scholarly journals The Societal Relevance of the “Rheinischer Merkur”

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-199
Author(s):  
Regina M. Frey

At present, there is no societally relevant political newspaper in Germany that is based on a Christian worldview. The Rheinischer Merkur, founded in 1946 shortly after the end of the Second World War and shut down by the German Bishops’ Conference in 2010, was a newspaper of this kind. It went beyond the Christian milieu in the fulfilment of its mission in the public arena. The closure of the Rheinischer Merkur obscures even today the decisive role it played in the elaboration of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and the substantial quality of the paper. This essay sketches the history of the Rheinischer Merkur and its self-understanding, as well as its decline, locating these in the context of the journalistic autonomies and media-ethical tensions to which every journalistic medium is subject.

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 97-139
Author(s):  
Jacek Puchalski

AN OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH INTO THE HISTORY OF LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANSHIP IN POLAND IN 1945–2015The author of the article discusses selected academic and popular publications concerning the history of libraries and librarianship in Poland which appeared in 1945–2015. In that period information about the most important historical resources of various Polish libraries and early book collections was made available; in addition, the period was marked by progress in the study of materials originating before the end of the 18th century. Scholars published a range of methodological studies as well as studies dealing with sources, contributing to the development of scholarship. On the other hand, there were too few editions of source materials.After 1989 scholars intensified their efforts to find sources in foreign collections, especially in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Germany. Polish collections kept abroad are yet to be fully researched and have their inventories and catalogues published.The vast body of literature is uneven when it comes to its focus on the various historical periods, regions, subregions and local centres. It comprises publications dealing with the history of libraries, their function and role in culture with regard to the history of the book, and publications focused on the types of libraries or individual libraries — of different traditions, sizes and stature. Scholars also explored the history of home book collections, reading rooms and libraries as well as biographies of librarians and collectors. The quality of the publications varies. There are gaps in, for example, the history of libraries in the former Polish Eastern Borderlands as well as “blank pages” in the historiography of Polish librarianship after the Second World War. There is a visible shortage of quantification of phenomena from the past of libraries, despite the fact that there are some possibilities in this respect. What is also needed is development in comparative studies, also in an international perspective, although this would require Polish historians to become more interested than before in the history of librarianship in other countries.


2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Shanken

Breaking the Taboo: Architects and Advertising in Depression and War chronicles the fall of a professional interdiction in architecture, precipitated by the Second World War. For much of the history of their profession in the United States, architects——unlike builders and engineers, their main competition——faced censure from the American Institute of Architects if they advertised their services. Architects established models of professional behavior intended to hold them apart from the commercial realm. Andrew M. Shanken explores how the Great Depression and the Second World War strained this outdated model of practice, placing architects within consumer culture in more conspicuous ways, redefining the architect's role in society and making public relations an essential part of presenting the profession to the public. Only with the unification of the AIA after the war would architects conduct a modern public relations campaign, but the taboo had begun to erode in the 1930s and early 1940s, setting the stage for the emergence of the modern profession.


Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA BAADE

This paper offers a case history of the BBC's ambivalent engagement with dance music during the Second World War. It examines what ‘dance music’ meant to the BBC, musicians, and the public, and how they contested and performed those meanings in the context of new social dance practices and the growing popularity of what became known as ‘swing’ in Britain. Although broadcasting in effect disembodied music closely associated with the physical, the BBC was a primary way for people to access dance music which supported their bodily acts of leisure and regimentation. The BBC's study and regulation of dance music centred around two goals: pleasing important groups in national service and broadcasting morale-boosting music. The problem of whether these goals were congruent lay at the heart of the issue, for the youth active in national service emerged as the primary audience for the two genres – ‘swing’ and ‘sentimentality’ – about which the BBC felt most dubious.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Andrzej Grzegorczyk

The Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem was the first camp set up by the Nazis to exterminate Jews during the Second World War. The history of Kulmhof has long been an area of interest for academics, but despite thorough research it remains one of the least-known places of its kind among the public. Studies of the role of archaeology in acquiring knowledge about the functioning of the camp have been particularly compelling. The excavations carried out intermittently over a thirty-year period (1986–2016), which constitute the subject of this article, have played a key role in the rise in public interest in the history of the camp.


