Intense Paradoxes of Memory: Researching Moral Questions About Remembering the Socialist Past

In 2007 two researchers embarked upon a project on the “social construction of the socialist past in eastern Germany”. The project sought to explore how the socialist past is remembered today, and the moral ambiguities condensed in memories. This is particularly relevant in eastern Germany, where debates about how to interpret the socialist past continue to strive. However, it soon became apparent that doing such an ethnographic project is no easy task. Both researchers became sucked into the debates they sought to explore, including the question of who people had been during GDR (German Democratic Republic, former East Germany) times and whether this mattered. Using the ethnographic self as a resource, this article explores the ethics of complicity or detachment in fieldwork situations where the researcher was invited to make judgements. It argues that ethnographers need to address the question of value‐judgements openly in their fieldwork, since they form an intrinsic part of all our humanity.     

Extranational spaces and the disruption of national boundaries: Turkish immigrant media and claims against the state in 1980s West Germany

After the 1980 coup that shook Turkey and almost twenty years after the bilateral ‘guest worker’ treaty shifted Germany's demographic make‐up, West German policy makers proposed increasingly restrictive regulations on the ‘guest workers’ who had heavily contributed to West Germany's economy. In this crucial historical moment, Turkish‐language newspapers, published in West Germany, created a politically motivated extranational public sphere in which they launched claims against both the West German and Turkish states. These claims shaped immigration and integration policy between the two countries, fostered diasporic activism and cross‐national religious and political organisations and gave rise to a variety of unexpected organisational outcomes that continue to impact both Germany and the Turkish Republic.     

When Communities Collide: Competing Claims for Archaeological Objects in the Market Place

Rather than recount a specific archaeological project and its community relationships, in the following, I consider the competing claims for archaeological objects by the various groups associated with the illegal and legal trade in antiquities. For nearly a decade I have examined the efficacy of cultural heritage laws in the protection of eastern Mediterranean archaeological landscapes. More specifically, I am interested in the contentious issues surrounding legalized antiquities markets as a means of protecting the archaeological past. In order to assess the value of various legal instruments I attempt to engage with the communities who claim an interest in the buying, selling, protection or appreciation of antiquities. The list of communities is long, varied and often at odds with each other. Reconciling these competing claims is a Herculean task, but one worthy of investigation as questions of inclusion, responsibilities and ownership of cultural heritage are at the forefront of an engaged archaeology.     

工业化时期德国西部城市的崛起及其影响

工业化时期是德国西部地区城市化发展的关键时期。这一时期该地区城市的发展速度明显加快,产业结构日益优化,城市体系逐渐完善,城市类型也朝着多样化的趋势发展。西部城市的强势崛起不仅得益于工业化的高速发展、大规模的铁路建设以及农业生产率的提高等因素,而且也加快了工业化进程,促进了经济重心的西移,进而带动了西北地区港口城市的快速成长。     

History after the end: post-socialist difference in a (post)modern world

This paper makes an intervention in the debates on postmodernism as dominant social and cultural order of the present from the perspective of post-socialist transformation. Grounded in an analysis of theoretical discourses and of qualitative interviews, it highlights the hierarchical time/space constructions and universalizing tendencies inherent in many proclamations of the postmodern epoch and contests the uncritical acceptance of the 'end of history' metanarrative. Post-socialist transformation is shown to be a complex process that fits uneasily into pre-given categories and disrupts an ordering logic that divides between a western, postmodern 'us' and 'the rest' of the world. My argument is formulated on the basis of research on the transformative processes in former east Germany.     

‘Dead dads’: memory narratives of war-related fatherlessness in Germany

After the Second World War, there were estimated to be around 20 million half-orphans in Europe. In Germany alone, 5.3 million soldiers killed in action left behind approximately 1.2 million widows, nearly 2.5 million half-orphans and about 100,000 complete orphans. This article examines how men and women from various social strata in western and eastern Germany remember their fathers who died in the war and in what way he has been stored in the family's collective memory. The analysis focuses on 30 life-history interviews with men and women from eastern and western Germany with various social and religious backgrounds, all of whom were born between 1935 and 1945 and had little or no memory of their fathers. The following questions are relevant: what memories did children have of their fathers, and what images of them were related by mothers and relatives? What individual, political, social and memory-cultural factors characterise a child's memory of her or his father? The article also analyses trans-generational transmissions and conflicts of how the father's past is remembered.     

