THE SWANSONG OF THE MANDARINS: HUMBOLDT’S IDEA OF THE UNIVERSITY IN EARLY POST-WAR GERMANY

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHAN ÖSTLING
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Future Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intellectual Elite ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World ◽  
Idea Of The University

In the wake of the Second World War, Germany saw an intensive debate about the idea of the university and its future role in society. All were agreed that the country's universities had to be revitalized after the ravages of Nazism, but the question was what weight should be given to the classical German heritage, and the Humboldtian tradition in particular. The mandarins, the older humanist scholars, dominated the public debate about the fundamental principles of research and higher education, and this essay focuses on the contribution made by three of them—Karl Jaspers, Gerhard Ritter, and Werner Richter. In making their points, they all revealed a strong historical orientation, but equally very different views on the Humboldtian legacy. This essay argues that their ideas about the German university must be seen against the background of the specific experiences of their generation. In the event, the immediate post-war period was the last time their academic ideals were to gain much of a hearing. The university debate proved to be the swansong for Germany's intellectual elite.

scholarly journals Punkty, czyli złuda modernizacji

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-271
Author(s):  
Marcin Kula
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Class Origin ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World

The author’s remarks on Agata Zysiak’s book Punkty za pochodzenie. Powojenna modernizacja i uniwersytet w robotniczym mieście [Points for Class Origin: Post-War Modernization and the University in a Working-Class City] (2016) primarily concern the question of social advance through education and Zysiak’s outline of this process in Poland after the Second World War. As a participant of that process — first as a student, and later as a teacher — the author suggests that it should be viewed from the perspective of historical sociology.

scholarly journals ‘The Crucible of the Malayan Nation’: The University and the Making of a New Malaya, 1938–62

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 1149-1187 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. STOCKWELL
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World

AbstractLike so many features of the British Empire, policy for colonial higher education was transformed during the Second World War. In 1945 the Asquith Commission established principles for its development, and in 1948 the Carr–Saunders report recommended the immediate establishment of a university in Malaya to prepare for self-government. This institution grew at a rate that surpassed expectations, but the aspirations of its founders were challenged by lack of resources, the mixed reactions of the Malayan people and the politics of decolonisation. The role of the University of Malaya in engineering a united Malayan nation was hampered by lingering colonial attitudes and ultimately frustrated by differences between Singapore and the Federation. These differences culminated in the university's partition in January 1962. In the end it was the politics of nation-building which moulded the university rather than the other way round.

Struggling with Yugoslavism in the First Yugoslavia

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Ranka Gašić
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intellectual Elite ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The debate over Yugoslav nationalism versus Serbian nationalism and the structure of the new Yugoslav state came to occupy a prominent place in the public discourse of the Belgrade political and intellectual elite at the end of the First World War and again before the start of the Second World War. The considerable prewar interest in Yugoslavism and some sort of Yugoslav state had not focused on the realistic challenges of including a large Croatian and Slovenian representation. The focus of this article is on the reaction of the Belgrade elite to these challenges, their major lines of division and agreement around the questions of centralism vs. federalism, and the national identity of Serbs, first in the new state and then in the later 1930s. Only then, after the efforts of King Aleksandar’s royal dictatorship to impose integral Yugoslavism had ended with his assassination, did the Belgrade elite turn to integral Serbian nationalism.

scholarly journals Stanisław Kryński – przyczynek do biografii

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-80
Author(s):  
Michał Lewandowski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
World War ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World

As a young man Stanisław Kryński, our Polish scholar, intended to devote his life to Roman Law. The fact may be surprising as Kryński received a great deal of attention thanks to his Polish translations of English poetry and the first volume of The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. The first archival research shows that in his youth Kryński was really into Roman Law and was even going to do his doctorate on “Iudicum familiae erciscundae in a Classic Roman Law”. He became the assistant of the professor Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski while studying at the Faculty of Law and State Science at the University of Warsaw. The professor became his academic mentor and enabled him to serve an academic apprenticeship in Rome in 1938. The outbreak of the Second World War pulled the rug from under Kryński’s feet. But still, the skills and knowledge acquired in Warsaw were extremely valuable when he lectured Roman Law at the Polish Faculty of Law in Oxford in the years 1944–1946. After returning to Poland, he became a higher education lecturer at SGH Warsaw School of Economics and at Catholic University of Lublin. He did not carry on the research into Roman Law.

What did ‘the people’ want?: the meaning of the 1945 general election

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 623-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Fielding
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Second World War ◽  
General Election ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The People ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

AbstractLabour's victory at the general election of 1945, the first in which the party won an absolute majority in the house of commons, had fundamental implications for Britain's post-war history. Despite this, historians have failed to examine the popular political temper which made Labour's term of office possible. Instead, they have largely assumed that the Second World War radicalized the public, turning an unprecedented number into enthusiastic Labour voters. Whilst not denying that the war had a profound impact on the politics of some sections of society this article proposes a rather different perspective to that normally offered. Instead of promoting pro-Labour sentiment it seems that the conflict left many members of the public disengaged from the political process and cynical about the motives of all politicians. As a consequence, rather than have Labour hold office by itself the generally favoured outcome appears to have been the formation of a progressive coalition committed to the implementation of the Beveridge report. However, in reality, electors who did not want to see the return of a Conservative government had no choice but to vote ‘straight left’.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

Western Ethnic Borderlands in the Influence of Russian-Soviet Propagangda Before and in the Years of the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (46) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
Russian Identity

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics

“Product Not Available in Pre-War Quantities – but Quality Remains the Same”: Remarks on Advertisements as Historical Sources

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Press ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The article focuses on advertisements as visual and historical sources. The material comes from the German press that appeared immediately after the end of the Second World War. During this time, all kinds of products were scarce. In comparison to this, colorful advertisements of luxury products are more than noteworthy. What do these images tell us about the early post-war years in Germany? The author argues that advertisements are a medium that shapes social norms. Rather than reflecting the historical realities, advertisements construct them. From an aesthetical and cultural point of view, advertisements gave thus a sense of continuity between the pre- and post-war years. The author suggests, therefore, that the advertisements should not be treated as a source for economic history. They are, however, important for studying social developments that occurred in the past.

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