Nawiązania do tradycji budownictwa wiejskiego w architekturze Wolnego Miasta Gdańska w dobie narodowego socjalizmu

After the establishment of the Free City of Danzig, the process of the renovation and inventory of arcaded houses (Vorlaubenhäuser) and timber -framed churches in the vicinity of Gdańsk began, along with the increasing scientific interest in them. At the same time, in numerous projects from the 1930s, the interest of architects in traditional rural construction, related to the orders of the Nationalist Socialist Party for certain types of structures, can be observed. In the suburbs of Gdańsk and Sopot, standard, posed as idyllic workers’ housing estates were founded, which were to combine the advantages of living in the countryside and in the city. The network of kindergartens of the National Socialist People’s Welfare (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt) as well as youth hostels used by the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) and the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel) was expanded. According to the Blut -und -Boden ideology, a network of camps for the Land Service (Landdienst) for the Hitlerjugend, community houses for members of the NSDAP Party, and exemplary farms were also founded. The repertoire of local materials, traditional architectural details, as well as references in interior design were intended as manifestations of the regional identity, used by the National Socialist authorities to serve the purposes of the Party propaganda, which was creating the myth of an idyllic, strong, homogeneous national community and proving the uninterrupted continuity of German culture in the Free City of Danzig, despite its separation from the German Reich.

FAR-RIGHT VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM RISES IN GERMANY: NATIONAL SOCIALIST UNDERGROUND (NSU) TERRORIST GROUP AND THE MURDERS OF EIGHT TURKISH-GERMAN CITIZENS

Between 2000-2007, ten people were killed in Germany by unknown perpetrators. Four days after the explosion, the missing woman – later revealed as Beate Zschäpe – turned herself in. As the German authorities started to put the pieces together, they recognized that they had discovered the underground cell of at least three wanted neo-Nazis that had gone clandestine in the late 1990s. All in all, the NSU caused the most severe crisis of the German internal security system after the Second World War – a process called by the Federal Prosecutor General Harald Range Germany's 'September 11' in March 2012 (FAZ 2012). By now a total of ten assassinations, three bomb attacks and fourteen bank robberies between 1998 and 2011 were attributed to the NSU and the trial in Munich against the last surviving member – Beate Zschäpe – and the four most important supporters is already the most extensive terror trail in post-Second World War Germany. Instead, according to people who were at the meeting, he spoke extensively about the danger posed by far-right extremists and so-called Reichsbürger, a fringe group that rejects modern Germany and instead adheres to the old German Reich. This represented 'one of the biggest challenges' for Germany's security apparatus. It is quite unfortunate that nowadays we are obliged to talk about far-right domestic terror acts against politicians in Germany who are defending human values. It is time to stop sweeping the serious threats emerging in Western Europe under the rug and face the real problem. It is a fact that certain sections of the Western European societies are moving steadily to far-right quarters feeding from white supremacist and racist ideas.

Egy új, mégis régi Németország születése

The year 1945 brought a radical change in the German history. The total defeat landed the Reich in difficulty. On the territory of the German Reich four entities have been established which could only get in touch with each other if the Allied Powers allowed them. The Allies took over the supreme power after Germany’s unconditional surrender. The old-new German political parties had to face the state building under hard circumstances such as the lack of sovereignty. The postwar chaos could be overcome in four years, therefore two new states have been rebuilt on the territory of the ‘Third Reich’. This study is restricted to present the birth of West Germany also known as Federal Republic of Germany from 1948 when the Western Powers officially announced the establishment of a federal state in the West German area.

Anatomical Science at University of Vienna 1938-45

60 years after the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria to the German Reich in March, 1938, Austria is still confronted by unaddressed questions about its Nazi past. After the fall of the National Socialist regime these questions were ignored or suppressed and for decades there was little discussion about events that occurred between 1938 and 1945 at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna. Investigations were launched only in response to initiatives from abroad. Table of Contents image credit: Medical University of Vienna, MUW-ZE-003250-0000_BEILAGE_BATCH5_0153-0198.

