scholarly journals Pragmatism and Reconciliation: Czech-German Political Relations, 1989 – 1997

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sarah Bracey
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Argumentation ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
The Right

<p>This thesis charts the process of Czech-German political reconciliation between the years 1989 and 1997 asking, broadly, how Czech and German government representatives arrived at the 1997 Declaration on Mutual Relations and their Future Development. The argument focuses on two failed approaches to reconciliation. First, the search for historical truth in the belief that a shared normative assessment would itself dictate the necessary political and legal action, and second, the resort to legal argumentation in the context of international law. In 1989-1990, the foreign policy agendas of both Czechoslovak and German governments prioritised the speedy harmonisation of relations in a spirit of goodwill and optimism. However, a series of seemingly intractable legal disputes arose. Firstly, concerning calls for German compensation for Czech victims of Nazism, and secondly, calls from within the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, an organisation of German expellees, for the restitution of property and the right of return, supported by the German federal government. Both the Czechoslovak (later Czech) and German governments simultaneously utilised two competing legal paradigms reflecting the jurisprudential schools of legal positivism and natural law theory to both support their own arguments and refute those of the other, exhibiting a striking symmetry of selfinterested bias. Czech and German representatives disputed the legal status of the Munich Agreement of 1938 (by which the Third Reich partitioned Czechoslovakia), and of the Beneš Decrees of 1945 (collectively sanctioning the deprivation of citizenship and expropriation of Sudeten German property). Their differing interpretations had implications either strengthening or undermining the Sudeten German restitution claim in the 1990s. Neither government sufficiently abided by the intellectual ground rules of a necessarily rational process of inter-state negotiation, preventing a legal resolution. Analysing Czech-German relations through the lens of ‘failed approaches’ highlights the triumph of pragmatism, with surprisingly durable results.</p>

scholarly journals Pragmatism and Reconciliation: Czech-German Political Relations, 1989 – 1997

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sarah Bracey
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Argumentation ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
The Right

<p>This thesis charts the process of Czech-German political reconciliation between the years 1989 and 1997 asking, broadly, how Czech and German government representatives arrived at the 1997 Declaration on Mutual Relations and their Future Development. The argument focuses on two failed approaches to reconciliation. First, the search for historical truth in the belief that a shared normative assessment would itself dictate the necessary political and legal action, and second, the resort to legal argumentation in the context of international law. In 1989-1990, the foreign policy agendas of both Czechoslovak and German governments prioritised the speedy harmonisation of relations in a spirit of goodwill and optimism. However, a series of seemingly intractable legal disputes arose. Firstly, concerning calls for German compensation for Czech victims of Nazism, and secondly, calls from within the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, an organisation of German expellees, for the restitution of property and the right of return, supported by the German federal government. Both the Czechoslovak (later Czech) and German governments simultaneously utilised two competing legal paradigms reflecting the jurisprudential schools of legal positivism and natural law theory to both support their own arguments and refute those of the other, exhibiting a striking symmetry of selfinterested bias. Czech and German representatives disputed the legal status of the Munich Agreement of 1938 (by which the Third Reich partitioned Czechoslovakia), and of the Beneš Decrees of 1945 (collectively sanctioning the deprivation of citizenship and expropriation of Sudeten German property). Their differing interpretations had implications either strengthening or undermining the Sudeten German restitution claim in the 1990s. Neither government sufficiently abided by the intellectual ground rules of a necessarily rational process of inter-state negotiation, preventing a legal resolution. Analysing Czech-German relations through the lens of ‘failed approaches’ highlights the triumph of pragmatism, with surprisingly durable results.</p>

Motivazioni dell'agire dei medici che hanno applicato l'eutanasia nel regime nazi-fascista

2009 ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Michael von Cranach
Keyword(s):  
Medical Profession ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Disabled Persons ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Right ◽  
Keywords Eugenics

- Michael von Cranach in this paper reports the killing of hundreds of thousands of disabled persons, mentally or physically ill, slaughtered in gas chambers or given lethal drugs, in the Third Reich during the Nazi period. The genocide of helpless and ailing persons (in addition to that of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals) put into operation under the principles of eugenics, defence and health of the Arian race. In reality, the genocide represented a sadistic exercise of power, that alleged itself the right to decide on citizens' life or death. Many physicians connived with the regime and were consequently considered the progressive élite of the medical profession. Keywords: eugenics, defence of the race, biopolitics, exercise of power, scientific and progressive medicine under the Third Reich.

