CONTEXTS OF COLONIALISM

The contributions to the collection under review offer a wide range of treatments of ways in which German colonialism intersected with aspects of domestic German culture and politics, with particular attention to the larger global setting in which the German colonial empire existed between 1884 and 1918—or was remembered up to 1945. The review situates and critiques the contributions in interpretive contexts based on general suggestions by one of the editors, Geoff Eley. These include a context in which “colonialism” and “imperialism” are recognized as specific discursive constructions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, another in which the causal focus in interpreting colonial phenomena is placed on exchanges that constituted an accelerating globality with which available conceptual modes (including colonialism and imperialism) could not keep pace, a third that complicates the categorical distinctions usually made between types of imperial program, and a fourth that aims at replicating on a much broader and more flexible basis something like the concept of “social imperialism” that forty years ago dominated interpretations of German imperialism. The essay ends with a view of how such an interpretive framework might be constructed.     

Nazi Leaks and Intrigues in Second World War Ankara: the Plot to Send Herbert Melzig to a Concentration Camp

This article excavates one of the stranger episodes that took place in the transnational microcosm of the German expatriate world in Ankara and Istanbul during the Second World War. ‘Professor’ Herbert Melzig's story, the ‘Melzig affair’, illustrates how this microcosm, with its very different constituent members - Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazism, German pro-Nazi expatriates, and an extensive embassy and Nazi Party network - acted as a conduit in German–Turkish relations, albeit one that produced unexpected results. This ‘Melzig affair’ sheds new light on the German presence in Second World War Turkey as well as the so-called German ‘exile on the Bosporus’ as it has been (re-)constructed and used in recent years; it also contributes to our understanding of Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War, especially regarding Turkey's reluctance to join the war on Hitler's side. At the end of the Melzig affair stood the ‘leaking’ of an internal Ministry of Propaganda memorandum. It prepared the ground for further leaks of this nature and was one of the turning points of public opinion in Turkey against the Third Reich.     

Die ‚Deutsche Physik’︁ in der Selbstkritik des NS‐Ideologen Alfred Bäumler

In 1944, the Nazi ideologist Alfred Baeumler wrote a memorandum for his boss Alfred Rosenberg, Adolf Hitler's commissioner for the political education of party members. In this sensational memo, which did not become known until long after 1945, Baeumler spoke out against the promotion of under‐performing physicists who oust highly‐qualified non‐Nazi scientists at the universities without submitting adequate research results. – Rosenberg's response is not known. What is known, however, is that Baeumler did not manage to change the situation criticised by him.     

‘Wanderer,kommst du nach Pforta …’: the tension between Classical tradition and the demands of a Nazi elite-school education at Schulpforta and Ilfeld, 1934–45

This paper explores the tensions which arose when Schulpforta, Germany's leading humanistic boarding school, was forcibly turned into a Nazi elite school (a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt, or Napola). The time-honoured traditions of Christianity and enlightened humanism previously cultivated at the erstwhile Landesschule zur Pforta (alma mater of Fichte, Ranke and Nietzsche) were swiftly subordinated to the demands of National Socialist ideology. Schulpforta, a former monastic foundation, was radically dechristianised, and the school's Classical curriculum soon served only to emphasise those aspects of Greco-Roman Antiquity which could ‘help the Third Reich achieve its destiny’, portraying the Greeks and Romans as proto-National Socialists, pure Aryan ancestors of the modern German race. The Napola curriculum focused on sport and pre-military training over academic excellence, and contemporary documentary evidence, memoirs and newly obtained eyewitness testimony all suggest that the Napola administration wished to assimilate Pforta with any other Napola. This idea is borne out by comparing the case of Napola Ilfeld, a former Klosterschule (monastery school) with a similar history. By the mid-1940s, Ilfeld had lost almost all connection with its humanistic past. Ultimately, we can see the erosion and Nazification of these schools' Christian and humanistic traditions as exemplifying in microcosm tendencies which were prevalent throughout the Third Reich.     

5. GROSSRAUM AND GEOPOLITICS: RESITUATING SCHMITT IN AN ATLANTIC CONTEXT

Contemporary theorists of international relations and historians of empire have found utility in the spatial theory of “Grossraum,” or “great space,” that Carl Schmitt developed in the 1930s and 40s. This article asks whether Schmitt's concept of Grossraum can be fully disentangled from its German history—from the Nazi pursuit of Lebensraum in which it eventually culminated, but with which it is not identical either. I argue that Schmitt's Grossraum theory is neither merely a symptomatic reflection of the Third Reich's objectives, nor a free‐floating theory with strong potential for critiquing imperialism, but is best approached as an important moment in the transatlantic conversation among empires that unfolded between 1890 and 1945 about the sources, methods, and prerogatives of global power. It compares Schmitt with other figures in German geopolitics such as Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer in order to establish a genealogy of the distinction between land and sea powers, arguing that Schmitt's writings on Grossraum modernize and transmit to the twentieth century the most influential theories of political geography and geopolitics developed in the Atlantic world between 1890 and 1930.     

Several issues influencing the course of German history

The course of German history is very sinuous. German nationalism, the imbalance of the political and economic development generated by the influence of the historical and cultural traditions, the might of the Junker feudal aristocracy, the weakness of the bourgeoisie, the postwar reeducation of democratization imposed by the western allied powers on Germany, the developed education and technology, etc. are all important factors that influenced Germany’s history. __________ Translated from: Wuhan Daxue Xuebao, Renwen Kexue Ban 武汉大学学报: 人文科学版 (Wuhan University Journal, Humanity Science), No. 3, 2004