Looting of Cultural Property in Europe for the Fuhrer – Museum in Linz

The article analyzes the activities of the Nazi “Special Mission Linz”, its organization and preparations for the opening of the Fuhrer-Museum in Linz. By A. Hitler’s design, Berlin was supposed to become a kind of Rome, and Linz – to become the European capital of world art. Although this museum was never established, its creation project and precious collections, most of which were seized from Jewish families, deserve a great deal of attention, and the connected with it secrets continue to be a concern of mankind. The crucial role in the selection and formation of the creating museum's expositions was played by its leaders. They took charge of future museum and selected for it the most precious items of the looted collections of Europe, coordinating the process of museum’s filling with Hitler. The author finds out that the Fuhrer-Museum in Linz expositions consisted mainly of art collections of Jews. The main criterion for the selection of valuable pieces of art for the museum was its belonging to the European high art. The article analyzes the components of the “mission’s” activities, outlines the routes of the artworks, which got into the museum collections in different ways. Besides, significant attention is paid in the article to the key figures: architects whose projects were approved by the Fuhrer, leaders of the museum in Linz – art historians and other executors who were directly involved in organizing and conducting of a large-scale looting of cultural property in Europe. The author notes that the purpose of the “Special Mission Linz”, was, inter alia, to find artworks created by masters of “Aryan” birth. The study emphasizes that such kind of museum establishment was an attempt to prove the greatness and steadfastness of the German Reich. It is noted in the article that Hitler was planning to build cultural centers in Königsberg and Drontheim (Norway) during the war. The Fuhrer wanted to establish a museum with cultural property from Eastern Europe in Königsberg, and the artworks of German authors were supposed to decorate the exposition of the newly created museum in Drontheim – the northernmost center of the future Great Empire. The fact that the Fuhrer-Museum in Linz was never built does not give any grounds to reject the facts of systematic looting and confiscation of cultural property that were conducting during many years of Nazi rule.

Reception of the Karl Kraus’ work among Serbian intellectuals

The paper explores relations of both Serbian nationalist and antinationalist intellectuals towards Karl Kraus? work. Analysis of the ?Last days of mankind? shows that Kraus wrote satires against ruling circles of the Habsburg Monarchy, demanded its reorganization, and even its destruction. He mostly ridiculed the top circles of the Habsburg Monarchy and German Reich, and unmasked their war plans against Serbia. He ridiculed warmongering Wiennese press, intellectuals, who betrayed their vocation by supporting German nationalism and Habsburg imperialism. Whereas some of the most distinctive Croatian Yugoslav-oriented intellectuals in the aftermath of WWI highly respected Karl Kraus, Serbian intellectuals have almost utterly neglected this talented nonconformist, who sympathised with Serbian and Yugoslav tendences despite their unpopularity in his own surroundings. Furthermore, interest for Kraus is much more visible in today?s Croatia than in Serbia. The paper?s goal is to offer an explanation of lack of interest for Kraus among Serbian intellectuals. In the twilight of socialism, majority of them showed nationalist parochialism, and a part of them expressed even unbridled warlike attitude, which contributed to thorough neglect of Kraus? voluminous, intellectually demanded and uncompromising pacifistic work. At the same time, anti-nationalist and pacifistic intellectuals were prepared to pay attention only for such aspects of the Kraus work, while they have neglected other aspects such as his criticism of pan-German imperialist tendences recognizable throughout the short 20th century.

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

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.

The onset of national socialism: Germans of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941

The German community of the Yugoslav Kingdom was, for the most part, concentrated in the territory of today's Vojvodina. Their centuries-long presence in this area indicates their readiness to live in a multinational environment, but also their ambition to live better than others, both in a cultural and economic sense. The attitude of this community towards the newly formed Yugoslav state was cautious, marked by concern and reserve, but it was not as negative as the one seen in the Hungarian community. The Germans intended to preserve their cultural identity through the organization of associations, and then to found a party. Their ambitions grew with the strengthening of the Third German Reich, when their political manifestation became more provocative and militant.