The Legal Status of Poles under German Occupation (1939–1945). Some Remarks on the Need for Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Stanisław Salmonowicz ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Third ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
New Research ◽  
Second World

The article describes the legal status of Poles residing within the territories occupied by Nazi Germany or areas incorporated into the Third Reich during the Second World War. The author points to the examples of the limitations placed on Poles in access to goods and services, including transport, healthcare, and cultural institutions. Furthermore, he reminds us of the orders and prohibitions derived from civil, administrative, and labour laws which were imposed on Poles. The author emphasises some significant differences between the Nazi occupation in Poland and in other European countries. As a result, he advocates the conduct of new research on the issue of the real situation of Poles in various occupied regions administered by the authorities of the Third Reich.

scholarly journals Prawo osobowe na ziemiach polskich wcielonych do Rzeszy Niemieckiej podczas drugiej wojny światowej

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-514
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kruszewski
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
German People ◽  
The Right ◽  
Subjective Rights

The subject of this article are basic questions within the range of civil law. They concern the general position of a human and legal people in the sphere of this law on Polish territory, which was incorporated into the Third Reich. The position of individuals, the citizens of II RP, under the occupation of the Third Reich in years 1939–1945, is analysed by the author not from the perspective of literal meaning of regulations of general part of Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) from 1896, but from the perspective of their specific interpretation, congruent with strategic and ideological purposes of the Nazi regime. In the article, the following issues are touched upon in turn: 1) personal law in terms of classical civil law contra national-socialist regime; 2) racism towards civil rights of a subjective individual; 3) elimination of the Jews from the legal relationships of civil law; 4) difficulties in the sphere of access to certain professions for Polish people and some restrictions upon personal rights; 5) the dependence of possibilities of exercising the private personal right on the consent to denationalization; 6) ban concerning getting married and the right to motherhood and fatherhood; 7) legislation of sterilisation and euthanasia. The formal changes in the legislation which were in force in the Third Reich — except for personal and family law (as well as legal rules connected with it regarding health protection of offspring), and “peasant law” (Bauernrecht) — were not significant, as is proved by the author. The old legal order was reversed in the Third Reich due to its new interpretation: classical concepts and legal institutions were filled with a different content. After the formal extension of BGB to territories incorporated into the Reich, which followed the decree of 25 September 1941 introducing German civil law, these territories became a field of social-political and racial-nationalist experiments, which in fact had a little in common with the German Civil Code’s regulations. A principle of equal access to private subjective rights was respected only in case of German people, i.a. the part which passively gave up to indoctrination. In relation to Jews, racism spoiled in this case the idea and concept of private subjective rights.

scholarly journals Polsko-niemiecki pakt o nieagresji z 1934 r. – geneza i przegląd postanowień

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Michał Koniecko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
French Military ◽  
The First World War ◽  
New States ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Free City Of Danzig ◽  
First World

