Reading German Jewry through Vernacular Photography: From the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leora Auslander
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Photograph Albums ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
The One ◽  
German Jewry

AbstractBuilding on a generation of scholarship that argues that an understanding of German Jewish life must move beyond debates over terms—assimilation, acculturation, integration, subcultures, and symbiosis—this article uses three photograph albums created by the Wassermann family of Bamberg, in conjunction with the written record, to suggest an alternative interpretive framework for understanding the complexity of German Jewish lives in the first third of the twentieth century. Rethinking this history through a close analysis of photographs and photograph albums is particularly productive because even if photography and album-making were ubiquitous practices throughout the twentieth century, the special affinity of Jews for photography has been well-documented. Their paradoxical historic experience—including ghettoization and forced migration, on the one hand, and powerful feelings of “at-homeness” in their various diasporic dwelling places, on the other, in combination with the specificities of Jewish religious practice—has given Jews a particular relation to time and to place, a relation sometimes made manifest in photography. That relation is, furthermore, historical, changing with each context in which Jews find themselves living.

The Micropolitics of Exchange

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Elswit
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

Exile has received relatively little attention in dance studies, although forced migration in the mid-twentieth century reconfigured artistic and intellectual landscapes on multiple continents. This chapter turns to German dance during and after the Third Reich, while drawing on theoretical and historical treatments of exile developed in other disciplines, as well as constructions of national identity. Such perspectives on displacement suggest that it is not the place of exiled artists, which needs to be reassessed within national dance histories; rather, these artists offer an opportunity to assess the contours of the historical narrations themselves and, with them, other forms of belonging. The case studies of Valeska Gert and Kurt Jooss highlight the micropolitics of exile’s transnational exchange. These intricate, personalized crosscurrents were catalyzed by survival strategies that registered in the work itself and left traces in history, which can only be seen by engaging with multiple forms of otherness.

A war hero or a Hitler soldier?

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Committee ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.

The One Hundred Days

2021 ◽  
pp. 336-356
Author(s):  
Peter Fritzsche
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter studies how the transformations which occurred in less than “one hundred days” in Germany evoked the original template for the one hundred days: Napoleon Bonaparte's return from Elba and the reestablishment of the empire until his abdication in the wake of Waterloo in 1815. Each of the hundred days—Napoleon's, Franklin D. Roosevelt's, and Adolf Hitler's—recharged history. The one hundred days consolidating the New Deal and the Nazi seizure of power gave new shape to the future in the extraordinary year of 1933. Ultimately, the great achievement of the Third Reich was getting Germans to see themselves as the Nazis did: as an imperiled people who had created for themselves a new lease on collective life. Not everyone agreed with the Nazis on every point, but most adjusted to National Socialism by interpreting it in their own way, adhering to old ideas by pursuing them in new forms. As a result, more and more Germans had accepted the Third Reich. This reassembly closed off any consideration of returning to the democratic governments of the Weimar Republic; it was neither recognized as a possibility nor desired.

Political and Social Dimensions of the Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic

1982 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Klaus J. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
German Jews ◽  
German States ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German Jewish

With the destruction of the Third Reich and subsequent establishment of two separate and sovereign German states, different perspectives on society and class have resulted in differences in German-Jewish affairs. The Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany, while predicated on the principles of religious corporations, became oriented toward the World Zionist Organization and the State of Israel. Indeed, Jewish life in West Germany soon represented expatriate Israeli existence, and the religious, cultural and political organizations of West-German Jews have become largely extensions of Zionist and Israeli purposes.

Parties and Pressure Groups in Weimar and Bonn

1965 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 635-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles E. Frye
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Group Politics ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

In the last forty years, Germany has had three radically different political systems. In each case, the party system, better than any other single index, reflects the style of politics of that period. The highly splintered, multiparty system of Weimar mirrors perfectly the extreme ideological dissension and radicalism of postwar German politics. The one-party system of the Third Reich epitomizes the attempt to destroy the individual's traditional social ties and then to absorb him totally in a coordinated movement. Finally, the two-party system of Bonn reflects the growing social and political consensus concerning the more pragmatic and concrete political goals of postHitlerian Germany. Although these three political systems are intimately related, the main question for us is why the democratic party systems of Weimar and Bonn are so different. The party systems are unintelligible, however, without an understanding of the patterns of pressure-group politics as well.

scholarly journals German Jews in Jelenia Góra immediately After the End of the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Szajda
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
German Population ◽  
World War ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Second World

This article presents the history of German Jews, survivors of the Extermination period, in Jelenia Góra in the years 1945–1947, that is from the establishment of the Jewish committee just after the end of the Second World War until the disappearance of this community two years later. This is the story of a group composed of people liberated from concentration camps as well as hiding in their homeland, including the “Mischling”. In the text, different aspects of the functioning of the German Jewish population are discussed in the context of the influx of Polish Jews from the territories of central Poland and the USSR, their relations with the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and the Voivodeship (the term corresponding to ‘province’ in many countries; translator’s note) Jewish Committee in Wrocław, as well as the state administration. The most interesting issue is the problem of the legal and social status of Jews who were striving to be recognised as victims of the Third Reich on equal terms with others, in this case most of all Polish Jews. Finally, almost all German Jews left the city during the deportation of the German population.

