What Is Leitkultur?

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-209
Author(s):  
Jana Cattien
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
German History ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
German Colonialism ◽  
The Enlightenment

Abstract This article interrogates the discursive regimes that underpin Leitkultur (guiding culture) discourse in contemporary Germany and argues that Leitkultur conjures Germany’s imagined “freedom from history” from within Enlightenment temporalities of liberal freedom. This requires that liberal Germany mark its limits in certain moments of German history—namely, National Socialism—while disavowing its role in the constitution of German colonialism. The return to the Enlightenment implied in hegemonic formulations of Leitkultur restores Germany’s freedom from an ugly past; this imagined return can carry the promise of a “diverse” and “inclusive” Germany only insofar as Germany’s colonial heritage is suppressed. The article aims to expose how Germany’s colonial legacy underpins dominant Leitkultur discourse while it is nevertheless hidden from it.

Hitler as Philosophe: Remnants of the Enlightenment in National Socialism.

1996 ◽  
Vol 101 (5) ◽  
pp. 1570
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Bendersky ◽  
Lawrence Birken
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
The Enlightenment

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Jane Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
German History ◽  
The Core ◽  
German States ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The Cold War

The Epilogue considers the core questions raised in earlier chapters: the place of National Socialism in German history and what it meant to be ‘German’ after the defeat of Nazism. Trials of leading figures in the regime in 1945–9 were a first step, but addressing responsibility for Nazi crimes was a prolonged and uneven process. How Germans confronted the Nazi past was affected by the establishment of two separate German states in 1949, the Cold War, the unification of Germany in 1990, and the eventual development of an international culture of Holocaust.

Agreeing to Disagree on the Legacies of Recent History

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan Kattago
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Agreeing To Disagree ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Historical Difference

Since 1989, social change in Europe has moved between two stories. The first being a politics of memory emphasizing the specificity of culture in national narratives, and the other extolling the virtues of the Enlightenment heritage of reason and humanity. While the Holocaust forms a central part of West European collective memory, national victimhood of former Communist countries tends to occlude the centrality of the Holocaust. Highlighting examples from the Estonian experience, this article asks whether attempts to find one single European memory of trauma ignore the complexity of history and are thus potentially disrespectful to those who suffered under both Communism and National Socialism. Pluralism in the sense of Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin is presented as a way in which to move beyond the settling of scores in the past and towards a respectful recognition and acknowledgement of historical difference.

German-Jewish Esotericism: The Case of Meir Wiener’s Expressionist Kabbalah

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Engel
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
German History ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
New Framework

Abstract The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neopaganism played an important role in modern German culture is thoroughly documented by scholars of German history. Experts on German-Jewish history, however, still tend to describe German-Jewish culture as one formed around the ideals of ‘Bildung’ and the Enlightenment. As a result, German-Jewish occultism, mysticism, and other non-Enlightenment texts and authors have received relatively little scholarly attention. The present article aims to help correct this bias by introducing a new framework for the study of German-Jewish culture, and by examining an all but forgotten case study: Meir Wiener and his work. After introducing the term ‘Western esotericism’, developed by scholars of religious studies, the article uses it to explore two of Meir Wiener’s strangest and virtually forgotten works. Wiener, it is shown, produced fantastically esoteric works in the context of German expressionism and Kabbalah studies, which better represent their time and place than scholars have thus far acknowledged.

The Politics of Populism: Germany and the American South in the 1890s

1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Peal
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
American South ◽  
Safety Valve ◽  
The United States ◽  
German History ◽  
International Dimension ◽  
The American South ◽  
Unique Outcome ◽  
High Tariff

A Populist newspaper in North Carolina commented in 1890 that agrarian unrest was common just about everywhere, in “high tariff and low tariff” countries as well as in “monarchies, empires, and republics.” Historians of this discontent have neglected the international dimension of protest that was so striking at the time. The countries that produced the most vigorous agrarian movements, Germany and the United States, have been especially well protected from the scrutiny of comparison. One reason for this neglect is that scholars in both countries emphasize their nations' peculiarities and capacity to make their own histories. The most influential study of American Populism, for instance, is still John D. Hicks' The Populist Revolt (1931). Hicks ascribed the movement to the closure of the frontier, the “safety valve” once thought to be the special feature of American history. Most scholars today reject the “Turner thesis,” but continue to see populism as uniquely democratic. Just as American Populists have been celebrated as “good guys,” German agrarian leaders have been demonized. The marked anti-Semitic aspect of agrarian movements in the 1890s has led historians to link them more or less directly to national socialism, the arguably unique “outcome” of German history. Whatever the sources of this exceptionalism, the constrained view has distorted the understanding of a crucial historical conjuncture.

Social Control and the Volksschule in Vormärz Prussia

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Barkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Economic History ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pre World War Ii

The ascension to power and twelve-year rule of National Socialism has had an enormous and continuing impact on the writing of German history. Since the early fifties, the leitmotiv of scholarship has been the search for the origins of Nazi successes in the peculiarities of Germany's or rather Prussia's history in the nineteenth century. Even with the emergence of social and economic history in the late sixties, the task of unearthing National Socialism's roots remained unchanged, although the tools altered and a more sophisticated strategy was adopted. A pervasive tendency developed to view all contemporary institutions as props of the authoritarian Prussian regime. Whereas pre–World War II scholarship glorified the Prussian past uncritically, the past two decades have witnessed across-the-board condemnation.

scholarly journals How do traumatic Shoah-witness testimonies fit into German History Education?

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalin Eszter Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Methods ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
History Education ◽  
Learning Objectives ◽  
German History ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

This essay traces ways in which traumatic Shoah witness testimonies fit into German history curricula conceptually by highlighting the competencies with which pupils are meant to grasp the topic of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Such curricula are diverse and they keep the learning objectives and teaching methods pertaining to emotions, imagination and ethical dimensions - as relevant to the topic - abstractly vague. This poses certain challenges and opportunities for history teachers and pupils.  One such opportunity is the incorporation of virtual video-graphed Shoah witness testimonies that by their nature are emotional as they narrate traumatic memories. The opportunity in such narrations lies in assigning the function of tertiary witnessing to pupils and this process is briefly described. The challenges of using such oral histories can be understood as those that clash with the non-discursively organised knowledge in pursuit of truth (verifiable facts) by means of what is traditionally considered historical evidence.

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