Vestiges and Witnesses: Archaeological Finds from the Nazi Euthanasia Institution of Hartheim as Objects of Research and Education

In Hartheim Castle, more than 30,000 people became victims of National Socialist euthanasia programs. In the course of building the memorial at the end of the 1990s, numerous structural remnants of the killing institution were found. In 2001 several pits with structural elements, some human remains, as well as belongings of people murdered were found by chance in the former castle garden. This contribution establishes the meaning these items have for research, as well as considerations and discussions about the possibilities of presenting the vestiges in museum form and how to use the latter for teaching projects.     

The Transylvanian promise: political mobilisation,unfulfilled hope and the rise of authoritarianism in interwar Romania

This article addresses the relationship between political mobilisation by raising hope for change and the increasing loss of confidence in democratic order in the Romanian transformation process after the First World War from a regional perspective. The survey focuses on the political discourse of the Transylvania-based National Party (from 1926 the National Peasants’ Party), which gained governmental power in 1928 through regionalist activism, benefiting from a multi-stranded discourse of permanent crisis caused by living conditions that could not meet the expectations of social advancement raised by the general enthusiasm about the emergence of ‘Greater Romania’. Unable to fulfil its promises of fundamental political change and economic recovery after a century of failed transformation, the Transylvanian-led government’s failure marks the moment of another profound disappointment, which saw the public discourse on political order turn more and more towards strengthening the concept of ‘authority’.     

Introduction: writing the contemporary history of European solidarity

Abstract

This introduction outlines the possibilities and perspectives of a history of ‘European solidarity’. While – given the high frequency with which the term is used in contemporary political debate – this is most certainly a hot-button issue, the topic has long been neglected by researchers on the history of European integration and European ideas. The reasons for this lack of empirical studies lie in the vagueness and the normativity of the term. This introduction thus conceptualizes ‘European solidarity’ as an analytical tool for research and discusses three major approaches to its historicization: first, deconstructing ideas and discursive notions of ‘European solidarity’, a term that has been omnipresent in primary sources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; second, investigating concrete practices of ‘European solidarity’, for example in welfare-state policies or in the work of civil-society actors; third, looking at historical limits of ‘European solidarity’ which help to bring contesting perceptions and motives into view. Finally, the introduction addresses the question of the analytical benefits of a history of ‘European solidarity’: it points among other things to new periodizations that help to avoid a teleological orientation in European historiography, as well as to the detachment of the European integration process from the institutionalization of the European Communities.     

AN ALGORITHM FOR THE SPATIAL PRICE EQUILIBRIUM PROBLEM ON A GENERAL NETWORK IN THE SPACE OF THE PATH FLOWS*

ABSTRACT. The spatial price equilibrium on a general network may be formulated as a nonlinear-cost mathematical programming problem with simple constraints, when the decision variables are the path flows. The solution of this problem is difficult due to the very large number of variables (paths) and the impracticality of generating all the paths from all the origins to all the destinations. In this paper, we develop a Gauss-Seidel-Newton Projection algorithm and combine it with a restriction strategy. That makes it unnecessary to generate a priori all the paths. This algorithm may be further improved by exploiting the equivalence between the spatial price equilibrium on a general network and the network equilibrium. Computational results that we present in this paper demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed solution algorithms.     

Neurosciences and research on chemical weapons of mass destruction in Nazi Germany

As a side-product of industrial research, new chemical nerve agents (Tabun, Sarin, Soman) superior to those available to the Allied Forces were discovered in Nazi Germany. These agents were never used by Germany, even though they were produced at a large scale. This article explores the toxicological and physiological research into the mechanisms of action of these novel nerve agents, and the emergence of military research objectives in neurophysiological and neurotoxicological research. Recently declassified Allied military intelligence files document secret nerve agent research, leading to intensified research on anticholinesterase agents in the peripheral and the central nervous system. The article discusses the involvement of IG Farben scientists, educational, medical and military institutions, and of Nobel Prize laureate Richard Kuhn, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research.     

Neuropathological research at the "Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Psychiatrie" (German Institute for Psychiatric Research) in Munich (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute). Scientific utilization of children's organs from the "Kinderfachabteilungen" (Children's Special Departments) at Bavarian State Hospitals

During National Socialism, the politically motivated interest in psychiatric genetic research lead to the founding of research departments specialized in pathological-anatomical brain research, the two Kaiser Wilhelm-Institutes (KWI) in Berlin and Munich. The latter was indirectly provided with brain material by Bavarian State Hospitals, to three of which "Kinderfachabteilungen" (Special Pediatric Units) were affiliated. As children became victims of the systematically conducted child "euthanasia" in these Special Pediatric Units, this paper will address the question whether and to which extent the organs from victims of child "euthanasia" were used for (neuro-) pathological research at the KWI in Munich. By means of case studies and medical histories (with focus on the situation in Kaufbeuren-Irsee), I will argue that pediatric departments on a regular base delivered slide preparations, that the child "euthanasia" conduced in these departments systematically contributed to neuropathological research and that slide preparations from victims of child "euthanasia" were used in scientific publications after 1945.