scholarly journals Historical Context in the Latest Lithuanian Music: Contemporary Tensions

Menotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jūratė Landsbergytė
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Visual Space ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
80Th Anniversary ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Language Of Music ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World

The historical context opens its unresolved issues inside contemporary cultural consciousness. It gives the language of music a specific dimension of dramatic tensions. Here, composers’ propositions acquire a coded imagery close to the aesthetics of modernist catastrophe. The musical text becomes highly contextual and filled with the knowledge arisen from history. It is like an encrypted message about the current transformation of history. The texture of the work becomes an expression of the signs incorporating also non-musical sounds or visual space. Semantics play a crucial role in soundscapes. In this sense, we can talk about the war and post-war semantics, which is making its comeback into Lithuanian music. Here, the aesthetic poles of tension or the dramaturgy of conflict arise and are realised through the spectra of hum or expression of identities. In this context, two recent works by Lithuanian composers should be mentioned: they accurately respond to the tensions and wounds of the Second World War that continue to bleed inside the identity consciousness of the Lithuanian nation. These wounds are the Holocaust and the post-war partisan struggle against the Soviet occupation. The topic of ‘war after war’ acquires its musical task in Vytautas Germanavičius’s (b.1969) work Red Trees (2018) for flute, cello, and organ dedicated to the partisan commander Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas. It is important to stress that Vanagas has been recognised as a de facto leader of the state and, thanks to sustained efforts of historians and archaeologists, his remains, which were discovered in the Vilnius Orphans’ Cemetery, were reburied in the Pantheon of State Leaders. All this forms an exceptional historical dimension, which finds an original reflection in Germanavičius’s work. Meanwhile, the Holocaust theme connects vividly with the 80th anniversary (late in 2020), of the deed of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who saved over 6,000 Jews in 1940. Algirdas Martinaitis (b.1950) work Visa for Life (2020) for two flutes, oboe, and organ is dedicated to Chiune Sugihara. Here, the composer combines, in a unique way, the worlds of the Japanese, the European tradition and Jewish music. His musical expression is based on the dramaturgy of transformation (the constant running of the toccata). In this way, each composer voices the context of the past: its tension transforms the language of music. It should be noted that both works bring back the catastrophe of the Second World War and the post-war period, which is a painful drama of the history of the Baltic States and not yet sufficiently understood in the world. As a result, the former meditative face of Baltic music identity changes accordingly.

The London-based Greek Shipping Co-operation Committee: A paradigm of collective action in the shipping sector, 1930–1950

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilias Bissias ◽  
Panagiotis Kapetanakis
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Business Sector ◽  
Shipping Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
80Th Anniversary ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

In 2016, the Greek Shipping Co-operation Committee (GSCC) celebrated its 80th anniversary in London. This article, which is part of an ongoing research project on the development of the GSCC in the twentieth century, provides a new interpretive framework by using the tools of historical institutionalism to study and understand the circumstances that led to its establishment, operation and broad activity in London, England. Furthermore, it seeks to answer the question of how the GSCC, as an independent institutional body of the Greek shipping industry, became a successful paradigm of concerted and collective action within a business sector that is known for its spirit of individualism. The particular time period under consideration in this article is the early 1930s to the early post-war years (1946–1950), excluding the Second World War, when exceptional conditions obliged the Committee to alter its normal mode of working.

Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma: opera, melodrama and the Resistance

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine O'Rawe
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Film History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
World War ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
Italian Film ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Italian neorealism is conventionally read as the authoritative cinematic chronicle of Italy's experience of the Second World War and the Resistance, through canonical films such as Rossellini'sRoma città aperta(Rome, Open City, 1945). It is important, however, to restore a full picture of the array of genres which narrated and refracted the Resistance experience in the post-war period. To this end, this article looks at a key genre that has been overlooked by scholarship, the opera film ormelodramma. In examiningAvanti a lui tremava tutta Roma(Before Him All Rome Trembled, Gallone, 1946), the article considers Mary Wood's contention (inItalian cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2005, 109) that in this period ‘realist cinematic conventions were insufficient for the maximum perception of the historical context’, and that the ‘affective charge’ of melodrama was essential for restoring this complexity. It assesses the appeal to the emotions produced by the film, and the ways in which this is constructed through the bodily and vocal performance of the operadivo, and questions the critical division between emotion (always viewed as excessive) and authenticity (seen in neorealism, the mode of seriousness) which has seen the opera film relegated to the margins of post-war Italian film history.

scholarly journals The status and the future of Baltic States and Romania in the strategy of Western Allies in the early years of the Second World War: a comparative view

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Ramojus Kraujelis
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World War ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World

The fate of Lithuania and Romania as well as future of the whole Central and Eastern European region was determined in the years of the Second World War. The common origin of their tragic and painful history was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the secret deal between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which divided Central and Eastern Europe between two totalitarian regimes. In June 1940 the three Baltic States and a part of Romania were directly occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. The main objective of this paper is to identify, analyze and compare the attitudes of the United States and Great Britain with respect to the annexation of the Baltic States and the Romania territory and discussed the post-war future reserved to them. During the early years of the Second Word War (1940-1942) few interesting international discussions about possible post-war arrangement plans existed. The analysis of the Western attitude would enable us to give answers to certain questions: What could have been done by the Western states for the benefit of Central and Eastern European region; what have they, in fact, done and what did they avoid doing? The year 1943 witnessed the consolidation of the Western attitude with regard to Soviet Union’s western borders, which resulted in the fundamental fact that Moscow did not intend to retract its interests in the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, North Bucovina and Bessarabia while the West did not intend to fight for these territories. Considering the fact that at the Teheran conference (1943) the Western states agreed upon turning the Baltic states into a Soviet interest sphere, the United States and Britain entered the Yalta conference (1945) with no illusions as to the fate of Central and Eastern Europe in general.

