Download or read book Helmut Kohl s Quest for Normality written by Christian Wicke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During his political career, Helmut Kohl used his own life story to promote a normalization of German nationalism and to overcome the stigma of the Nazi period. In the context of the cold war and the memory of the fascist past, he was able to exploit the combination of his religious, generational, regional, and educational (he has a PhD in History) experiences by connecting nationalist ideas to particular biographical narratives. Kohl presented himself as the embodiment of “normality”: a de-radicalized German nationalism which was intended to eclipse any anti-Western and post-national peculiarities. This book takes a biographical approach to the study of nationalism by examining its manifestation in Helmut Kohl and the way he historicized Germany’s past.
Download or read book Memory Laws Memory Wars written by Nikolay Koposov and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major contribution to our understanding of present-day historical consciousness through a study of memory laws across Europe.
Download or read book Sustainable Utopias written by Jennifer L. Allen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To reclaim a sense of hope for the future, German activists in the late twentieth century engaged ordinary citizens in innovative projects that resisted alienation and disenfranchisement. By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of crisis after the 1973 global oil shock appeared to doom dreams of a better world. The eventual victory of capitalism and, seemingly, liberal democracy relieved some fears but exchanged them for complacency and cynicism. Not, however, in West Germany. Jennifer Allen showcases grassroots activism of the 1980s and 1990s that envisioned a radically different society based on community-centered politicsÑa society in which the democratization of culture and power ameliorated alienation and resisted the impotence of end-of-history narratives. BerlinÕs History Workshop liberated research from university confines by providing opportunities for ordinary people to write and debate the story of the nation. The Green Party made the politics of direct democracy central to its program. Artists changed the way people viewed and acted in public spaces by installing objects in unexpected environments, including the Stolpersteine: paving stones, embedded in residential sidewalks, bearing the names of Nazi victims. These activists went beyond just trafficking in ideas. They forged new infrastructures, spaces, and behaviors that gave everyday people real agency in their communities. Undergirding this activism was the environmentalist concept of sustainability, which demanded that any alternative to existing society be both enduring and adaptable. A rigorous but inspiring tale of hope in action, Sustainable Utopias makes the case that it is still worth believing in human creativity and the labor of citizenship.
Download or read book The Euro Crisis and European Identities written by Charlotte Galpin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book builds upon our knowledge of the far-reaching economic, political and social effects of the Euro crisis on the European Union by providing a unique study of European identities. In particular, it considers the impact on the construction of European identities in political and media discourse in Germany, Ireland and Poland—three countries with profoundly different experiences of the crisis and never before compared in a single study. Offering an original insight into the dynamics of identity change at moments of upheaval, the author argues that political and media actors in the early stages of the crisis drew on long-standing identities in order to make sense of the crisis in the public sphere. European identity discourses are thus resilient to change but become central to legitimising and contesting bailouts and further economic integration. As such, the author challenges the commonly held view that identities change dramatically at times of crisis but argues that this very resilience helps to understand the EU’s current divisions. The study of identity during the Euro crisis sheds important light on the prospects for European solidarity as well as on the future of the single currency as an identity-building project. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of EU politics, comparative European politics, and identity politics.
Download or read book Holocaust Angst written by Jacob S. Eder and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of an outpouring of research on Holocaust history, Holocaust Angst takes an innovative approach. It explores how Germans perceived and reacted to how Americans publicly commemorated the Holocaust. It argues that a network of mostly conservative West German officials and their associates in private organizations and foundations, with Chancellor Kohl located at its center, perceived themselves as the "victims" of the afterlife of the Holocaust in America. They were concerned that public manifestations of Holocaust memory, such as museums, monuments, and movies, could severely damage the Federal Republic's reputation and even cause Americans to question the Federal Republic's status as an ally. From their perspective, American Holocaust memorial culture constituted a stumbling block for (West) German-American relations since the late 1970s. Providing the first comprehensive, archival study of German efforts to cope with the Nazi past vis-à-vis the United States up to the 1990s, this book uncovers the fears of German officials-some of whom were former Nazis or World War II veterans-about the impact of Holocaust memory on the reputation of the Federal Republic and reveals their at times negative perceptions of American Jews. Focusing on a variety of fields of interaction, ranging from the diplomatic to the scholarly and public spheres, the book unearths the complicated and often contradictory process of managing the legacies of genocide on an international stage. West German decision makers realized that American Holocaust memory was not an "anti-German plot" by American Jews and acknowledged that they could not significantly change American Holocaust discourse. In the end, German confrontation with American Holocaust memory contributed to a more open engagement on the part of the West German government with this memory and eventually rendered it a "positive resource" for German self-representation abroad. Holocaust Angst offers new perspectives on postwar Germany's place in the world system as well as the Holocaust culture in the United States and the role of transnational organizations.
Download or read book Never Again written by Andrew I. Port and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germans remember the Nazi past so that it may never happen again. But how has the abstract vow to remember translated into concrete action to prevent new genocides abroad? As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”? Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port examines how the Nazi past shaped German responses to the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda—and further, how these foreign atrocities recast Germans’ understanding of their own horrific history. In the late 1970s, the reign of the Khmer Rouge received relatively little attention from a firmly antiwar public that was just “discovering” the Holocaust. By the 1990s, the genocide of the Jews was squarely at the center of German identity, a tectonic shift that inspired greater involvement in Bosnia and, to a lesser extent, Rwanda. Germany’s increased willingness to use force in defense of others reflected the enthusiastic embrace of human rights by public officials and ordinary citizens. At the same time, conservatives welcomed the opportunity for a more active international role involving military might—to the chagrin of pacifists and progressives at home. Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again is a story with deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of State Sponsored History After 1945 written by Berber Bevernage and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-03 with total page 877 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides the first systematic integrated analysis of the role that states or state actors play in the construction of history and public memory after 1945. The book focuses on many different forms of state-sponsored history, including memory laws, monuments and memorials, state-archives, science policies, history in schools, truth commissions, historical expert commissions, the use of history in courts and tribunals etc. The handbook contributes to the study of history and public memory by combining elements of state-focused research in separate fields of study. By looking at the state’s memorialising capacities the book introduces an analytical perspective that is not often found in classical studies of the state. The handbook has a broad geographical focus and analyses cases from different regions around the world. The volume mainly tackles democratic contexts, although dictatorial regimes are not excluded.
