the child's understanding of pain. Most important, childrenwere encouraged to explain what it was like to be in pain, notonly to describe symptoms but also to share their dreams andhopes, their fears and uncertainties—as well as the placeof pain in their world.     

A Balancing Act: Domestic Pressures and International Systemic Constraints in the Foreign Policies of the Great Powers, 1848-1851

During the revolutions of 1848 and their aftermath, the governmentsof France, Austria and Prussia, respectively, were exposed toextraordinary pressure from a variety of nationalist movementswith fundamentally different agendas. They had difficult choicesto make as to whether they let their foreign policies be determinedby domestic concerns or heed the rules of the internationalsystem—it was hardly possible to do both. As a resultthey performed a ‘balancing act’ on a tight rope:a wrong step could cause their fall, either because they wouldbe overthrown by their own people, or they would risk war withother Great Powers. Those not affected by a revolution in 1848,i.e. conservative Russia and progressive Britain, had to opteither for backing countries with political tendencies similarto their own, or for simply upholding the balance of power andinternational rules. The author concludes that the ‘primacyof foreign policy’—within this context more preciselythe primacy of the international system's rules and the balanceof power—helps to understand the actual foreign policiesof four of the five Great Powers during the European crisisof 1848–51. Austria's government, the one country tryingto overthrow the balance of power and change the nature of thesystem, was effectively checked. The rules of the post-1815international system were still an efficacious tool for discipliningstates.