Beyond Annexationism: The Central Powers’ Ostpolitik as Structural Transformation, 1917–18

This article explores the eastern policy of Germany and Austria-Hungary during the latter half of the First World War (1917–18). It attempts to go beyond the traditional annexationist–non-annexationist dichotomy prevalent in the literature and approach the issue from the perspective of structural transformation of the international system. It argues that the Central Powers endeavoured to accommodate imperial collapse in Eastern Europe and prevent its further spread by replacing the obsolete system of imperial dynasticism with a new arrangement based on autonomous and semi-autonomous states. German and Austrian leaders often disagreed on implementation and formed temporary understandings across the civilian–military divide. This policy ultimately proved counterproductive, as it failed to contain the westward spread of national and social revolution. Austro-German support for nominally independent states in Eastern Europe, national in form but Central European in cultural and political outlook, inadvertently contributed to further imperial collapse, as the increasingly restless nationalities of Austria-Hungary began to challenge the legitimacy of imperial dynasticism in Central Europe. The Central Powers’ Ostpolitik in 1917–18 became a transformative historical event due to the fact that it facilitated the structural transformation of international relations in Central and Eastern Europe from imperial dynasticism to a system of nation-states.     

晚清官派留德学生研究

留学政策是晚清政府的一项重要政策。随着中德贸易和外交往来的开始,以及中国人对德国认识的逐步加深,清政府开始陆续向德国派遣留学生。1876-1911年的中国留德学生构成了这个时期中国留学生中的重要组成部分。留德学生主要来自湖北和江浙,他们在德国的学习以军事训练为主,但后来逐渐转向法律和自然科学等科目。留学生的管理对清政府来说是个难题。随着留学人数的增加,中德双方都在努力探索解决方案,但实际效果并不理想。     

PERSPECTIVES ON THE SAGEBRUSH REBELLION

The Sagebrush Rebellion began in the late 1970s with the objective of transferring various categories of federally owned lands to the states. The movement was centered in western “public lands” states, where nearly half the total land area is in federal ownership. Within a relatively short period of time this objective was changed to one of “privatizing” federal lands, of selling these land into private ownership. While the Sagebrush Rebellion has been highly political in its activities, the movement can be viewed in the perspective of historical land disposition policies in the U.S. These policies were changed near the turn of the century from alienating public lands into private ownership to their retention and management by the federal government. Confusion over the economics of building a free enterprise system based on private property rights, and the costs associated with building such as system, appear to have been major factors in changing land policies. Two important aras in which this occurred were the Homestead Act of 1862 and timber. The provisions of the Homestead Act imposed heavy costs on settlers, and these costs caused a reaction against the economic system that was being built.     

Heritage transactions at the Festival of Pacific Arts

The Festival of Pacific Arts, hosted by a different Pacific Island state once every four years, is a prime site for the reproduction of the global discourse on heritage. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at the festival, this paper focuses on how the concept of heritage is employed at the festival as both an instrument of statecraft and a tool for the assertion of grass-roots political and economic agency. We conclude that heritage in the context of the festival is a form of cultural practice involving relationships of power and inequality, expressed in transactions of ownership and value transformations that have become over determined by economic logic and the concept of property.     

Unravelling Church Land: Transformations in the Relations between Church,State and Community in Uganda

Christian churches control substantial areas of land in Africa. While intensifying struggles over their holdings are partly due to the increased pressure on land in general, they also reflect transformations in the relations through which churches’ claims to land are legitimized, the increased association of churches with business, and churches’ unique positioning as both institutions and communities. This article presents the trajectory of relations between church, state and community in Uganda from the missionary acquisition of land in the colonial era to the unravelling of church landholding under Museveni. Drawing on long‐term ethnographic fieldwork, the authors argue that claims to church land in contemporary Uganda draw on: 1) notions of belonging to the land; 2) views about the nature of churches as communities; 3) discontent regarding whether customary land owners gave churches user rights or ownership; and 4) assessment of the churches’ success in ensuring that the land works for the common good. The article develops a novel approach to analysing the changing meaning of the landholdings of religious institutions, thus extending ongoing discussions about land, politics, development and religion in Africa.     

中国建筑遗产再认识

中国仿生的构架体系建筑,在历史早期就已传播到邻近的东亚国家,从而形成了一个东方建筑体系。18世纪以来,又影响到欧洲,与西方新材料、新技术相结合,使摩天楼得以矗立;中国《老子》的空间学说,引起世界"近代建筑革命";中国的陶制砌块用植物油处理的原理,促成抗酸、碱的"有、无机相结合"的建材理论,被誉为世界"建材革命"。直至今日,不同于西方"花园"(ga rden)和"林园"(pa r k)的中国人为环境与自然环境相融合的园林原理,促成了现代景观学;中国的精神与物质统一功能场效应的风水学说,已经在日、韩、美、德、法等西方国家兴起。作为全人类的财富——中国建筑遗产,将继续对人类生存环境的建设做出贡献。     

MEDIEVAL LEAD GLASS IN CENTRAL EUROPE

In Trommsdorfstraße, Erfurt, a glass‐processing workshop has been excavated, which produced lead glass rings and beads in the 13th century. This workshop produced two different lead glasses. The first, a high‐lead glass, could be found throughout Europe, from England to Russia. However, another newly defined type of glass could be identified (Central European lead–ash glass). This can be demonstrated by analysing the literature, and it has been found in eastern Germany, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. A Slavic lead–ash glass with the same ash content as the Central European lead–ash glass but lower amounts of lead was produced in Eastern Europe. In western Germany, another type of ash (beech ash) was used to produce a wood‐ash lead glass. Lead‐isotope analysis proved that the same source of lead was used for the wood‐ash lead glass and the high‐lead glass in western Germany and the two types of glass from Erfurt.     

