‘Restoring friendship and confidence as far as possible between the inimical nations’: Post-World War I Berlin through English eyes

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 239-251
Author(s):  
Gesa Stedman
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
World War I ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Observation ◽  
Class Habitus

Three British women writers and their memoirs or letters serve as the key witnesses to rapid change from war-torn Berlin to a highly desired tourist destination. The war-induced transition of Berlin was matched by the social changes for women whose traces can be found in the three texts: the writer’s position changes from that of the voyeuse to the flâneuse. While the old aristocratic cosmopolitanism in Evelyn Blücher’s and Helen D’Abernon’s circles was on the wane, a more middle-class cosmopolitanism, as exemplified by the Bloomsbury psychoanalyst and translator Alix Strachey, became more important in the aftermath of World War I. The three writers share an interest in social observation, but all three are tied by their particular upper-middle- or upper-class habitus. An image of Berlin emerges which predates Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin myth by at least a decade.

Making History to/as the Main Pillar of Identity: The Assyrian Paradigm

Belleten ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 76 (276) ◽  
pp. 631-646
Author(s):  
Bülent Özdemi̇r
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions

In the 20th century Assyrians living in Diaspora have increased their search of identity because of the social and political conditions of their present countries. In doing so, they utilize the history by picking up certain events which are still kept fresh in the collective memory of the Assyrian society. World War I, which caused a large segment of the Assyrians to emigrate from the Middle East, has been considered as the milestone event of their history. They preferred to use and evaluate the circumstances during WW I in terms of a genocidal attack of the Ottomans against their nation. This political definition dwarfs the promises which were not kept given by their Western allies during the war for an independent Assyrian state. The aspects of Assyrian civilization existed thousands of years ago as one of the real pillars of their identity suffer from the artificially developed political unification around the aspects of their doom in WWI presented as a genocidal case. Additionally, this plays an efficient role in removal of existing religious and sectarian differences for centuries among Assyrians. This paper aims at showing in the framework of primary sources how Assyrian genocidal claims are being used pragmatically in the formation of national consciousness in a very effective way. Not the Assyrian civilization but their constructed history in WWI is used for the formation of their nation definition.

Charles Wolfe, “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna”

Heart Beats ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Robson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
John Moore

This chapter resurrects “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna.” Charles Wolfe's poem, a reimagining of the hasty interment of a fallen general after one of the land battles in the Napoleonic wars, was repeatedly quoted by soldiers and other individuals during the American Civil War when they found themselves having to organize, or witness, the burials of dead comrades. In recent years, cultural historians of Great Britain have tried to account for the massive shift in burial and memorial practices for the common soldier that occurred between 1815 and 1915. The chapter argues that the presence of Wolfe's poem in the hearts and minds of ordinary people played its part in creating the social expectations that led to the establishment of the National Cemeteries in the United States, and thus, in due course, the mass memorialization of World War I.

The Dimensions of Social Conflict at the End of World War I

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Polarization ◽  
Class Divisions

This chapter examines social conflict at the end of World War I in three dimensions: in terms of class, elite, and interest groups. Conservatives throughout Europe were preoccupied with class divisions and the vulnerability of their own favored stations in life, but their sense of vulnerability emerged in different language and day-to-day disputes. In France, social defensiveness was revealed directly by continuing justification and discussion of the bourgeoisie, while in Germany the fixation with the Social Democratic Party and in Italy the defense of “liberalism” disclosed underlying class malaise. The chapter explains how these differences emerged within a pervasive anxiety about social polarization. It also considers the ways in which the elites sought to utilize the opportunity to reassert their older social hegemony in the context of corporate capitalism.

History and International Relations

Mind-Society ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 228-256
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
General Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Insight Into

Historical explanation and the understanding of international relations can be enhanced by applying detailed psychological, neural, and social mechanisms to real-world events. By applying the method of social cognitive-emotional workups to the origins of World War I, this chapter shows the relevance of an integrated account of beliefs, concepts, values, rules, analogies, metaphors, emotions, inferences, and communication. The result transcends the limitations of purely narrative explanations in history and provides insight into why the field of international relations has lacked a satisfactory general theory. Explaining social changes in both groups and individuals requires understanding the communicative interactions of cognitive-emotional minds; the result is mechanistic-narrative explanation. Dealing with complex historical developments such as the outbreak of wars requires solution of the person–group problem.

Survival and Autonomy

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Emily Greble
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
European Project ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Islamic Institutions

The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and World War I shattered the social fabric of Ottoman Europe and led to a radical revision of the region’s political boundaries. How did experiences of successive traumas—expulsions, famine, disease, massacres, and new occupation regimes—shape Muslims’ understandings of the European project and their experiences within it? This chapter analyzes this catastrophic era from diverse Muslim perspectives. It reveals how many Muslims found legal promises of political equality and rights ambiguous and intangible, and instead sought to define their own terms of political belonging. They wanted autonomy, confessional sovereignty, and the protection of Islamic institutions and property.

Gerd Callesen, Socialist Internationals: A Bibliography of Publications of the Social-Democratic and Socialist Internationals, 1914–2000. Bonn and Gent: Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2001. 167 pp. Free of charge.

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 173-175
Author(s):  
Reiner Tosstorff
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Association ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

This is a very useful bibliographical tool produced by the efforts of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI). This association comprises more than one hundred archives, libraries and research centers all over the world, though the vast majority are located in Europe, and not all of them have the same importance, reflecting the geographical and political unevenness of socialism's history. This particular volume aims to list all the publications of the social-democratic internationals after 1914, i.e. from the time of the political split due to the support for World War I by most social-democratic parties. This means that the left-wing, beginning with the Kienthal-Zimmerwald movement during the war and leading to the “Communist International” from 1919 on, is not represented here. But also left-wing splits from social democracy in later years, as in the 1930s with the “London Bureau” of left-wing socialist parties (and also the Bureau's predecessors) are excluded here, as they openly campaigned against social democracy. Also, a few international workers' institutions (mainly in the cultural field) that had been founded before 1914, but tried to maintain their independence after 1914 faced with the political split, are therefore not listed as well.

Mobility and Migration of Spanish Mathematicians during the Years around the Spanish Civil War and World War II

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Pacheco
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
And Migration

ArgumentThis paper considers some aspects of the reception and development of contemporary mathematics in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century, more specifically between 1910 and 1950. It analyzes the possible influence of scientists’ mobility in the adoption of newer views or theories. A short overview of key points of the social and scientific background in nineteenth-century Spain locates the expounded facts in an appropriate context. Three leading threads are followed. First is the consideration of the mobility of some Spanish mathematicians during a period including World War I and World War II – when Spain was a theoretically neutral country – and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Second, the emergence and socio-political behavior of a dominant mathematical group gathered around Julio Rey Pastor between 1915 and 1936 is also accounted for, as well as its continuity after the Civil War into the 1940s. Third, attention is paid to the migration or interior exile of a number of mathematicians as a consequence of the Civil War. The paper is organized around nine Tables containing information on mobility of mathematicians, doctorates awarded in the mathematical sciences, and mathematical production in Spain during this period, accompanied by statistical résumés and comments on interesting entries. The main conclusions drawn are: 1) a number of integrants of the Rey group, himself included, officially traveled to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland – usually after having obtained doctorates and fixed positions – imported mathematical knowledge into Spain; 2) the group also managed to dominate the mathematical panorama from both the scientific and the sociological viewpoint; 3) social usages in Spanish mathematical affairs established in Spain in the years prior to the Civil War present a clear continuity under the Franco regime once the war was over.

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