ARCHALP ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
Corrado Binel

The text traces the history of Aosta Valley architecture from the Second World War to the present day. The first part focuses on the evolution of architecture in the fifties and sixties, on modern architecture and on the international influences in a long phase of great economic growth. In the central part it focuses rather on the regionalist and sometimes folkloristic evolution of the following decades. He then tried to analyse, starting from the 2000s, the profound transformations generated by the economic crisis but also by the extraordinary occupation of land that over the course of about 50 years has saturated most of the territory of a small Alpine region. Finally, it attempts an analysis of the most recent development, of relations with the rest of the Alpine world and of the not easy attempt to combine history, environment, aesthetics and rationality. The text is accompanied by the choice of eight architectures from 2010 in the last eight years. As you can see only two are public works, two of collective interest and four are private homes and this choice wants to focus your attention to the fact that in the near future, in all likelihood, will no longer be the public commission to be at the center of possible experiments with new architectural languages.


Muzikologija ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Ivana Vesic

On account of its illegal status in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the CPY underwent many transformations in its organizational structure and methods of political struggle during the 1920s and 1930s. Although there are different periodizations of the pre-Second World war history of the CPY, most historiographers designate as most important moments the termination of the five-year long dictatorship of King Aleksandar in 1934 and the implementation of new policies in Comintern in 1935. After that, the CPY began very dynamic political campaigning attempting to reach different parts of the population which affected the definition and application of its cultural policies. Closer alignment with the leftist element of the field of culture created fertile ground for the construction of a broad cultural programme as well as the institutional circuit that enabled the implementation of some of its parts. A group of music specialists among the left-oriented cultural actors contributed to the process of the conceptual and practical articulation of the parts of the programme regulating musical practice. The so-called ?left music front? activists developed plural perspectives in the discussion of the music order in a classless society, interpreting the problem of the popularization of high-art music as well as the emancipation of proletarian music from different ideological positions. In that process they leaned on a specific version of the canon of composers both in the local and international music traditions and also on a historical narrative grounded in a dialectical materialism that was deduced from the Soviet model of the history of music. At the dawn of the Second World War, ?left music front? became more homogenized which was the result of strict ideological disciplining of members of the CPY in that period. Unlike the leftist segment of the literary field in which party policies were strongly opposed and criticized publicly, there were no ideological conflicts of that sort in its musical counterpart. Because of strict political control of the public sphere, activists of the ?left music front? had difficulties in the implementation of their cultural programme. They focused mostly on cultural work within workers` and students` organizations and societies that gave them an opportunity to promote in the public some of the core concepts of that programme. Although the activities in the abovementioned organizations gave modest results in the process of the institutionalization of the CPY`s cultural policies, they could be seen as an important basis for the development of musical practices after the Second World War. Together with other artistic projects in the leftist part of the cultural field, the musical undertakings of the members and ?fellow travellers? of the CPY contributed to the pluralisation and differentiation of that field, creating an alternative understanding of the production of music as well as of cultural policies on music.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-76
Author(s):  
ARTHUR HAWLEY PARMELEE

I read with great interest Dr. Rothman's manuscript, "The Quality of Medical Care," published in your section of Pediatrics in February, 1952. I am an admirer of Dr. Rothman, and his discussion of medical education was certainly a scholarly one. I would, however, like to present a difference of opinion regarding some statements in one paragraph of his manuscript. In this paragraph, he decries the fact that internes have so much time off and are getting married and having families while still in training. He infers that medical education has suffered by this change. I would like to quote some of this paragraph: ". . . at the turn of the century, the house staff had little or no time off and very little or no financial remuneration. Living quarters were provided within the hospital; matrimony was postponed . . . towards the end of the decade preceding the second world war, it became customary in the majority of the hospitals for the house staff to have every other night off, and every other week end off. Coincident with this change, the yearly stipend increased, and what with the war and some unknown factor, marriage became the rule rather than the exception.


