German History (german + history)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Undoing Trauma: Reconstructing the Church of Our Lady in Dresden

ETHOS, Issue 2 2006
Jason James
This article is an examination of the recent reconstruction of the Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) in Dresden, Germany, in relation to a desire for normalcy, which in this case finds expression in a fantasy of resurrection. The reconstruction of a monumental edifice framed as a victim of World War II and socialism both depends on and enacts the fantasy that historical loss can be undone. In addition, the project identifies Germany with German cultural heritage, which appears wholly distinct from the nation's burdened pasts, and offers a monumental symbolic touchstone for narratives of modern German history in which the nation and its citizens figure primarily as suffering victims. In this way, the reconstruction of the church embodies something more complex than mere forgetting. It enacts a fantasy of undoing loss, rendering the work of mourning unnecessary, while at the same time embracing injury and victimhood. [Germany, Dresden, nationalism, architecture, memory] [source]


PARADES, PUBLIC SPACE, AND PROPAGANDA: THE NAZI CULTURE PARADES IN MUNICH

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2008
Joshua Hagen
ABSTRACT. As the birthplace of the Nazi Party and the official Capital of the Movement, Munich assumed a high profile within the party's propaganda apparatus. While Berlin became the political and foreign policy centre of Hitler's Reich and Nuremberg the site of massive displays of national power during the annual party rallies, national and local party leaders launched a series of cultural initiatives to showcase Munich as the Capital of German Art. Munich hosted numerous festivals proclaiming a rebirth of German art and culture, as well as the regime's supposedly peaceful intentions for domestic and international audiences. To help achieve these goals, Nazi leaders staged a series of extravagant parades in Munich celebrating German cultural achievements. The parades provided an opportunity for the regime to monopolize Munich's public spaces through performances of its particular vision of German history, culture and national belonging. While such mass public spectacles had obvious propaganda potential, several constraints, most prominently Munich's existing spatial layout, limited the parades' effectiveness. [source]


Karl Pearson,The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age by Theodore M. Porter: A Review

INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
Herbert A. David
Summary Porter presents an excellent account of the young Karl Pearson and his extraordinarily varied activities. These ranged from the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos Exams to German history and folklore, and included free thought, socialism, the woman's question, and the law. Returning to science, Pearson produced the famous Grammar of Science. He decided on a career in statistics only at age 35. Porter emphasizes Pearson's often acrimonious but largely successful battles to show the wide applicability and importance of statistics in many areas of science and public affairs. Eugenics became a passion for Pearson. Avoiding all formulas Porter fails to give any concrete ideas of even Pearson's most important contributions to statistical theory. We try to sketch these here. [source]


Religion, Historical Contingencies, and Institutional Conditions of Criminal Punishment: The German Case and Beyond

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2004
Joachim J. Savelsberg
Religion and historical contingencies help explain cross-national and historic variation of criminal law and punishment. Case studies from German history suggest: First, the Calvinist affiliation of early Prussian monarchs advanced the centralization of power, rationalization of government bureaucracy, and elements of the welfare state, factors that are likely to affect punishment. Second, the dominant position of Lutheranism in the German population advanced the institutionalization of a separation of forgiveness in the private sphere versus punishment of "outer behavior" by the state. Third, these principles became secularized in philosophy, jurisprudence, and nineteenth-century criminal codes. Fourth, partly due to historical contingencies, these codes remained in effect into post,World War II Germany. Fifth, the experience of the Nazi regime motivated major changes in criminal law, legal thought, public opinion, and religious ideas about punishment in the Federal Republic of Germany. Religion thus directly and indirectly affects criminal law and punishment, in interaction with historical contingencies, institutional conditions of the state, and other structural factors. [source]


The Death of the Collective Subject in Uwe Johnson's Mutmassungen über Jakob

ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 6 2003
David Kenosian
In previous interpretations of Uwe Johnson's Mutmassungen über Jakob, critics have focused primarily on Johnson's relationship to socialism on the complex narrative structure of the novel. In this essay, I explore a topic that has received comparatively little attention: Johnson's notion of subjectivity. I show that Johnson's attempt to challenge Marxist concepts of the collective subject is inseparably linked to his views on representing history. Johnson's first move is to eliminate the omniscient Socialist Realist narrator who is supposed to have a greater understanding of societal forces than do the characters in the fictional world. But in Mutmassungen über Jakob, it is the protagonist (Jakob) who has a greater understanding of politics than the former Socialist Realist narrator (Rohlfs). Their relationship undermines the political hierarchy constituted by workers and party. In addition, history in the novel is not narrated from a privileged epistemological position. Rather, it is reconstructed in a negotiation among various subjects (characters) at the porous border between history and memory. This self-reflexive model of historiography is, as implied by Uwe Johnson, democratic, in contradistinction to Socialist Realism. Finally, I point out that this model of writing history in Mutmassungen über Jakob anticipates the polyphonic representation of the past in Johnson's Jahrestage (1970,83). In Johnson's final work, German history is consequently written in dialogues with Germans, immigrants from Eastern Europe, Holocaust survivors, and textual sources from various countries. [source]


SUBJECT, OBJECT, MIMESIS: THE AESTHETIC WORLD OF THE BECHERS' PHOTOGRAPHY

ART HISTORY, Issue 5 2009
SARAH E. JAMES
This paper will examine the critical relationship between subjectivity and objecthood established in Bernd and Hilla Bechers' photography. Building upon existing readings by Blake Stimson and Michael Fried, I argue that Adorno's aesthetic thought, and especially his category of mimesis, offers a way in which both to frame the politics of the subject and object experiences in the Bechers' photography, and to situate these culturally, contextualizing their work within a critical juncture in German history. The Bechers' rejection of the subject and the pursuit of an objective photography are explored in relation to the ,post-Auschwitz taboo on beauty' and the anti-ideology that dominated West Germany of the 1950s. The Bechers' attempt to redeem expression by presenting the frail objectivity and historicity of things is examined in relation to the negative dialectical framework and desubjectifying model of aesthetics formulated by Adorno. [source]