Warlords and Holymen. Scotland AD80-1000

This article compares and contrasts the work of Quentin Skinner and Jacques Derrida on power and the State. It argues that despite Skinner's explicit repudiation of Derrida's method of philosophising, he has come to advocate an approach to the history of ideas that bears important and striking similarities to Derrida's thought. I attribute this intellectual gravitation toward Derrida as the logical outcome of a shared understanding on the nature of the cosmos and man's place within it—an understanding profoundly indebted to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the genealogical history of Michel Foucault. As a means to illustrate the narrowing intellectual gulf between Skinner and Derrida, I compare their respective thoughts on the nature of the modern and contemporary State, a State that both intellectuals see as emerging from a dominant western philosophical tradition that, at its core, is marked by the idea of fear. For both Skinner and Derrida this has profound consequences for the possibilities open to individuals and societies for free thought and political action.     

The politics of commemorative street renaming: Berlin 1945–1948

Commemorative street names belong to the ideological foundations of the socio-political order. The process of renaming streets figures prominently in a stage of regime change. As a measure of historical revision, renaming the past is a twofold procedure that involves both the de-commemoration of the version of history associated with and supportive of the old regime and the commemoration of heroes and events that represent the new regime and its version of history. This paper examines political processes and commemorative priorities and strategies that directed the renaming of streets in post-World War II Berlin during two successive municipal administrations. The first part of the article explores the failed project promoted by the unelected communist administration that ruled Berlin between May 1945 and October 1946 aimed to achieve a comprehensive odonymic reform that went beyond a mere purge of explicit Nazi street names. The second part examines the substantially downscaled purge of Berlin’s register of street names accomplished by the SPD-led city government that took office after the October 1946 democratic election.     

„On employera les meilleurs Graveurs pour les Figures”︁. Zeichner und Stecher der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1700–1806

“We will employ the best engravers for the figures” – Draughtsmen and Engravers of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1700–1809. – Although barely mentioned in accounts of its history of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, draughtsmen and engravers were, from the very inception, essential collaborators. Based on previously overlooked archival sources, this paper investigates the strategies that scientists used to select the most appropriate candidates during the first hundred years of the academy's existence. These included: (1) the engaging of artists already known to the scientists or those who had been recommendaded to them; (2) maintaining long‐term relationships with a number of artists, and later with their offspring (who had frequently been trained by their fathers); in 1768 this strategy culminated in the creation of a permanent position for one academic draughtsman; and (3) hiring draughtsmen who specialised in the subject matter in question, which entailed, for example, employing different people to carry out anatomical and botanical illustrations.     

Erasmus

This essay seeks to examine the history of the intellectual comradeship between J.L. Talmon and the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). The scholarly dialog between the two began in 1947, continued until Talmon's death in 1980, and is well documented in their private correspondence. I argue that there were two levels to this dialog: First, both Berlin and Talmon took part in the Totalitarianism discourse, which was colored by Popperian terminology, and thus I claim that their ideas should be examined as part of the Cold-War political discourse. The second level stemmed from their similar East-European origin, their mutual Jewish identity, and their attitude towards the Zionist movement.

At times the two levels of discourse conjoined commensurably, but in other cases the juxtaposition of the two created conceptual tensions. Examining Berlin and Talmon's thought from this dual perspective, I argue, can shed new light on the inner conflicts and conceptual tensions that each of them had to face. In particular, I claim that both thinkers tried to integrate their Anglophile liberal heritage with their support of National movements in general, and the Jewish National movement in particular. Nevertheless, the different approaches of Talmon and Berlin present two concepts of liberal Nationalism: While Talmon assumed that Zionism solved the Jewish individual's dilemmas by making Jews members of a commune attached to soil; Berlin sought to preserve the individual in an inviolable sphere and thus was more ambivalent in his attitude towards the state of Israel. In conclusion, I offer to see Talmon as a classic Zionist liberal and Berlin as a supporter of what I call “Diaspora Zionism”, an approach, which would later provide the grounds for Berlin's celebrated pluralism.     

Exploring international film festivals from a co-evolutionary perspective: the cases of Berlin and Busan compared

In the past two decades, the number of international film festivals strongly increased. As a research topic, however, these festivals have received little attention within economic geography and regional studies. The aim of this comparative paper is to explore the institutional history and impact on local economic development of two international film festivals, namely Berlin and Busan, from a co-evolutionary perspective. Based on qualitative empirical fieldwork done in Busan and Berlin we draw two conclusions. First, different institutional structures have led to different ways of success. However, Busan’s less stable and tenser institutional configuration may negatively affect the festival in the near future. Secondly, in both cities the festival affects the local economy, albeit in different ways.     

Politisch motivierte Emigration deutscher Ärzte

In 1933 the nazis had immediately started to reorganize the health service and the medical profession on the basis of eugenics and efficiency. For everybody who had been engaged in the institutions of social medicine or social hygiene in the Weimar Republic the inhibition of medical practice, misery, distress, persecution, imprisonment or at the best emigration had been the consequence of it, for political and mostly also for racial reasons. But for these physicians who had to flee from Nazi-Germany the situation in the immigration countries had not been a good one in most of the cases. Therefore it is only possible to speak - if you neglect the special situation of the psychiatrists in the U.S.A. - in particular cases of transfer of medical science into the immigration countries from Germany. Most of the immigrants stayed after the war in their new homelands. The loss of these progressive aspects of social hygiene caused by the emigration of these physicians 1933 and afterwards from Germany can be noticed in this field of medicine and public health service in Western Germany until now.     

Science for Competition among Powers: Geographical Knowledge,Colonial-Diplomatic Networks,and the Scramble for Africa**

Historical studies on the relationship between science and diplomacy tend to focus on events since World War II and on initiatives for the maintenance of peace or to achieve cooperation over contentious matters. This article presents the case of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823–1907), a Portuguese zoologist who had formal diplomatic responsibilities in a context of competition for the colonization of Africa in the nineteenth century. He used his knowledge in African geography to implement colonial and diplomatic strategies that aimed at outcompeting rival powers. The development of a network of actors with scientific, colonial, and diplomatic expertise was crucial for the negotiations that involved the partition of the Congo basin, which resulted in victories for Portugal that surpassed the country's marginal political relevance at the international level and had long-lasting consequences.     

Raum und Disziplin. Klinische Wissenschaft im Krankenhaus

The historical shift in the function of the hospital from an asylum for the care of the indigent sick to a medical‐therapeutic institution is intimately associated with the exploitation of the hospital as a clinical facility. Thus, over the course of the 19th century the space of the hospital and its disciplinary structure was permeated and reorganized by clinical practices. Drawing on the example of the Charite hospital in Berlin, it can be shown how the historical shift in the hospital's outward social function went hand in hand with the creation of a differentiated internal clinical space. In this compartmentalized clinical space the discipline of the hospital was replaced with methods of clinical examination, techniques of observation, and procedures of documentation, all of which helped to transform the hospital into a knowledge‐space.