Download or read book German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal written by Sean A. Forner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how democracy was rethought in Germany in the wake of National Socialism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. Focusing on a loose network of public intellectuals in the immediate postwar years, Sean Forner traces their attempts to reckon with the experience of Nazism and scour Germany's ambivalent political and cultural traditions for materials with which to build a better future. In doing so, he reveals, they formulated an internally variegated but distinctly participatory vision of democratic renewal - a paradoxical counter-elitism of intellectual elites. Although their projects ran aground on internal tensions and on the Cold War, their commitments fueled critique and dissent in the two postwar Germanys during the 1950s and thereafter. The book uncovers a conception of political participation that went beyond the limited possibilities of the Cold War era and influenced the political struggles of later decades in both East and West.
Download or read book German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal written by Sean Forner and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book examines how democracy was rethought in Germany in the wake of National Socialism, the Second World War and the Holocaust. Focusing on a diverse network of intellectual elites in the immediate postwar years, Professor Forner traces their attempts to reckon with the experience of Nazism and scour Germany's ambivalent political and cultural traditions for materials with which to build a better future. In doing so, he reveals how they formulated an internally variegated, but distinctly participatory vision of democratic renewal - a paradoxical counter-elitism of intellectual elites. Although their projects ran aground on internal tensions and on the Cold War, their commitments fuelled critique and dissent in both East and West Germany in the 1950s. The book uncovers a conception of political participation that went beyond the limited possibilities of the Cold War era and which would influence the political struggles of later decades in Germany and across the globe"--
Download or read book The Intellectual Origins of the German Model Rethinking Democracy in the Bonn Republic written by Aline-Florence Manent and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation reconstructs how the West German intellectual and political establishment envisioned the conditions for democratic renewal in the early decades of the Federal Republic of Germany. I examine how theoreticians as well as actors with practical engagements in economics, law, and politics experienced the problem of democratic reconstruction and what solutions they proposed. I argue that many of the defining--and now often lauded--features of the Federal Republic's political and socio-economic model were forged within the establishment's concern for stability and social peace. This intellectual and political sensitivity underlies a distinctive understanding of democratic governance primarily concerned with countering the alienating effects of mass democracy and the market economy so that individuals might come to feel at home in their polity. I reconstruct how this concern informed proposals for administrative and territorial reform intended to foster civic belonging through local self-government, conceptions of industrial democracy and corporate governance, or justifications for the place of religion in a modern democracy.
Download or read book Antifascist Humanism and the Politics of Cultural Renewal in Germany written by Andreas Agocs and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antifascism is usually described as either a political ideology of activists and intellectuals confronting the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini, or as a cynical tool that justified the Stalinist expansion of communism in Europe. Andreas Agocs widens our understanding of antifascism by placing it in the context of twentieth-century movements of 'cultural renewal'. He explores the concept of 'antifascist humanism', the attempt by communist and liberal intellectuals and artists to heal the divisions of Nazism by reviving the 'other Germany' of classical Weimar. This project took intellectual shape in German exile communities in Europe and Latin America during World War II and found its institutional embodiment in the Cultural League for Democratic Renewal in Soviet-occupied Berlin in 1945. During the emerging Cold War, antifascist humanism's uneasy blend of twentieth-century mass politics and cultural nationalism became the focal point of new divisions in occupied Germany and the early German Democratic Republic. This study traces German traditions of cultural renewal from their beginnings in antifascist activism to their failure in the emerging Cold War.
