Download or read book Modernism Representations of National Culture written by Ahmet Ersoy and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presentations of National Cultures. Fifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in the east-European region. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures, from the different ideological approaches and finessing projects of how to create the modern state liberal, conservative, socialist and others to the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities.
Download or read book Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands written by Eagle Glassheim and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative study of the aftermath of ethnic cleansing, Eagle Glassheim examines the transformation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland from the end of the Second World War, through the Cold War, and into the twenty-first century. Prior to their expulsion in 1945, ethnic Germans had inhabited the Sudeten borderlands for hundreds of years, with deeply rooted local cultures and close, if sometimes tense, ties with Bohemia's Czech majority. Cynically, if largely willingly, harnessed by Hitler in 1938 to his pursuit of a Greater Germany, the Sudetenland's three million Germans became the focus of Czech authorities in their retributive efforts to remove an alien ethnic element from the body politic—and claim the spoils of this coal-rich, industrialized area. Yet, as Glassheim reveals, socialist efforts to create a modern utopia in the newly resettled "frontier" territories proved exceedingly difficult. Many borderland regions remained sparsely populated, peppered with dilapidated and abandoned houses, and hobbled by decaying infrastructure. In the more densely populated northern districts, coalmines, chemical works, and power plants scarred the land and spewed toxic gases into the air. What once was a diverse religious, cultural, economic, and linguistic "contact zone," became, according to many observers, a scarred wasteland, both physically and psychologically. Glassheim offers new perspectives on the struggles of reclaiming ethnically cleansed lands in light of utopian dreams and dystopian realities—brought on by the uprooting of cultures, the loss of communities, and the industrial degradation of a once-thriving region. To Glassheim, the lessons drawn from the Sudetenland speak to the deep social traumas and environmental pathologies wrought by both ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored modernization processes that accelerated across Europe as a result of the great wars of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Orderly and Humane written by R. M. Douglas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.
Download or read book The Devil s Wall written by Mark Cornwall and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legend has it that twenty miles of volcanic rock rising through the landscape of northern Bohemia was the work of the devil, who separated the warring Czechs and Germans by building a wall. The nineteenth-century invention of the Devil's Wall was evidence of rising ethnic tensions. In interwar Czechoslovakia, Sudeten German nationalists conceived a radical mission to try to restore German influence across the region. Mark Cornwall tells the story of Heinz Rutha, an internationally recognized figure in his day, who was the pioneer of a youth movement that emphasized male bonding in its quest to reassert German dominance over Czech space. Through a narrative that unravels the threads of Rutha's own repressed sexuality, Cornwall shows how Czech authorities misinterpreted Rutha's mission as sexual deviance and in 1937 charged him with corrupting adolescents. The resulting scandal led to Rutha's imprisonment, suicide, and excommunication from the nationalist cause he had devoted his life to furthering. Cornwall is the first historian to tackle the long-taboo subject of how youth, homosexuality, and nationalism intersected in a fascist environment. "The Devil's Wall" also challenges the notion that all Sudeten German nationalists were Nazis, and supplies a fresh explanation for Britain's appeasement of Hitler, showing why the British might justifiably have supported the 1930s Sudeten German cause. In this readable biography of an ardent German Bohemian who participated as perpetrator, witness, and victim, Cornwall radically reassesses the Czech-German struggle of early twentieth-century Europe.
Download or read book Prague in Black written by Chad Bryant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-31 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the heels of the Munich Agreement, Hitler’s troops marched into Prague and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi leaders were determined to make the region entirely German. Bryant explores the origins and implementation of these plans as part of a wider history of Nazi rule and its eventual consequences for the region.
Download or read book Czechs and Germans 1848 2004 written by Václav Houžvička and published by Karolinum Press, Charles University. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vaclav Hou vi ka describes the development of the Czech-German national controversies from the mid-19th century, through the establishing of the CzechoslovakRepublic in 1918, to the beginning of the 21st century. He focuses mainly on the tragic end of the nations' coexistence in 1938-1945 and the following development of different Czech and German reflections on the reasons for the removal of Germans from the CzechoslovakRepublic after 1945 in the latter part of the 20th century. A detailed explanation of Czech, German and Sudeten-German concepts is rendered in detail and coherently within the international and social-economic context of the 20th century. "
Download or read book The Germans and the East written by Charles W. Ingrao and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The editors present a collection of 23 historical papers exploring relationships between "the Germans" (necessarily adopting different senses of the term for different periods or different topics) and their immediate neighbors to the East. The eras discussed range from the Middle Ages to European integration. Examples of specific topics addressed include the Teutonic order in the development of the political culture of Northeastern Europe during the Middle ages, Teutonic-Balt relations in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades, the emergence of Polenliteratur in 18th century Germany, German colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the 18th century, changing meanings of "German" in Habsburg Central Europe, German military occupation and culture on the Eastern Front in Word War I, interwar Poland and the problem of Polish-speaking Germans, the implementation of Nazi racial policy in occupied Poland, Austro-Czechoslovak relations and the post-war expulsion of the Germans, and narratives of the lost German East in Cold War West Germany.