THE IMPACT OF SKILL‐SPECIFIC MIGRATION ON REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT DISPARITIES IN GERMANY

Differences in regional unemployment are still pronounced in Germany, especially between eastern and western Germany. Although the skill level seems important for the relationship between regional disparities and labor migration, corresponding empirical evidence is scarce. Applying dynamic panel models, we investigate the impact of labor mobility differentiated by educational attainment of the workers on regional unemployment disparities between 2000 and 2008. The impact of low‐ and medium‐skilled migration is consistent with traditional neoclassical reasoning, suggesting that labor mobility reduces differences in regional unemployment rates. In contrast, the migration of high‐skilled workers tends to reinforce disparities.     

浅析先占取得制度之构建

先占取得制度作为原始取得的一种方式,有着深厚的历史渊源和确立价值,当今世界很多国家的民事立法均不同程度地使这一制度得以体现。可见,其作为取得无主财产所有权的一种手段仍具有较强的实用性。而我国的这一制度却长期为国家公权所取代,致使私权得不到有效保护。尤其是在新近出台的《物权法》之中,这项制度也没有被确立,这对于我国民法的完善不能不说是一个遗憾。今后,在我国民事立法中应填补这项空白,以维护其私法本色。     

Legal Literacy and Immovable Property: Laws,Norms and Practices in Colombia

An equitable gender distribution of property ownership may be enhanced or limited by family law, individual knowledge of the law, and social norms. South America's laws of equal inheritance by sex and birth order and equal distribution of property upon divorce provide the basis of a gender‐equitable distribution of property ownership. This report of a qualitative case study exploring the gendered knowledge of immovable property laws and the practice of patterns of property ownership in central Colombia provides insights into the gap between law and practice caused by lack of information, social norms, gendered access to legal titles, a complex legal system and high transaction costs. It argues for greater attention to titling, legal procedures, legal education and legal advice to secure effective immovable property ownership for women.     

Indigènes after Indigènes: post-war France and its North African troops

This article focuses on North African soldiers who served in the French army of occupation in western Germany after its liberation in 1945. Taking as its starting point Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 film, Indigènes, the article contrasts claims the film made about the memorial exclusion of the colonial soldier with his surprising centrality to French accounts of their own military exploits. Using publications issued by the army for its internal readership and archival records of the military occupation's day-to-day activities, the author argues for a modified understanding of the French Republican notion of assimilation that is able to take account of the prolific representation of the North African soldier, and his accommodation, in Cold War Germany.     

The politics of donating technological artifacts: techno-nationalism and the donations of the world’s first jet engines

The Smithsonian Institution’s aviation collection includes two early jet engines, both of which were given to the museum by foreign donors. The first, a prototype of Britain’s first jet engine, which flew during World War II, was donated by the British state in 1949. The second, a replica of Germany’s first jet engine, which flew in late August 1939, was donated by Germany’s leading museum, the Deutsches Museum, in 1980. The two are today presented as equivalent artifacts, yet the paths followed by the two objects to the American museum were anything but equivalent. Recovering the political and historical contexts that informed each of these two donations shows how what was apparently the same action fulfilled two very different agendas. Unlike the British donation, which was calculated to support Britain’s (at that time solitary) claim to having invented the jet engine, the German donation supported a narrative of dual invention, which had become the internationally agreed standard story between 1949 and 1980. This dual-inventor narrative allowed the German museum to forward a more subtle goal than promoting a national inventor; that of depoliticizing and normalizing Germany’s aerospace tradition internationally despite the fact that German aviation had been a locus for German nationalism and National Socialist largess. Reflecting on these two donations raises questions about how technology – particular historical claims about technology made in museums – have contributed to the construction of national identities.     

The German Secret State Police in Spain: Extending the Reach of National Socialism

Germany encroached in Spain's internal affairs that followed providing military support the Spanish Civil War in the interest of pursuing National Socialist objectives through the establishment of an extensive apparatus of National Socialist organisations in Spain, including the Gestapo. Cooperation was officially established between Spanish and German police on 25 November 1937, which was extended to the Spanish political police on 31 July 1938, when they entered into a secret agreement with the German Gestapo for mutual assistance. The Gestapo trained the Spanish ordinary police and political police to contribute to maintaining the Franco regime in control of Spain, just as the Gestapo in Germany was charged with investigating and suppressing all forms of anti-state tendencies, and exported its methods and proceedings to Spain under the guise of contributing to the struggle against the alleged danger of worldwide communism. In addition to cooperation with Spanish police on suppressing dissent against the Franco regime, other functions related to serving the interests of National Socialist Germany, which deployed the Gestapo for various purposes while Spain constituted an extension of National Socialist Germany's sphere of influence. This was ensured through the Gestapo maintaining a presence in Spain until 1945.