RECEPCIJA I REPREZENTACIJA HOLOKAUSTA U ISTOČNOM BERLINU I BEOGRADU NAKON DRUGOG SVETSKOG RATA

Lipar ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (75) ◽  
pp. 163-186
Author(s):  
Milena Nešić Pavković ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Second World

The goal of this paper is to investigate the memory of the Holocaust, i.e. the reception and representation of the suffering of the Jewish population during the rule of the Third Reich (under Nazi rule and occupation) in the capitals of the states constituted after the Second World War - in East Berlin, GDR, and Belgrade, SFRY, during the period from 1945 to 1989/1991. Relying on the achievements of memory studies and analyzing the political moods of that time and the ways of constructing official narratives about Jewish suffering in selected post-war Communist countries, the similarities and differences in the policy of representing Jewish suffering in these two countries and the memory of Jewish victims in places of remembrance and in the practices of remembrance in their capitals will be pointed out.

The Memory of Europe’s Age of Catastrophe, 1914–2014

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Cultural Struggle ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The enormous death toll of the twentieth-century world wars created a cultural struggle over their meaning. States, institutions, and individuals developed conflicting memories, which shifted with the political trends of the post-war eras. After the First World War nationalist narratives promoted by states did not automatically win unanimous adherence, but the apparently apolitical language of loss and mourning was most successful where the war was least controversial or where national narratives were unavailable. While memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust has often been discussed in terms of forgetting, there was no amnesia but rather a selective appropriation of the past. Myths of victimhood and resistance proved popular across Europe and persisted despite periodic engagements with the past. Germany’s acknowledgement of the Nazi past is the most thorough, while most Europeans states now more easily remember the Second World War than their colonial heritage.

scholarly journals Unrecognizable, abandoned, unnamed, avoided places: On the murders committed against Jews in Poland in the period after the Second World War and their commemoration

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-147
Author(s):  
Andrzej Rykała
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

The fall of the Third Reich, turning the “most tragic page” in the history of the Jewish nation, i .e . the Second World War, did not mean the end of the tragedy for Jews on Polish soil. Even before the end of the greatest confl in the history of humankind, in the areas liberated from Nazi Germany occupation, many survivors of the Holocaust experienced acts of ruthless violence. However, very few of the numerous victims of the post-war anti-Jewish terror have been commemorated in public space. To a very small extent the form of public commemoration also covered earlier wartime cases of collective murders committed against Jews by Polish Christians. Even if the sites of the dramatic events which occurred in the shadow of the Holocaust were marked, the complete truth about their course was not restored everywhere.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 20

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Although the reconciliation of Jewish and Polish memories of the Holocaust is the central issue in contemporary Polish–Jewish relations, this is the first attempt to examine these divisive memories in a comprehensive way. Until 1989, Polish consciousness of the Second World War subsumed the destruction of Polish Jewry within a communist narrative of Polish martyrdom and heroism. Post-war Jewish memory, by contrast, has been concerned mostly with Jewish martyrdom and heroism. Since the 1980s, however, a significant number of Jews and Poles have sought to identify a common ground and have met with partial but increasing success, notwithstanding the new debates that have emerged in recent years concerning Polish behaviour during the Nazi genocide of the Jews that Poles had ignored for half a century. This volume considers these contentious issues from different angles. Among the topics covered are Jewish memorial projects, both in Poland and beyond its borders, the Polish approach to Holocaust memory under communist rule, and post-communist efforts both to retrieve the Jewish dimension to Polish wartime memory and to reckon with the dark side of the Polish national past. An interview with Henryk Grynberg touches on many of these issues, as do the three poems by Grynberg reproduced here. The 'New Views' section features innovative research in other areas of Polish–Jewish studies. A special section is devoted to research concerning the New Synagogue in Poznan, built in 1907, which is still standing only because the Nazis turned it into a swimming pool.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fleming
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

In the midst of the Second World War, the Allies acknowledged Germany's ongoing programme of extermination. In the Shadow of the Holocaust examines the struggle to attain post-war justice and prosecution. Focusing on Poland's engagement with the United Nations War Crimes Commission, it analyses the different ways that the Polish Government in Exile (based in London from 1940) agitated for an Allied response to German atrocities. Michael Fleming shows that jurists associated with the Government in Exile made significant contributions to legal debates on war crimes and, along with others, paid attention to German crimes against Jews. By exploring the relationship between the UNWCC and the Polish War Crimes Office under the authority of the Polish Government in Exile and later, from the summer of 1945, the Polish Government in Warsaw, Fleming provides a new lens through which to examine the early stages of the Cold War.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

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