Mastering the Past? Nazism and the Holocaust in West German History Textbooks of the 1960s

Author(s):  
Brian M. Puaca
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
Joachim Whaley

Helmuth Plessner’s The Delayed Nation was a key text in the Sonderweg narrative that dominated the writing of German history from the later 1950s to the mid-1980s: the idea that the disaster of the Third Reich and the Holocaust could be explained in terms of Germany’s problematic path to modernity since the Middle Ages. The book had originally been published under a rather prolix title in Zurich in 1935 when Plessner was an émigré in the Netherlands. It made little impact then, and only attracted attention from 1959 under a short title which seemed to capture the essence of the emerging left-liberal view of the disastrous course of German history. The more accessible title in reality masked an extremely complex book which did not sit easily with the social history preoccupations of the avant-garde of post-war German historians. Plessner’s history was a narrative of intellectual degeneration that placed philosophy at the heart of the German problem. Plessner’s book can only be fully understand in relation to his own philosophical and political concerns in the 1920s. Its impact in the 1960s and after derives almost entirely from its suggestive and eye-catching title.


Focaal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (74) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa J. Krieg

Based on an ethnographic field study in a museum and an evening high school in Cologne, this paper discusses experiences of young German adults in everyday encounters with the Holocaust, which are oft en accompanied by feelings of discomfort. Considering the Holocaust as an uncanny, strange matter contributes to understanding that distance and proximity are key factors in creating uncomfortable encounters. Distance from the Holocaust reduces discomfort, but where distance cannot be created, other strategies have to be put to work. This article underlines the significance of experience in an individual’s personal relation to the past for gaining an improved understanding of Holocaust memorial culture in Germany.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo

By identifying two general issues in recent history textbook controversies worldwide (oblivion and inclusion), this article examines understandings of the United States in Mexico's history textbooks (especially those of 1992) as a means to test the limits of historical imagining between U. S. and Mexican historiographies. Drawing lessons from recent European and Indian historiographical debates, the article argues that many of the historical clashes between the nationalist historiographies of Mexico and the United States could be taught as series of unsolved enigmas, ironies, and contradictions in the midst of a central enigma: the persistence of two nationalist historiographies incapable of contemplating their common ground. The article maintains that lo mexicano has been a constant part of the past and present of the US, and lo gringo an intrinsic component of Mexico's history. The di erences in their historical tracks have been made into monumental ontological oppositions, which are in fact two tracks—often overlapping—of the same and shared con ictual and complex experience.


Author(s):  
П. В. Капустин ◽  
А. И. Гаврилов

Состояние проблемы. Проблематика городской среды заявила о себе в 1960-е годы как протест против модернистских методов урбанизма и других видов проектирования. Средовое движение не случайно тогда именовали «антипрофессиональным» - оно было направлено против устоявшихся и недейственных методов работы с городом - от исследования до управления. За прошедшие десятилетия в рамках самого средового движения и его идейных наследников наработано немало методов и приемов работы, однако они до сих не подвергались анализу как пребывающая в исторической динамике целостная совокупность инструментария, альтернативного традиционному градостроительству. Результаты. Рассмотрены особенности и проблемы анализа методологического «арсенала» средового движения и урбанистики. Методы работы с городской средой впервые структурированы по типам знания. Показана близость методов исследовательского и проектного подходов в отношении городской среды. Выводы. В ближайшее время можно ожидать появления новых синтетических знаний и частных методологий, связанных как с обострением средовой проблематики, с расширением круга средовых акторов, так и с процессом профессионализации урбанистики. Statement of the problem. The urban environment paradigm emerged in the 1960s as a protest against the modernist methods of urbanism and other types of design. It was no coincidence that the environmental movement was back then called "anti-professional" as it was directed against the established and ineffective methods of working with the city, i. e., from research to management. Over the past decades, within the framework of the environmental movement and its ideological heirs, a lot of methods and have been developed. However, they have not yet been analyzed as an integral set of tools in the historical dynamics which is an alternative to traditional urban planning. Results. The features and problems of the analysis of the methodological “arsenal” of environmental movement and urban studies are considered. The methods of working with the urban environment are first structured according to the types of knowledge. The proximity of research and design approaches in the case when the urban environment is dealt with is shown. Conclusions. In the nearest future, we can expect new synthetic knowledge and particular methodologies related to both the exacerbation of environmental problems to emerge as well as the expansion of the circle of environmental actors and the process of professionalization of urbanstics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088832542095080
Author(s):  
Nikolay Koposov

This article belongs to the special cluster “Here to Stay: The Politics of History in Eastern Europe”, guest-edited by Félix Krawatzek & George Soroka. The rise of historical memory, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, has made the past an increasingly important soft-power resource. At its initial stage, the rise of memory contributed to the decay of self-congratulatory national narratives and to the formation of a “cosmopolitan” memory centered on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity and informed by the notion of state repentance for the wrongdoings of the past. Laws criminalizing the denial of these crimes, which were adopted in “old” continental democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, were a characteristic expression of this democratic culture of memory. However, with the rise of national populism and the formation of the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the politics of memory has taken a significantly different turn. National populists are remarkably persistent in whitewashing their countries’ history and using it to promote nationalist mobilization. This process has manifested itself in the formation of new types of memory laws, which shift the blame for historical injustices to other countries (the 1998 Polish, the 2000 Czech, the 2010 Lithuanian, the June 2010 Hungarian, and the 2014 Latvian statutes) and, in some cases, openly protect the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity (the 2005 Turkish, the 2014 Russian, the 2015 Ukrainian, the 2006 and the 2018 Polish enactments). The article examines Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian legislation regarding the past that demonstrates the current linkage between populism and memory.