scholarly journals Paul von Klenau og hans niende symfoni. Kilderne, værket, receptionen

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 229
Author(s):  
Niels Krabbe
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Music History ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ninth Symphony ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
Liturgical Texts ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

Niels Krabbe: Paul von Klenau and his ninth Symphony – the sources, the work, the reception In 2001, the Royal Library learned about a comprehensive private collection in Vienna that contained music, letters and lecture manuscripts, photographs and other archive materials of the Danish composer Paul von Klenau (1883–1946). A preliminary survey of the collection revealed that the contents included a number of music manuscripts (symphonies, chamber music concerts and more), which were not known from the rest of the library’s major collection of Klenau works. The collection’s greatest and most interesting work was a major complete “Ninth Symphony” for orchestra, choir and four soloists in eight movements, for a Latin text with a mix of liturgical texts from the Catholic requiem and texts of unknown provenance.In 2005, the library succeeded in acquiring the collection and it was transferred to the Royal Library. Subsequently, the Danish Centre for Music Publication (DCM) organised a philological adaptation and published Symphony No. 9 for the purpose of the premier performance of the work, which duly took place 70 years after it was written, performed as a Thursday Concert in March 2014 and conducted by Michael Schønwandt.Klenau had worked in Germany as a composer and conductor in the 1920s and 1930s. He returned to Denmark in 1939 where he stayed for the rest of his life. Because of his extensive German background he did not receive high recognition in Danish music, despite the range and nature of his musical output. This was mainly because of his relationship with the Third Reich and Nazism, which affected his last years and his posthumous reputation.Symphony No. 9 was composed in the years 1944–45, and is a mix of requiem and a symphony, each in four movements. Due to the text, the work is both a traditional requiem and a requiem about the war. Both in its expression and in its length, it is probably the greatest symphony ever written by a Danish composer.The premier in 2014 received mixed reviews, and Klenau’s attitude to Nazism was discussed once again. The work was criticised for its eclectic character with its mix of late romantic forms of expression on the one side and its accomplished dodecaphonic passages on the other.The newly available Klenau collection from Vienna, including the treated Symphony No. 9, has nuanced and problematised Klenau’s position in Danish music history.

scholarly journals CZECHIAN GERMANS: THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL SELF-DESTRUCTION (1939–1945)

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Viktor Melnyk
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Functional Method ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Logical Sequence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

Objective of the study: to classify and identify the main causes of the process of political self-destruction of the German ethnic minority in the territory of Czechoslovakia; to propose, substantiate and introduce into scientific circulation the concept of political self-destruction of the German community in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which existed under the suzerainty of the Third Reich from March 15, 1939 to May 13, 1945. Methodology: Therefore, the journalistic and literary works of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were analyzed, as well as legal documents and diplomatic protocols adopted following the Yalta Conference (February 4 — F ebruary 11, 1945), the Potsdam Conference (July 17 — August 2, 1945). With the help of the traditional complex of historical and legal methods (text study, comparative analysis, legal analogy), were analyzed the content and external forms of legal succession of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in relation to the First Czechoslovak Republic (October 28, 1918 — September 30, 1938) and the Second Czechoslovak Republic (September 30, 1938 — March 15, 1939). Structural and functional method allowed to isolate the main reasons for the successful cultural and socio-economic coexistence of Germans and Czechs in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under the auspices of the Third Reich in 1939–1945. The socio-psychological approach, in turn, determined the political-political characterization of the rise of interethnic hostility of the Czechs to the Germans. The article argues that the cause of the massacres of Germans by Czech fighters (actions with clear signs of genocide) during 1945–1950 was the transfer of the so-called «guilt for Soviet occupation» by the Czech collective consciousness to the Germans. With the help of English and Soviet propaganda, a negative image of the Germans in the mass media was simultaneously formed. Results and conclusions: The history of the Czechoslovak Republic of 1918–1939 is a prime example of the confrontation between spatial and ethno-linguistic political ideologues. On the one hand, there were Sudeten and Bohemian Germans, supported by the strong movement of the Nazis. On the other hand, the concept of Central European Slavic integration, known as «Czechoslovakism». The struggle between these two ideologues often falls out of sight of contemporary political scientists (political scientists) and historians. This article does not fill the gap, but aims to demonstrate the Czech-German ethno-political conflict of the mid-twentieth century in the form of a logical sequence of events that led to the collapse of both Pan-Germanism and Czechoslovakism. The bloody war between the Slavs and the Germans in the center of Europe ended with the victory of «third power» — ideology of communism.

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