German Angst

Author(s):  
Frank Biess

German Angst analyzes the relationship of fear and democracy in postwar West Germany. While fear has historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, the book highlights the role of fear and anxiety in a democratizing society: these emotions undermined democracy and stabilized it at the same time. By taking seriously postwar Germans’ uncertainties about the future, the book challenges dominant linear and teleological narratives of postwar West German “success.” It highlights the prospective function of memories of war and defeat, of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Fears and anxieties derived from memories of a catastrophic past that postwar Germans projected into the future. Based on case studies from the 1940s to the present, the book provides a new interpretive synthesis of the Federal Republic. It tells the history of the Federal Republic as a series of recurring crises, in which specific fears and anxieties emerged, served a variety of political functions, and then again abated. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary insights of emotion studies, the book transcends the dichotomy of “reason” and “emotion.” Fear and anxiety were not exclusively irrational and dysfunctional but served important roles in postwar democracy. These emotions sensitized postwar Germans to the dangers of an authoritarian transformation, and they also served as the emotional engine of the environmental and peace movements. The book also provides an original analysis of the emotional basis of right-wing populism in Germany today, and it explores the possibilities of a democratic politics of emotion.

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Katja Corcoran ◽  
Michael Häfner ◽  
Mathias Kauff ◽  
Stefan Stürmer

Abstract. In this article, we reflect on 50 years of the journal Social Psychology. We interviewed colleagues who have witnessed the history of the journal. Based on these interviews, we identified three crucial periods in Social Psychology’s history, that are (a) the early development and further professionalization of the journal, (b) the reunification of East and West Germany, and (c) the internationalization of the journal and its transformation from the Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie to Social Psychology. We end our reflection with a discussion of changes that occurred during these periods and their implication for the future of our field.


German Angst ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 66-94
Author(s):  
Frank Biess

This chapter analyzes a little-known episode of moral panic during the 1950s: the alleged abduction of young German men into the French Foreign Legion. Fears and fantasies of the Foreign Legion reflected a widespread sense of popular humiliation and limited sovereignty vis-à-vis the Western allies during that decade. Fears of the abduction of young Germans into the Legion reflected deep-seated concerns regarding the safety and integrity of male youth, which formed the core constituency of postwar reconstruction. The alleged “recruiter” as “folk devil” represented the absolute opposite of normative male citizenship. Cultural representations cast the recruiter as effeminate, foreign, and potentially homosexual, as well as displaying some of the stereotypical antisemitic features of the Jewish “other.” By the late 1950s, the growing recognition that young men entered the Legion out of their own volition shifted public attention from fear of recruiters to concerns about the fragility of male youth in postwar society. West German anxieties regarding the Legion began to focus on the inner resilience and resistance of young German men rather than the external threat of seduction by French-paid recruiters. This shift from externally to internally generated fears and anxieties anticipated a general shift in the history of fear and anxiety in West Germany from the late 1950s onward.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 310-324
Author(s):  
Johnny Rodger

The Glasgow School of Art has a long history of the cultivation of the art of drawing. Many types of drawing have been taught and practiced within the institution since its establishment in 1845. Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art building, completed between 1897 and 1909, can be seen as one great outcome of that design-through-tradition. The building not only sheltered and thus enabled a further cultivation of the art of drawing, but became itself a model for the practices of that drawing tradition. There is a strong body of work, much of it by teachers and students of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, which has focussed on the building and explored through drawing the architectonic features and significance of the structure. This work has been useful as a teaching and critical aid but also as a contribution to the art and discipline of architecture. In the wake of the first 2014 fire, which destroyed part of the building, this body of work suddenly became of use as a design tool rather than simply an exploratory or critical tool, as the institution sought to reproduce exactly what had been lost. The most recent 2018 fire wreaked a destruction much more comprehensive across the whole building. Accordingly, we are forced to completely review the relationship of that drawing heritage to the building. That is to say, the building largely no longer exists, and the drawings take on a life of their own in a way not previously attached to them. The school may, however, be rebuilt, recreated ‘as was’ at some point in the future, potentially instigating yet another type of relationship between the existing drawing work and a new ‘Mackintosh’ building.


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-93
Author(s):  
Alexander Badenoch

Until recently, broadcasting in Europe has been seen by historians and broadcasters alike as intricately related to national territory. Starting immediately after the Second World War, when West German national territory was still uncertain, this article explores how the broadcasting space of the Federal Republic (FRG) shaped and was shaped by material, institutional, and discursive developments in European broadcasting spaces from the end of World War II until the early 1960s. In particular, it examines the border regimes defined by overlapping zones of circulation via broadcasting, including radio hardware, signals and cultural products such as music. It examines these spaces in part from the view of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the federation of (then) Western public service broadcasters in Europe. By reconstructing the history of broadcasting in the Federal Republic within the frame of attempts to regulate European broadcasting spaces, it aims to show how territorial spaces were transgressed, transformed, or reinforced by the emerging global conflict.


Author(s):  
Desmond Dinan

On June 20, 1950, representatives of six countries (Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) met in Paris to launch what became the first intergovernmental conference in the history of European integration. The outcome, after a year of difficult negotiations, was an agreement to establish the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed in Paris on April 18, 1951. Based on the Schuman Declaration of May 1950, the Paris Treaty established a High Authority of a “supranational character,” with responsibility for managing a common market for two key industrial sectors. The Coal and Steel Community was a political as much as an economic undertaking. It institutionalized a new departure in relations between France and West Germany and helped cement a postwar peace settlement in Western Europe, within the broader framework of an emerging transatlantic system.