Download or read book Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy written by Jay P. Corrin and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the development of progressive Catholic approaches to political and economic modernization, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy disputes standard interpretations of the Catholic response to democracy and modernity in the English-speaking world—particularly the conventional view that the Church was the servant of right-wing reactionaries and authoritarian, patriarchal structures. Starting with the writings of Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler of Germany, the Frenchman Frédérick Ozanam, and England’s Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, whose pioneering work laid the foundation of the Catholic "third way," Corrin reveals a long tradition within Roman Catholicism that championed social activism. These visionary writers were the forerunners of Pope John XXIII’s aggiornamento, a call for Catholics to broaden their historical perspectives and move beyond a static theology fixed to the past. By examining this often overlooked tradition, Corrin attempts to confront the perception that Catholicism in the modern age has invariably been an institution of reaction that is highly suspicious of liberalism and progressive social reform. Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy charts the efforts of key Catholic intellectuals, primarily in Britain and the United States, who embraced the modern world and endeavored to use the legacies of their faith to form an alternative, pluralistic path that avoided both socialist collectivism and capitalism. In this sweeping volume, Corrin discusses the influences of Cecil and G. K. Chesterton, H. A. Reinhold, Hilaire Belloc, and many others on the development of Catholic social, economic, and political thought, with a special focus on Belloc and Reinhold as representatives of reactionary and progressive positions, respectively. He also provides an in-depth analysis of Catholic Distributists’ responses to the labor unrest in Britain prior to World War I and later, in the 1930s, to the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War and the forces of fascism and communism.
Download or read book The Arts of Democratization written by Jennifer M. Kapczynski and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-02-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How postwar West German democracy was styled through word, image, sound, performance, and gathering
Download or read book The Weimar Century written by Udi Greenberg and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ideas, individuals, and political traditions from Weimar Germany molded the global postwar order The Weimar Century reveals the origins of two dramatic events: Germany's post–World War II transformation from a racist dictatorship to a liberal democracy, and the ideological genesis of the Cold War. Blending intellectual, political, and international histories, Udi Greenberg shows that the foundations of Germany’s reconstruction lay in the country’s first democratic experiment, the Weimar Republic (1918–33). He traces the paths of five crucial German émigrés who participated in Weimar’s intense political debates, spent the Nazi era in the United States, and then rebuilt Europe after a devastating war. Examining the unexpected stories of these diverse individuals—Protestant political thinker Carl J. Friedrich, Socialist theorist Ernst Fraenkel, Catholic publicist Waldemar Gurian, liberal lawyer Karl Loewenstein, and international relations theorist Hans Morgenthau—Greenberg uncovers the intellectual and political forces that forged Germany’s democracy after dictatorship, war, and occupation. In restructuring German thought and politics, these émigrés also shaped the currents of the early Cold War. Having borne witness to Weimar’s political clashes and violent upheavals, they called on democratic regimes to permanently mobilize their citizens and resources in global struggle against their Communist enemies. In the process, they gained entry to the highest levels of American power, serving as top-level advisors to American occupation authorities in Germany and Korea, consultants for the State Department in Latin America, and leaders in universities and philanthropic foundations across Europe and the United States. Their ideas became integral to American global hegemony. From interwar Germany to the dawn of the American century, The Weimar Century sheds light on the crucial ideas, individuals, and politics that made the trans-Atlantic postwar order.
Download or read book The Problem of Democracy in Postwar Europe written by Pepijn Corduwener and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current perception of democratic crisis in Western Europe gives a renewed urgency to a new perspective on the way democracy was reconstructed after World War II and the principles that underpinned its postwar transformation. This study accounts for the formation of the postwar democratic order in Western Europe by studying how the main political actors in France, West Germany and Italy conceptualized democracy and strove over its meaning. Based upon a wide range of librarian and archival sources from these countries, it tracks changing conceptions of democracy among leading politicians, political parties, and leaders of social movements, and unveils how they were deeply divided over key principles of postwar democracy – such as the political party, the free market economy, representation, and civic participation. By comparing three national debates on the question what democracy meant and how it should be institutionalized and practiced, this study argues that only in the 1970s conceptions of democracy converged and key political actors accepted each other as democrats with similar conceptions of democracy. This study thereby deconstructs the myth of the quick emergence of one consensual Western European model of democracy after 1945, demonstrates that its formation was a long and contentious process in which national differences were often of crucial importance, and contributes to an enhanced understanding of the historical roots of the current sentiment of democratic crisis.