Author(s):  
E. S. Lyubomirova

The article is devoted to the new aspects in the study of the history of post-war Germany, revealed in the book written by Sabine Bode «Post-war children - born in the 1950s, and their fathers-soldiers». It discusses the contribution made by Bode in the study of mental and psycho-emotional consequences of the Second World War and the «exclusion of the past», which is reflected in the fate of the post-war children and continues to have an impact on the socio-political life of the Federal Republic of Germany up to the present day. Nevertheless the article criticizes an excessive preoccupation of the monograph with the descriptions of the individual biographies to the detriment of analysis.


2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-65
Author(s):  
Koen Aerts

De bestraffing van de collaboratie na de Tweede Wereldoorlog is één van de meest gepolitiseerde gebeurtenissen uit het Belgisch nationaal verleden. In Vlaanderen werd de repressie al gauw afgeschilderd als een Belgische, zelfs francofone, wraakoefening om de Vlaamse beweging te breken. Die beeldvorming vindt nog steeds bijval bij het brede publiek. Nochtans heeft de wetenschappelijke geschiedschrijving de zogenaamde anti-Vlaamse repressie al lange tijd ontmaskerd als een mythe. Op basis van de uitkomst van de repressierechtspraak wordt er geconcludeerd dat er in Vlaanderen meer en in Franstalig België zwaarder is gestraft. Dat verschil zou te wijten zijn aan het succes van de politieke collaboratie in het Vlaams landsgedeelte en een meer apolitieke, gemeenrechtelijke samenwerking met de Duitse vijand in Franstalig België. Deze bijdrage stelt vraagtekens bij de gegrondheid van die veronderstelde verklaring vanuit de stelling dat de repressie in Franstalig België simpelweg strenger was. De resultaten van het repressief apparaat zeggen immers meer over het karakter van de bestraffing dan over de aard van de collaboratie. Om die reden is er nood aan een sociale geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog die rekening houdt met het mens- en maatschappijbeeld van alle betrokkenen, aan welke kant van de beklaagdenbank ook. ________ The prosecution of collaboration after the Second World War: mild in Flanders and severe in French-speaking Belgium? An argument for a social history of the Second World War.The prosecution of collaboration after the Second World War is one of the most politicised events from the Belgian national history. In Flanders the repression would soon be described as a Belgian or even French-speaking revenge intended to destroy the Flemish movement. The public at large still supports that representation of the issue. However, scientific historiography disclosed a long time ago that the so-called anti-Flemish repression was a myth. Based on the results of the repression jurisprudence it has been concluded that prosecution took place more often in Flanders, and that it was more severe in French-speaking Belgium. The difference could be explained by the success of political collaboration in the Flemish part of the country and a more a-political common law-based collaboration with the German enemy in French-speaking Belgium. This contribution questions the merits of that supposed explanation, based on the theory that repression in French-speaking Belgium was simply more severe. After all, the results of the repressive system are more indicative of the character of the prosecution than the nature of the collaboration. For that reason, we need a social history of the Second World War, which takes account of the concept of man and society of all those involved, no matter on which side of the dock they stood.


2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-225
Author(s):  
D. W. Waters

Commander Derek Howse, who has died aged 78, was a man of many talents which he used unstintingly in time of war, and in times of peace for the public benefit. After a distinguished career in the Royal Navy he joined the Museum service, and rose in it to become the leading authority on the history of the buildings, instruments and astronomical timekeepers of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, on the solution in the eighteenth century of the problem of determining the longitude at sea by lunar distance and by chronometer, and on the development and use of radar at sea.Derek was the son of a Captain of the Royal Navy, and at the age of thirteen and a half years followed his father into the Navy as a Naval Cadet. In HMS Britannia (then the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth) for the next three and a half years Derek was given a very broad – for those, even more for present times – education, for it was in the sciences and the humanities, in marine engineering and in seamanship, before going to sea as a midshipman in the 16″-gun battleship HMS Rodney for some two years. He then completed his sub-lieutenant's qualifying courses in navigation, gunnery, torpedoes, anti-submarine warfare and signals in 1939, as the Second World War broke out, when he again went to sea.


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