German Women Paleobotanists From the 1920S to the 1970S—Or Why Did This Story Start So Late?

2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Mohr ◽  
Annette Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Women Students ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Vegetation History ◽  
Women Scientists ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Entry ◽  
Class Background ◽  
East German

This study documents women paleobotanists and their achievements from the late 1920s to the early 1970s in Germany. More than forty women were involved in paleobotanical research and related fields during this period. After they had finished their degrees, about two thirds of them left the field for private, political, and/or economic reasons. Several of them, however, had a successful career or were even leaders in their field. Compared with other disciplines and neighbouring countries, the unusually late entry of women students into this discipline from the 1930s on is explained by the close affiliation of the discipline with Paleozoic geology and mining in Germany before 1945. It is significant that of the thirteen women who finished a degree in the field before 1945, about two thirds studied Quaternary pollen analysis and vegetation history. Only a minority was involved in pre-Quaternary paleobotany. After World War II, the number of women scientists increased noticeably only when Tertiary palynology/paleobotany became more important sub-disciplines of paleobotany, a pattern which was similar in both parts of the newly divided country. During the period between 1945 and 1955, the number of women students in West Germany was significantly higher than in the East. This is partly explained by the policies of the East German communist party, which put restrictions on women students from a middle-class background. Between 1955 and 1973 the number of women students in East Germany exceeded those in the West. This was due to the East German party policy of activating the female working force, especially in fields which had been traditionally occupied by men, such as geology, mining, and engineering.

Rejecting Radbruch: The European Court of Human Rights and the Crimes of the East German Leadership

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Central Line ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
European Court ◽  
East German ◽  
East And West

The European Court of Human Rights found no violation of the Convention in its judgement in the complaints of the former East German political and military leaders Streletz, Kessler, and Krenz. All three were convicted and sentenced to terms in prison by German courts in relation to the deaths of East Germans who were killed in attempts at fleeing across the fortified border between East and West Germany. Nonetheless, the Court's decision constitutes a clear rejection of the Radbruch Formula, which served as a central line of reasoning in the decisions of the German courts in the cases. The author addresses the Court's rejection of the Radbruch Formula, focusing especially on the distinct historical and political circumstances that existed after World War II and in 1989.

Memory as Public Identity

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Kathrin Bachleitner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
West Germany ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
Critical Situation ◽  
Process Memory ◽  
Post War

This chapter places collective memory at the basis of a country’s identity and posits that memory returns from the international sphere to the domestic environment. In the course of this process, memory moves from being an official strategy to becoming part of the wider public identity. Memory’s impact thus transforms from a direct, active opportunity to an indirect, passive constraint for policymakers. Notably, as identity, collective memory is unexamined, and assumed to underwrite the mindset of a country’s public and its representatives. To illustrate this transformation, this chapter looks to the cases of West Germany and Austria in the second post-war decade. The ‘critical situation’ for analysis arrived in 1961 in the form of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. The West German and Austrian reactions to the trial demonstrate that by the early 1960s these countries had come to view their role in World War II through the lens of a pre-existing national narrative in almost entirely unexamined ways.

Computer Chess and Chess Computers in East Germany

ICGA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 152-164
Author(s):  
Ingo Althöfer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Computer Chess ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

After World War II, Germany was split into four occupation zones, from which two states arose in 1949: West Germany (officially called FRG) and East Germany (officially GDR). East Germany was under Soviet control until 1989. In both states, computer chess and chess computers followed interesting, but rather different paths. We give an overview of East German developments: on commercial chess computers, problem chess programs, the book of 1987, the Serfling tournaments, and correspondence chess pioneer Heinrich Burger. There exist important interrelations between topics. The starting point is a short description of the Cold War situation with its harsh economic consequences for the socialist states, including East Germany.

scholarly journals After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitav Acharya
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
World Order ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
China And India ◽  
International Stability

While the West woke up to the threat to the liberal international order when Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, its decline was apparent even at the height of the Obama-Clinton era. What follows the end of the U.S.-dominated world order is not a return to multipolarity as many pundits assume. The twenty-first-century world—politically and culturally diverse but economically and institutionally interlinked—is vastly different from the multipolar world that existed prior to World War II. China and India are major powers now; and globalization will not end, but will take on a new form, driven more by the East than the West and more by South-South linkages than North-North ones. The system of global governance will fragment, with new actors and institutions chipping away at the old UN-based system. Liberal values and institutions will not disappear, but will have to coexist and enmesh with the ideas and institutions of others, especially those initiated by China. This “multiplex world” carries both risks and opportunities for managing international stability. Instead of bemoaning the passing of the old liberal order, the West should accept the new realities and search for new ways to ensure peace and stability in partnership with the rising powers.