Download or read book Embracing Democracy in Modern Germany written by Michael L. Hughes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the modern era, the traditional stereotype of Germans as authoritarian and subservient has faded, as they have become (mostly) model democrats. This book, for the first time, examines 130 years of history to comprehensively address the central questions of German democratization: How and why did this process occur? What has democracy meant to various Germans? And how stable is their, or indeed anyone's, democracy? Looking at six German regimes across thirteen decades, this study enables you to see how and why some Germans have always chosen to be politically active (even under dictatorships); the enormous range of conceptions of political culture and democracy they have held; and how interactions among various factors undercut or facilitated democracy at different times. Michael L. Hughes also makes clear that recent surges of support for 'populism' and 'authoritarianism' have not come out of nowhere but are inherent in long-standing contestations about democracy and political citizenship. Hughes argues that democracy – in Germany or elsewhere – cannot be a story of adversity overcome which culminates in a happy ending; it is an ongoing, open-ended process whose ultimate outcome remains uncertain.
Download or read book Western Europe s Democratic Age written by Martin Conway and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new history of how democracy became the dominant political force in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century What happened in the years following World War II to create a democratic revolution in the western half of Europe? In Western Europe's Democratic Age, Martin Conway provides an innovative new account of how a stable, durable, and remarkably uniform model of parliamentary democracy emerged in Western Europe—and how this democratic ascendancy held fast until the latter decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Conway describes how Western Europe's postwar democratic order was built by elite, intellectual, and popular forces. Much more than the consequence of the defeat of fascism and the rejection of Communism, this democratic order rested on universal male and female suffrage, but also on new forms of state authority and new political forces—primarily Christian and social democratic—that espoused democratic values. Above all, it gained the support of the people, for whom democracy provided a new model of citizenship that reflected the aspirations of a more prosperous society. This democratic order did not, however, endure. Its hierarchies of class, gender, and race, which initially gave it its strength, as well as the strains of decolonization and social change, led to an explosion of demands for greater democratic freedoms in the 1960s, and to the much more contested democratic politics of Europe in the late twentieth century. Western Europe's Democratic Age is a compelling history that sheds new light not only on the past of European democracy but also on the unresolved question of its future.
Download or read book A More Democratic Community written by Sara Lorenzini and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The histories of European unification and of West European democracy during the second half of the twentieth century have often been considered as separate or even antagonistic processes with the institutions of European integration being regarded as bastions of bureaucratic rule. A More Democratic Community challenges this assumption and argues that European integration benefited from the democratic accountability of member states while contributing to the validation of national democratic institutions. However, it also unveils a paradox: as integration deepened, it diminished the power of national parliaments, sparking a democratic accountability crisis within the Community. This insightful volume sheds light on pivotal reforms addressing Europe's perceived democratic deficit.
Download or read book New Lefts written by Terence Renaud and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of Europe's "new lefts," from the antifascist 1920s to the anti-establishment 1960s In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe's New Left rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents' antiquated politics of reform. It was not the first time an upstart leftist movement was built on the ruins of the old. This book traces the history of neoleftism from its antifascist roots in the first half of the twentieth century, to its postwar reconstruction in the 1950s, to its explosive reinvention by the 1960s counterculture. Terence Renaud demonstrates why the left in Europe underwent a series of internal revolts against the organizational forms of established parties and unions. He describes how small groups of militant youth such as New Beginning in Germany tried to sustain grassroots movements without reproducing the bureaucratic, hierarchical, and supposedly obsolete structures of Social Democracy and Communism. Neoleftist militants experimented with alternative modes of organization such as councils, assemblies, and action committees. However, Renaud reveals that these same militants, decades later, often came to defend the very institutions they had opposed in their youth. Providing vital historical perspective on the challenges confronting leftists today, this book tells the story of generations of antifascists, left socialists, and anti-authoritarians who tried to build radical democratic alternatives to capitalism and kindle hope in reactionary times.
Download or read book State Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War written by John Horne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-07-03 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a volume of comparative essays on the First World War that focuses on one central feature: the political and cultural "mobilization" of the populations of the main belligerent countries in Europe behind the war. It explores how and why they supported the war for so long (as soldiers and civilians), why that support weakened in the face of the devastation of trench warfare, and why states with a stronger degree of political support and national integration (such as Britain and France) were ultimately successful.
