scholarly journals Channeling Janus: The Birth of the West German State and Rebirth of the German Nation

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Jacovou
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German State ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
German Nation

CESAA Essay Competition 2018 – Undergraduate winner: Jack JacovouThis essay will submit three arguments which will sustain this thesis respectively: 1) the incorporation of expellees, the expellee movement, and their irredentism which romanticised the Nazi period, saw a form political extremism rise as a direct consequence of the breakup of Germany after World War II (WWII)1; 2) the decline of the German Communist Party (KPD) and National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) reflected Germans becoming critical of the political extremism prevalent between the 1919 until 19452; 3) influenced by both the War and German history wholistically, the Allies and Germans crafted a Basic Law (Grundgesetz) which embodied a strong parliamentary and federal system.3 With all this in mind, the first argument to highlight how Germany drew upon its history to craft new political institutions and a new culture, is the incorporation of the expellees and their irredentism.

scholarly journals German Nationalism and Its Influence on the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland 1917–1939

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Filip Lipiński
Keyword(s):  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
German State ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Nation ◽  
German People ◽  
German Reich ◽  
First World

The roots of German nationalism among members of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland are bound with the activity of German authorities who tried to separate the German community in the occupied Kingdom of Poland during the First World War. German nationalism of the era was based on religious, social, and political factors, such as the idea of a unified German nation both within and outside of the German Reich. According to this idea, the German state was to be the defender of the German people worldwide. Such ideas woke the separatist tendencies inside the Augsburg Church. The political situation in the Second Polish Republic and spread of the national socialist ideology in the 1930s increased the separatist tendencies in the Church and led to a conflict with its pro-governmental Consistory and the General Superintendent, later Bishop Juliusz Bursche.

How Did Germany Go Right?

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist

To set a single agenda for German history would be a foolhardy task, but let us begin with a major generalization about the long-term development of the field. Two mega-issues have dominated the historiography and debates for a century or more, standing on the path of historical research like some huge boulders that can not be moved or even circumvented. The first concerns how the German communities of Central Europe had constructed a nation-state—Tantae molis erat Germanam condere gentem, to adapt Vergil. There was a Prussian-centered statist answer by scholars including Leopold von Ranke, Heinrich von Treitschke, and Friedrich Meinecke, and continuing through Christopher Clark'sIron Kingdom. A more decentered approach has, by contrast, stressed local experiences; liberal and participatory currents of a political or religious (often Roman Catholic in sympathy, e.g., the work of Franz Schnabel) or cultural nature; and, finally, the heritage of a federalist constitutionalism, whether instantiated in the Holy Roman Empire or in the later celebratory afterglow ofHeimat. The second mega-issue that dominated the historiography for the first generation—perhaps half-century—after World War II and the collapse of Nazism was one that I was asked about at my undergraduate oral examinations in the spring of 1960: Where did Germany go wrong? The catastrophic career of National Socialist Germany, both internally and for Europe in general, compelled my generation and later ones never to lose sight of that issue. Even those who rejected claims about long-term disabling flaws in the emergence of liberal democracy—the political original sin, so to speak—had to address that fundamental issue.

Loathsome Deutschtum?

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-264
Author(s):  
Julie Hubbert
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The Will

Much has been said about the Nazi appropriation of Wagner’s music in the 1930s and 1940s. As early as 1933, Hitler transformed the Bayreuth Festival into a celebration of National Socialist ideology and propagated miniature Wagner festivals to celebrate his own birthday. Wagner’s music also resounded throughout the culture and media at large. What has been less understood and examined, however, is how this same music was also used in nonnarrative films, newsreels, government documentaries, and industrial and advertising films of the period. Here the appropriation of Wagner is more complex and problematic. Master Hands (1936), the critically acclaimed, feature-length industrial film sponsored by the American car company Chevrolet, is an excellent example. As several film scholars have observed, the film is an artistic advertisement for the American automobile industry that borrows heavily from Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. But the film’s score, a compilation full of Wagner excerpts, arranged by composer Samuel Benavie and performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, about which almost nothing has been said, is equally propagandistic. By examining the music for this industrial advertisement for Chevrolet, this chapter not only re-examines the reception of Wagner in the United States between the World War I and World War II but also examines the integral role his music played in the creation of American films of persuasion. It explores the use U.S. industrial filmmakers made of Wagner’s music as an audible signifier not for German fascism but to advertise for American democracy, industry, and capitalism.

