NEW DATA ABOUT THE HOARDS OF ROMAN COINS FROM THE HRODNA REGION OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS

The article provides information on five new locations of Roman coins from the Hrodna region of the Republic of Belarus: three hoards, as well as two collective finds that can be interpreted as parts of hoards. All of them are represented by denarii of the Roman Empire. Only in one of the deposits – from the village of Bačancy – there is a hybrid barbarian imitation of the imperial denarius. Another of the hoards, found near the village of Varanki, contains, in addition to denarii, fragments of cut silver items, which dates to the beginning of the Migration Period, which makes it possible to determine the date of hiding of this complex in the 5th century. All these finds were made in the course of illegal searches and, unfortunately, only one hoard (Bačancy) almost entirely ended up in the museum collection. The rest of the deposits went to private collections, which hinders their detailed study. Along with new finds in the Hrodna region, there are from 9 to 13 hoards of antique coins. Most of them consist of denarii of the Roman Empire (sometimes along with barbarian imitations). Of the other deposits, the most interesting are the hoard of Roman Republican denarii from under the village of Luckaŭliany, a complex of bronze Alexandrian tetradrachms from under the village of Turec and a hoard (?) of perforated aurei from under the village of Ambileŭcy. Most of the hoards of Roman coins from the Hrodna region can be associated with the East Germans (Pszeworsk and Wielbark archaeological cultures), who penetrated into the Neman River basin inhabited by Baltic tribes in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. It is with the Germans that the vast majority of the hoards of Roman Imperial denarii found on the territory of Barbaricum are associated. It is also possible that some of the hoards could have been deposited by the Balts, which are under powerful East German influence.

Where the Film Has the (Visual) Word?

To date, film magazines have primarily seen use as sources when researching individual periods of cinema history, rather than as objects of study themselves. Instead, the following paper brings the visuality, mediality and materiality of film periodicals to the fore. The question being addressed is the following: What kind of film knowledge and film understanding do illustrated film magazines negotiate in their presentation and selection—precisely in their (hitherto mainly disregarded) visuality, in their appearance, in their sensual material presence? The East German magazine Neue Filmwelt serves as an example for this approach. The essay proposes three ways of looking at the visual intermedial relation to film: How the magazine inscribes its words onto the picture; how it appropriates pictures, symbols, signets and typographies associated with cinema; and how it thereby outlines its very own position as a cultural and visual product in connection to film.

Teaching about Fascism(s): The Relationship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in East German, West German, and Italian Textbooks, 1950–60

The parallels and interconnections between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany are not merely a matter of contemporary scholarly interest, but also were and still are a charged political and societal question. Through an analysis of discourse in school history textbooks, this article analyzes how scholars, students, teachers and state authorities perceived these parallels and interconnections during the immediate postwar period. The paper investigates how the earliest history textbooks – published in the post-fascist successor states of East Germany, West Germany, and Italy between 1950 and 1960 – evaluated the relationship between Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany during the 1930s. The 1930s are key because they began with Mussolini as the senior fascist dictator; over the course of the decade – with the war in Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War, the passage of anti-Semitic racial laws, and the creation of the Pact of Steel – Hitler's Germany eclipsed Mussolini's Italy as the preeminent fascist power. By looking at postwar textbooks’ representations of the Fascist Italy–Nazi Germany relationship during the 1930s, we can see that the postwar post-fascist states often blamed each other for the emergence of the especially imperialist, racist and violent elements of fascism. Thus, this article illustrates how educational materials marshalled deflection strategies during the long process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

Transnational Dimensions of a ‘German Case’: The Expatriation of Wolf Biermann and the Politics of Solidarity in the 1970s

In November 1976, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) announced the expatriation of the dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, preventing his return from a concert tour in West Germany. This step attracted widespread press coverage and sparked a substantial expression of solidarity by East German intellectuals. This article proposes an alternative perspective on this well-known episode in German history by highlighting its transnational dimensions and its international contexts. Biermann’s work interacted with broader cultural currents of the period, while his political engagement with events in Chile and Spain testified to the importance of transnational solidarity for left-wing mobilizations. Moreover, the article points to two important international factors that are crucial for understanding the events of 1976: the role of Eurocommunism within left-wing debate on the one hand, and the resonance of human rights discourse during the 1970s on the other.