Download or read book Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy written by Jay P. Corrin and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the development of progressive Catholic approaches to political and economic modernization, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy disputes standard interpretations of the Catholic response to democracy and modernity in the English-speaking world - particularly the conventional view that the Church was the servant of right-wing reaction-aries and authoritarian, patriarchal structures. Starting with the writings of Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler of Germany, the Frenchman Frederic Ozanam, and England's Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, whose pioneering work laid the foundation of the Catholic third way, Corrin reveals a long tradition within Roman Catholicism that championed social activism. These visionary writers were the forerunners of Pope John XXIII's aggiornamento, a call for Catholics to broaden their historical perspectives and move beyond a static theology fixed to the past. By examining this often overlooked tradition, Corrin attempts to confront the perception that Catholicism in the modern age has invariably been an institution of reaction that is highly suspicious of liberalism and progressive social reform. Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of
Download or read book Lions and Lambs written by Noah Benezra Strote and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new interpretation of Germany's democratic transformation in the twentieth century, focusing on the generation that shaped the post-Nazi reconstruction Not long after the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, Germans rebuilt their shattered country and emerged as one of the leading nations of the Western liberal world. In his debut work, Noah Strote analyzes this remarkable turnaround and challenges the widely held perception that the Western Allies--particularly the United States--were responsible for Germany's transformation. Instead, Strote draws from never-before-seen material to show how common opposition to Adolf Hitler united the fractious groups that had once vied for supremacy under the Weimar Republic, Germany's first democracy (1918-1933). His character-driven narrative follows ten Germans of rival worldviews who experienced the breakdown of Weimar society, lived under the Nazi dictatorship, and together assumed founding roles in the democratic reconstruction. While many have imagined postwar Germany as the product of foreign-led democratization, this study highlights the crucial role of indigenous ideas and institutions that stretched back decades before Hitler. Foregrounding the resolution of key conflicts that crippled the country's first democracy, Strote presents a new model for understanding the origins of today's Federal Republic.
Download or read book Learning Democracy written by Brian M. Puaca and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarship on the history of West Germany's educational system has traditionally portrayed the postwar period of Allied occupation as a failure and the following decades as a time of pedagogical stagnation. Two decades after World War II, however, the Federal Republic had become a stable democracy, a member of NATO, and a close ally of the West. Had the schools really failed to contribute to this remarkable transformation of German society and political culture? This study persuasively argues that long before the protest movements of the late 1960s, the West German educational system was undergoing meaningful reform from within. Although politicians and intellectual elites paid little attention to education after 1945, administrators, teachers, and pupils initiated significant changes in schools at the local level. The work of these actors resulted in an array of democratic reforms that signaled a departure from the authoritarian and nationalistic legacies of the past. The establishment of exchange programs between the United States and West Germany, the formation of student government organizations and student newspapers, the publication of revised history and civics textbooks, the expansion of teacher training programs, and the creation of a Social Studies curriculum all contributed to the advent of a new German educational system following World War II. The subtle, incremental reforms inaugurated during the first two postwar decades prepared a new generation of young Germans for their responsibilities as citizens of a democratic state.
Download or read book The Rise and Demise of German Statism written by Gregg Owen Kvistad and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 1999 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German statism as a political ideology has been the subject of many historical studies. Whereas most of these focus on theoretical texts, cultural works, and vague "traditions", this study understands German statism as a functioning logic of political membership, a logic that has helped to determine who is "in" and who is "out" with regard to the German political community. Tracing statism from the early 19th century through German unification and beyond in the 1990s, the author argues that, with its central concern for a political loyalty that is vetted "from above," it historically served the function of stabilizing the political order and containing democratic mobilization. Beginning in the 1960s, however, a mobilized German democratic consciousness "from below" gradually rejected statism as anachronistic for informing political and policy debate, and German political institutions began to respond to kind.