One of the effects of the end of the First World War (then known as the Great War), was a significant geopolitical transformation on the map of Europe. Many new states were established at that time. One of them was Poland (the Second Polish Republic). The territory of the newly created state included part of the lands previously belonging to Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. The conceding of Greater Poland and parts of Pomerania and Upper Silesia to the reborn Republic of Poland caused a deep conflict between Poland and Germany. One of the main goals of the Weimar Republic’s foreign policy was to regain the disputed territories. The interests of both countries were therefore at odds, and one of the manifestations of the poor relations was the Customs War. Following Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power, Marshal Józef Piłsudski proposed France a preventive war, in order to remove the dictator from power. This was a turning point that led to an improvement in mutual relations, resulting in the conclusion of a non-aggression pact. Contacts between the two countries revived, and Nazi propaganda ceased its attacks on Poland. The period of warming ended with the first territorial claims against the Republic of Poland, including the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Third Reich. Deterioration of diplomatic relations, combined with British-French military guarantees for Poland, led to the declaration of the Pact by Germany in April 1939. The aim of this article is to present the genesis and content of the Polish-German non-aggression pact and to analyze it from the legal point of view, as well as from the point of view of the intentions of the parties which accompanied its conclusion.

Jewish Frontkämpfer and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Other ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the changes to Jewish war veterans' legal status after the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and the ways in which many of these men tried to retain their sense of Germanness in the face of intensifying state-sponsored terror and persecution. Although the Nazis succeeded in banning Jews from the civil service and most veterans' organizations, this did not mean that Jewish veterans were abruptly cast to the margins of German public life. Not all Germans shared Himmler's radical vision of a racially purified Volksgemeinschaft. This inconsistency in experience — persecution on the one hand, and limited solidarity with the German public on the other — obscured the gravity of the Nazi threat, leading many Jewish veterans to contemplate accommodation with the Third Reich.

OBLIGATORYJNY SYSTEM NAUCZANIA RELIGII W SZKOŁACH PUBLICZNYCH W ŚWIETLE WYBRANYCH KONKORDATÓW

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-69
Author(s):  
Jacek Janusz Mrozek
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Time Dimension ◽  
Lower Saxony ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Catholic Church

The subject of this article is an attempt to analyse the religion teaching in the mandatory formguaranteed by concordats from the Third Reich (1933), Bavaria (1924) − amended in 1968 and 1974,Lower Saxony (1965), Sarah (1985), Austria (1962 ) and Portugal (1940). Concordat guaranteesprotecting the right of the Catholic Church to teach religion in public schools in these countries areexpressed primarily in the field of religion education, its time dimension, in preparing their owneducational programs, providing religion teachers a rightful position like those teachers of othersubjects, and finally in the supervision on the teaching of religion in schools.

Hunger and the Remaking of History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Weinreb
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This chapter analyzes occupied Germany between 1945 and 1949, the years that saw the transition from the Second World War to the Cold War. During this time, the country was divided into four zones, each occupied by an Allied power (the United States, the USSR, France, and Great Britain.) This chapter argues that these years, known in Germany as the Hunger Years, played a key role in shaping modern discourses of human rights through assertions of the right of all individuals to food. Specifically, in the wake of the Third Reich, the hunger of German civilians acquired a moral weight that effectively depoliticized the category of “rights.” Analyzing civilian and medical debates about the causes and consequences of German hunger, the chapter explores the ways in which the different Allied rationing programs interpreted responsibility for Nazi crimes, and the ways in which Germans reacted to, challenged, and appropriated these categories.

Interest, Collusion, and Alignment

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Adut
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
The Other ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Adolf Hitler ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Right

Ivan Ermakoff ’s Ruling Oneself Out focuses on two major instances of voluntary surrender of power in Western history: the March 1933 bill that empowered Adolf Hitler with the right to amend the Weimar Constitution and the transfer of full executive, legislative, and constitutional authority to Marshal Philippe Pétain in July 1940. The first event inaugurated the Third Reich, the other Vichy France. Much ink has been spilled over these events. But Ermakoff finds various problems with the existing accounts and advances his own theory of collective abdication in their stead. Moreover, his theory is geared to analyze all kinds of political crises and breakdowns where collective abdication plays a role—as it often does in such contexts. Ermakoff ’s theory is a formal one. It can hold for any situation in which a group confronts the possibility of collective persecution and has to decide whether to resist or abdicate. It is not confined to formally defined collectivities or to parliamentary settings: the dynamics that it reveals are independent of specific group configurations and institutional contexts.

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