Download or read book The German Polity written by Eric Langenbacher and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thoroughly revised and updated edition provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary Germany, one of the world’s leading economic and political powers. Tracing the country’s transformation since World War II, the author provides an in-depth guide to Germany’s current institutions, actors, and challenges.
Download or read book How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century written by Robert J. Norrell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace examines the decisions that historical thinking shaped about war and peace in Germany and the United States during the twentieth century and how contemporary scholars can better understand the influences of today’s historical insight.
Download or read book Cities Contested written by Martin Baumeister and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians discuss the 1970s as an era of deep transformations and even structural rupture in Western societies. For the first time, Cities Contested engages in this debate from the perspective of comparative urban history, examining the struggles in and about urban space at a time when ideas about the “city” and concepts of urban planning were being reconsidered. This book discusses the structural rupture of the time by comparing case studies of Italian and Western German cities, analyzing central issues of urban politics, urban renewal and heritage, and urban protest and social movements. An original contribution to current debates on the transition from industrial modernity to post-Fordist societies as well as to urban history and the history of social movements, Cities Contested draws on the parallel histories of Italy and Germany to propose new questions and new avenues for investigation.
Download or read book 1989 and the West written by Eleni Braat and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in 1989, many anticipated that the end of the Cold War would usher in the ‘end of history’ characterized by the victory of democracy and capitalism. At the thirtieth anniversary of this momentous event, this book challenges this assumption. It studies the most recent era of contemporary European history in order to analyse the impact, consequences and legacy of the end of the Cold War for Western Europe. Bringing together leading scholars on the topic, the volume answers the question of how the end of the Cold War has affected Western Europe and reveals how it accelerated and reinforced processes that shaped the fragile (geo-)political and economic order of the continent today. In four thematic sections, the book analyses the changing position of Germany in Europe; studies the transformation of neoliberal capitalism; answers the question how Western Europe faced the geopolitical challenges after the Berlin Wall came down; and investigates the crisis of representative democracy. As such, the book provides a comprehensive and novel historical perspective on Europe since the late 1980s.
Download or read book German Structural Pacifism written by Joseph Verbovszky and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rationed Life written by Rudolf Kučera and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from the battlefront, hundreds of thousands of workers toiled in Bohemian factories over the course of World War I, and their lives were inescapably shaped by the conflict. In particular, they faced new and dramatic forms of material hardship that strained social ties and placed in sharp relief the most mundane aspects of daily life, such as when, what, and with whom to eat. This study reconstructs the experience of the Bohemian working class during the Great War through explorations of four basic spheres—food, labor, gender, and protest—that comprise a fascinating case study in early twentieth-century social history.
Download or read book Performing Unification written by Matt Cornish and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall, important German theater artists have created plays and productions about unification. Some have challenged how German history is written, while others opposed the very act of storytelling. Performing Unification examines how directors, playwrights, and theater groups including Heiner Müller, Frank Castorf, and Rimini Protokoll have represented and misrepresented the past, confronting their nation’s history and collective identity. Matt Cornish surveys German-language history plays from the Baroque period through the documentary theater movement of the 1960s to show how German identity has always been contested, then turns to performances of unification after 1989. Cornish argues that theater, in its structures and its live gestures, on pages, stages, and streets, helps us to understand the past and its effect on us, our relationships with others in our communities, and our futures. Engaging with theater theory from Aristotle through Bertolt Brecht and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s “postdramatic” theater, and with theories of history from Hegel to Walter Benjamin and Hayden White, Performing Unification demonstrates that historiography and dramaturgy are intertwined.
Download or read book Index de P riodiques Canadiens written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 1712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Remembering Social Movements written by Stefan Berger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-12 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remembering Social Movements offers a comparative historical examination of the relations between social movements and collective memory. A detailed historiographical and theoretical review of the field introduces the reader to five key concepts to help guide analysis: repertoires of contention, historical events, generations, collective identities, and emotions. The book examines how social movements act to shape public memory as well as how memory plays an important role within social movements through 15 historical case studies, spanning labour, feminist, peace, anti-nuclear, and urban movements, as well as specific examples of ‘memory activism’ from the 19th century to the 21st century. These include transnational and explicitly comparative case studies, in addition to cases rooted in German, Australian, Indian, and American history, ensuring that the reader gains a real insight into the remembrance of social activism across the globe and in different contexts. The book concludes with an epilogue from a prominent Memory Studies scholar. Bringing together the previously disparate fields of Memory Studies and Social Movement Studies, this book systematically scrutinises the two-way relationship between memory and activism and uses case studies to ground students while offering analytical tools for the reader.
Download or read book Beyond the Regulatory Polity written by Philipp Genschel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the involvement of the European Union in the exercise of core state powers such as foreign and defense policy, public finance, public administration, and the maintenance of law and order.