Choice in the West

1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Working Out

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.

“The Triumph of the West”: American Education and the Narrative of Decolonization, 1930–1965

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Jackson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World History ◽  
American Education ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Global Engagement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Good Government ◽  
Western Values ◽  
European Colonialism

This article examines representations of imperialism, anti-colonial nationalism, and decolonization in US textbooks for American and World History courses between 1930 and 1965. Broadly speaking, 1930s and early 1940s texts lauded imperialism and associated European colonialism with American imperialist activities. Authors extolled the benefits for colonial peoples, including literacy, good government, and peace, and anti-colonial nationalists were caricatured as irrational and ungrateful. US global engagement during and after World War II gradually changed the narrative, particularly following Philippine independence in 1946, as texts subsequently portrayed the US as an enlightened decolonizer. Postwar textbooks tended to argue that nationalism was a product of Western ideas and that anti-colonial nationalism was a triumph for Western civilization. While constructing this narrative of the spread of Western values, textbook authors largely marginalized colonial actors, promoted unflattering and stereotyped views of Africans and Asians, and de-emphasized the extreme violence inherent in the decolonization process.

scholarly journals Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Laura Emmery
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
New Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive Discussion ◽  
Made In

Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music (edited by Danijela Špirić Beard and Ljerka Rasmussen) is a fascinating study of how popular music developed in post-World War II Yugoslavia, eventually reaching both unsurpassable popularity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and critical acclaim in the West. Through the comprehensive discussion of all popular music trends in Yugoslavia − commercial pop (zabavna-pop), rock, punk, new wave, disco, folk (narodna), and neofolk (novokomponovana) − across all six socialist Yugoslav republics, the reader is given the engrossing socio-cultural and political history of the country, providing the audience with a much-needed and riveting context for understanding the formation and the eventual demise of Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Cities with Class?

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-305
Author(s):  
Eric Fure-Slocum
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Lake Michigan ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Big City ◽  
Great City ◽  
The City

Nicknaming his city “Dear Old Lady Thrift,”Milwaukee Journalwriter Richard Davis chastised city leaders for failing to build a “great city.” His unflattering portrait pictured post–World War II Milwaukee as a “plump and smiling city . … [sitting] in complacent shabbiness on the west shore of Lake Michigan like a wealthy old lady in black alpaca taking her ease on the beach.” He continued, “All her slips are showing, but she doesn’t mind a bit” (Davis 1947: 189, 191). Reprinted in theMilwaukee Journaltwo weeks before voters went to the polls to decide if the city would reverse its debt-free policy to finance postwar development, Davis’s depiction warned that Milwaukee was a chaotic andin efficient metropolis in danger of falling behind(“Not So Fair Is America’s Fair City”Milwaukee Journal[hereafterMJ], 16 March 1947). Her thriftiness bordered on stinginess, her complacency slipped into indolence, and her neglected femininity bespoke disorder. City leaders’ frugality, rooted in a tradition of cautious municipal fiscal policies, big city problems mismatched with small town attitudes, and public “indifference,” Davis contended, threatened the postwar city.

Henry Cowell and the West Coast Dance Scene

Artful Noise ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
Thomas Siwe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Henry Cowell

Modern dance and music for percussion are linked through the works of musicians who studied with the iconoclastic composer Henry Cowell. This chapter highlights the work of numerous artists who were involved in the dance and music scene along the West Coast of the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Cowell’s early publishing venture New Music helped launch the careers of composers Johanna Beyer, William Russell, Lou Harrison, John Cage, and others. The latter two composers, Harrison and Cage, also studied with the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg whose use of the twelve-tone technique became central to the music of the twentieth century. The chapter ends with a summary of percussion music’s development from the decades before World War I to the compositional hiatus caused by World War II.

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