Author(s):  
Elwira Sienkiewicz ◽  
Michał Gąsiorowski ◽  
Ladislav Hamerlík ◽  
Peter Bitušík ◽  
Joanna Stańczak

AbstractLakes located in the Polish and Slovak parts of the Tatra Mountains were included in the Tatra diatom database (POL_SLOV training set). The relationship between the diatoms and the water chemistry in the surface sediments of 33 lakes was the basis for the statistical and numerical techniques for quantitative pH reconstruction. The reconstruction of the past water pH was performed using the alpine (AL:PE) and POL_SLOV training sets to compare the reliability of the databases for the Tatra lakes. The results showed that the POL_SLOV training set had better statistical parameters (R2 higher by 0.16, RMSE and max. bias lower by 0.2 and 0.36, respectively) compared to the AL:PE training set. The better performance of the POL_SLOV training set is particularly visible in the case of Przedni Staw Polski where the curve of the inferred water pH shows an opposite trend for the period from the 1960s to 1990 compared to that based on the AL:PE dataset. The reliability of the inferred pH was confirmed by the comparison with current instrumental measurements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Julie Berg ◽  
Clifford Shearing

The 40th Anniversary Edition of Taylor, Walton and Young’s New Criminology, published in 2013, opened with these words: ‘The New Criminology was written at a particular time and place, it was a product of 1968 and its aftermath; a world turned upside down’. We are at a similar moment today. Several developments have been, and are turning, our 21st century world upside down. Among the most profound has been the emergence of a new earth, that the ‘Anthropocene’ references, and ‘cyberspace’, a term first used in the 1960s, which James Lovelock has recently termed a ‘Novacene’, a world that includes both human and artificial intelligences. We live today on an earth that is proving to be very different to the Holocene earth, our home for the past 12,000 years. To appreciate the Novacene one need only think of our ‘smart’ phones. This world constitutes a novel domain of existence that Castells has conceived of as a terrain of ‘material arrangements that allow for simultaneity of social practices without territorial contiguity’ – a world of sprawling material infrastructures, that has enabled a ‘space of flows’, through which massive amounts of information travel. Like the Anthropocene, the Novacene has brought with it novel ‘harmscapes’, for example, attacks on energy systems. In this paper, we consider how criminology has responded to these harmscapes brought on by these new worlds. We identify ‘lines of flight’ that are emerging, as these challenges are being met by criminological thinkers who are developing the conceptual trajectories that are shaping 21st century criminologies.


2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-362
Author(s):  
Pablo A. J. Brescia ◽  
Scott M. Bennett

This interview with Mexican writer David Toscana ponders the current state of both Mexican and Latin American narrative and serves as an insight into his own works. Toscana's statements about the recurring themes in his narrative (failure, loneliness, characters put to the test, and a tendency to play with different time frames, especially in his novels) help illustrate some of the characteristics of his fiction, which, according to various critics, is one of the most promising today in Mexico. Also noteworthy are his comments about the tendency of writers from his generation (born in the 1960s and later) to reject the legacy of the "boom" writers. Toscana's own interest is to revisit history and tradition by constructing a different voice and a different vision, a new way of seeing and hearing both the past and the present. Esta entrevista con el escritor mexicano David Toscana trata de explorar el estado actual de la narrativa mexicana y latinoamericana, améén de servir como una aproximacióón a la incipiente obra de este autor. Las respuestas de Toscana sobre los temas recurrentes en su literatura (el fracaso, la soledad, los personajes sometidos a pruebas y una tendencia a proponer diferentes marcos temporales, especialmente en sus novelas) subrayan algunos rasgos de su ficcióón, la cual, segúún la críítica especializada, es una de las máás prometedoras en el panorama mexicano de hoy. De especial interéés son los comentarios de Toscana sobre la tendencia de los escritores de su generacióón a rechazar el legado del "boom" latinoamericano. Toscana reacciona contra ese rechazo y propone una voz personal que vuelva a la historia y a la tradicióón y plantee una nueva manera de ver el pasado y el presente de Mééxico.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Angrist ◽  
Jörn-Steffen Pischke

The past half-century has seen economic research become increasingly empirical, while the nature of empirical economic research has also changed. In the 1960s and 1970s, an empirical economist's typical mission was to “explain” economic variables like wages or GDP growth. Applied econometrics has since evolved to prioritize the estimation of specific causal effects and empirical policy analysis over general models of outcome determination. Yet econometric instruction remains mostly abstract, focusing on the search for “true models” and technical concerns associated with classical regression assumptions. Questions of research design and causality still take a back seat in the classroom, in spite of having risen to the top of the modern empirical agenda. This essay traces the divergent development of econometric teaching and empirical practice, arguing for a pedagogical paradigm shift.


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