Lex Russica ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
A. P. Grakhotskiy

The trial against Karlsruhe criminal police Secretary Adolf Rube, held in 1949, was the first trial in Germany, during which Nazi atrocities committed on the territory of Belarus were considered. By the example of this process, the paper attempts to identify the specifics of West Germany courts’ consideration of criminal cases related to the commission of Holocaust crimes in Eastern Europe. German law excluded the possibility of punishing Nazi criminals for genocide, crimes against peace and humanity. Guided by the norms of the German Criminal Code of 1871, German justice considered each case of murder of Jews during the years of national socialism as a separate crime, caused by personal motives. Based on this, A. Rube was punished not for participating in the state-organized, bureaucratically planned genocide of the Jewish people, but for committing separate, unrelated murders. The defendant, who was accused of killing 436 Jews in the Minsk ghetto, was found guilty of unlawfully depriving 27 people of their lives and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, in 1962 he was amnestied and was released. By presenting the Holocaust as a mosaic of individual, unrelated criminal acts, German justice maintained the illusion that "normal" Germans "knew nothing" about the mass extermination of Jews, that the Holocaust was solely the product of the Hitler’s actions, his fanatical entourage, and individual "pathological sadists," "sex maniacs," and "upstarts" such as A. Rube, who sought to assert themselves at the expense of Jewish victims.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Lidia Zessin-Jurek

THE EBBS AND FLOWS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THE GULAG MEMORY IN EU-ROPE. MEMORY DYNAMICS IN THE NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXTSIn spring 2017 the long-awaited House of European History in Brussels was opened. Its exhibition tries to tackle not only the tumultuous history of 20th-century Europe, but also the diverse cultures of memory that surround this topic. The article touches upon the problem of co-existence and mutual relationship of the two important, if not the most crucial, topics on the European mnemonic map: that of the Holocaust and that of the Gulag. The uneven and changeable development of these memory cultures has been presented in the historical perspective and analysed through the way they have functioned at the national with Poland and Germany as examples and transnational EU levels. The concluding statement encapsulates the thesis that the EU-ropean memory confl ict in its original phase, centred around Brussels, achieved its climax some years ago. Nowadays the problems of history and memory are administered mostly within the regional and, even more, national public spheres. As the focal point of European dispute, on the other hand, new — seemingly beyond historical — topics emerged. Among them is the cultural problem sparked by the mass infl ux of immigrants to Europe.


2021 ◽  
pp. 482-503
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Boase

The prophetic figure of Jeremiah has long been associated with the book of Lamentations. The earliest known attribution of Lamentations to Jeremiah dates to the time of the Septuagint, an attribution that is repeated in other early translations and rabbinic commentary. Since the rise of critical scholarship, however, the authenticity of Jeremiah as author has been questioned, with few contemporary scholars continuing to argue that the prophet was the actual author of the Lamentations. Despite this, the prophet figure/persona continues to be identified within Lamentations, albeit in ways far removed from the direct attribution expressed in earlier periods. This chapter traces the rise and fall of Jeremiah as author of Lamentations, exploring possible reasons why the prophetic figure has been so important in the history of interpretation within Lamentations studies, with a particular focus on the way that Jeremianic authorship has contributed to the theological understanding of the book. The ever-changing understanding of the relationship of Jeremiah with Lamentations has been influenced by the interpretive lenses and needs of successive communities, a trend which will continue into the future as new methods and approaches emerge.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig

The introduction presents the book’s core argument that twentieth-century Jewish archives were not just about the past but also about the future: We can look to a process whereby Jews turned increasingly toward archives as anchors of memory in a rapidly changing world. Jews in Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine all sought to gather the files of the past in order to represent their place in Jewish life and articulate a vision of the future. It situates these projects in the history of community-based archiving and archival theory and methodology, as well as Jewish history at large. It also dives into the ways we can see archive making as a metaphor for the broader patterns in modern Jewish history, as Jews sought to gather the sources and resources of their culture both before the Holocaust and especially in its aftermath.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002200942091470
Author(s):  
Philipp Graf

Beginning with an encounter between Erich Honecker and the Jewish communist Leo Zuckermann that took place in Mexico City in September 1981, this article investigates the relationship of the communist movement in the German-speaking world to the ‘Jewish question’ and the Holocaust. At a reception of the GDR embassy on the occasion of Honecker’s state visit, the Chairman of the State Council shook hands with Zuckermann, a formerly high-ranking Socialist Unity Party of Germany functionary who had fled the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1952, and assured him that he was happy to see him again. This gesture by Honecker rehabilitated a man over whom a blanket of silence had been spread in the GDR decades earlier: during his first exile in Mexico, Zuckermann had developed positions that granted the Jewish people in light of the crimes of National Socialism the right both to restitution and to an independent state. This article offers new insights into the genesis of Zuckermann’s thinking and illuminates the reactions of the party leadership, which was surprisingly not opposed to such partisanship on behalf of the Jewish collective during a short ‘interim period’ from 1943/4 to 1948/9.


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