Atskaņotājmākslas attīstība Liepājā un Otrā pasaules kara ietekme uz mūziķu likteņiem

2021 ◽  
pp. 338-351
Author(s):  
Vēsma Lēvalde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Soviet Union

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.

scholarly journals Trzecia Rzesza wobec Romów i Sinti – w kręgu rasizmu i ludobójstwa

2017 ◽  
pp. 11-32
Author(s):  
Piotr Jacek Krzyżanowski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
German Nation ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
Roma People ◽  
The Right ◽  
Compulsory Sterilisation

The Third Reich’s policy towards the Sinti and Roma people was based on racist theories claiming the superiority of the German nation over other nations. The rule of the National Socialists in Germany systematically eliminated the Sinti and Roma people from all areas of public life. They were regarded as a socially unassimilated group prone to criminal activity. Consequently, the Roma and Sinti people were refused the right to live and were subject to compulsory sterilisation and systematic extermination during World War II. It was in German-occupied Poland that the extermination was carried out to the greatest extent. Losses among the Roma and Sinti people have not been precisely estimated yet. Approximately at least 250,000 lost their lives in ghettos, concentration camps and outside the camps.

The Reichsschulen and the Napolas’ Germanizing Mission in Eastern and Western Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 288-311
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
Heinrich Himmler ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe

Heinrich Himmler, August Heißmeyer, and the NPEA Inspectorate were eager to create a transnational empire of Napolas and ‘Reichsschulen’ in all of the territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. These schools both mirrored and contributed to broader National Socialist occupation and Germanization policies throughout Eastern and Western Europe. They were intended to create a cadre of ‘Germanic’ or ‘Germanizable’ leaders, loyal above all to the SS. The chapter begins by exploring the genesis of the Reichsschulen in the occupied Netherlands—Valkenburg and Heythuysen—which were adopted as a ‘Germanic’ prestige project by the Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyß-Inquart. The chapter then turns eastwards to consider the role of the Napolas which were established in the conquered Czech and Polish lands, focusing on NPEA Sudetenland in Ploschkowitz (Ploskowice), NPEA Wartheland in Reisen (Rydzyna), and NPEA Loben (Lubliniec). All in all, the Napola selection process in the occupied Eastern territories can be seen as the peak of all the ‘racial sieving’ processes which the Nazi state forced ‘ethnic Germans’ (Volksdeutsche), Czechs, and Poles to undergo, inextricably bound up with the Third Reich’s wider race, resettlement, and extermination policies. The ultimate aim of all of these schools was to mingle Reich German and ‘ethnic German’ or ‘Germanic’ pupils, educating the two groups alongside each other, in order to create a unified cohort of leaders for the future Nazi empire, and to reclaim valuable ‘Germanic blood’ for the Reich.

De-securitization, sexual violence, and the politics of silence

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-234
Author(s):  
Sabine Hirschauer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
World War ◽  
Security Issue ◽  
State Identity ◽  
German State ◽  
The Us ◽  
Discursive Representations ◽  
Insight Into

Drawing on the author’s archival research in Germany and the US, empirical data about US-allied troop sexual violence during post-World War II occupied Germany suggests a complex interplay between gender, security, silence production, and state identity. Through a feminist security studies lens, this article theorizes about an unexplored, obscured form of de-securitization: the unmaking of a security issue or referent object as active silence. De-securitization as silence provides a unique insight into silence production, gender’s normativity, and security. To move beyond de-securitization’s presumed politicization, the argument identifies specific hypervisibilities and new state-self, dominant memory regimes as acts, discursive representations, processes, or incidents of de-securitization – producing and reproducing active silence and facilitating the making of a newly imagined, ‘good’ German state-self.

What Remains? The Political Culture of an Unlucky Birth

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-42
Author(s):  
A. James McAdams
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Wrong Place

The future political culture of eastern Germany and, with it, the relationshipbetween unified Germany’s once divided populations willdepend heavily upon how all Germans respond to a distinctive factabout the east. The region experienced not one but, counting theGerman Democratic Republic (GDR), two separate eras of dictatorship.This fact can be, and has been, understood in two differentways, with significantly different implications in each case. The firstis the perspective of the victim. According to this view, the citizens ofthe GDR uniquely had to shoulder the burden of having been born,in effect, “in the wrong place.” Not only did they endure greaterhardships than their western counterparts, such as the rebuilding ofGermany after World War II, but they suffered by themselvesthrough the debilitating consequences of Soviet occupation and theirinability, until 1990, to act upon the right to “free self-determination”(to quote the original preamble of the Basic Law). As a result, accordingto this argument, easterners were owed special treatment afterunification because of their distinctive misfortunes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document