Download or read book The Bell of Treason written by P. E. Caquet and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined material, this staggering account sheds new light on the Allies’ responsibility for a landmark agreement that had dire consequences. On returning from Germany on September 30, 1938, after signing an agreement with Hitler on the carve-up of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain addressed the British crowds: “My good friends…I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” Winston Churchill rejoined: “You have chosen dishonor and you will have war.” P. E. Caquet’s history of the events leading to the Munich Agreement and its aftermath is told for the first time from the point of view of the peoples of Czechoslovakia. Basing his work on previously unexamined sources, including press, memoirs, private journals, army plans, cabinet records, and radio, Caquet presents one of the most shameful episodes in modern European history. Among his most explosive revelations is the strength of the French and Czechoslovak forces before Munich; Germany’s dominance turns out to have been an illusion. The case for appeasement never existed. The result is a nail-biting story of diplomatic intrigue, perhaps the nearest thing to a morality play that history ever furnishes. The Czechoslovak authorities were Cassandras in their own country, the only ones who could see Hitler’s threat for what it was, and appeasement as the disaster it proved to be. In Caquet’s devastating account, their doomed struggle against extinction and the complacency of their notional allies finally gets the memorial it deserves.
Download or read book Budweisers Into Czechs and Germans written by Jeremy King and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of a single town in Bohemia casts new light on nationalism in Central Europe between the Springtime of Nations in 1848 and the Cold War. Jeremy King tells the story of both German and Czech-speaking Budweis/Budæjovice, which belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918, and then to Czechoslovakia, Hitler's Third Reich, and Czechoslovakia again. Residents, at first simply "Budweisers," or Habsburg subjects with mostly local loyalties, gradually became Czechs or Germans. Who became Czech, though, and who German? What did it mean to be one or the other? In answering these questions, King shows how an epochal, region-wide contest for power found expression in Budweis/Budæjovice not only through elections but through clubs, schools, boycotts, breweries, a remarkable constitutional experiment, a couple of riots, and much more. In tracing the nationalization of politics from small and sometimes comic beginnings to the genocide and mass expulsions of the 1940s, he also rejects traditional interpretive frameworks. Writing not a national history but a history of nationhood, both Czech and German, King recovers a nonnational dimension to the past. Embodied locally by Budweisers and more generally by the Habsburg state, that dimension has long been blocked from view by a national rhetoric of race and ethnicity. King's Czech-Habsburg-German narrative, in addition to capturing the dynamism and complexity of Bohemian politics, participates in broader scholarly discussions concerning the nature of nationalism.
Download or read book Czechslovkia Before Munich written by J. W. Bruegel and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1973-06-21 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of Czech-German relations from 1918 until Munich from the standpoint of internal as well as international politics. Dr Bruegel describes the difficulties created by the existence of a 3 million strong German minority in Czechoslovakia after 1918 and, in this context, British foreign policy, British appeasement of Hitler and the Munich Crisis. After investigating the liability of the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of the First World War the author describes the birth of Czechoslovakia- a democratic state in the heart of Europe- whose rulers attempted to establish a regime of justice and equality towards the various nationalities in the country; by 1933 an ideal situation had not been reached but the great majority of the German population was loyal to the state and was far from any irrendentist leanings. Dr Brugel then examines British diplomacy and attitudes towards Czechoslovakia with the rise of Hitler and traces in detail British support of Konrad Henlein. He outlines the ways in which Britain ignored the German democratic element, the development of the policy of appeasement, and the eventual sacrifice of Czechoslovakia and its implications. The German edition of this book, published in 1967, was based on a wide range of German, Czechoslovak, British and French archival and published material as well as on the author's personal knowledge of pre-war Czechoslovakia. For this English edition Dr Bruegel has deleted some material of mainly German interest and incorporated much newly available material: Foreign Office files and the personal correspondence and memoirs of those involved. These stress how the British government persisted in its appeasement policy, despite contrary evidence of Hitler's intentions and often despite her allies' inclinations. This book sheds new light on the Munich Crisis, on the part played in British policy by Chamberlain and members of the diplomatic staff, the degree to which the Czechoslovak government and the German democrats were completely ignored and the results for Britain herself and for the whole of Europe.
Download or read book Redrawing Nations written by Philipp Ther and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After World War II, some 12 million Germans, 3 million Poles and Ukrainians, and tens of thousands of Hungarians were expelled from their homes and forced to migrate to their supposed countries of origin. Using freshly available materials from Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Czechoslovak, German, British, and American archives, the contributors to this book provide a sweeping, detailed account of the turmoil caused by the huge wave of forced migration during the nascent Cold War. The book also documents the deep and lasting political, social, and economic consequences of this traumatic time, raising difficult questions about the effect of forced migration on postwar reconstruction, the rise of Communism, and the growing tensions between Western Europe and the Eastern bloc. Those interested in European Cold-War history will find this book indispensable for understanding the profound--but hitherto little known--upheavals caused by the massive ethnic cleansing that took place from 1944 to 1948.
Download or read book The German Legacy in East Central Europe as Recorded in Recent German language Literature written by Valentina Glajar and published by Camden House. This book was released on 2004 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Valentina Glajar investigates these narratives as representations of multicultural East Central Europe in German-language literature that show the political and ethnic tensions between Germans and local peoples that marked these regions throughout the twentieth century, often with tragic consequences. The study thus expands and diversifies the understanding of German literature and challenges the concept of a homogeneous German identity reaching far beyond the borders of the German-speaking countries."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book A Nation of Victims written by Helmut Schmitz and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The re-emergence of the issue of wartime suffering to the fore of German public discourse represents the greatest shift in German memory culture since the Historikerstreit of the 1980s. The (international) attention and debates triggered by, for example, W.G. Sebald's Luftkrieg und Literatur, Günter Grass's Im Krebsgang, Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand testify to a change in focus away from the victims of National Socialism to the traumatic experience of the 'perpetrator collective' and its legacies. The volume brings together German, English and Israeli literary and film scholars and historians addressing issues surrounding the representation of German wartime suffering from the immediate post-war period to the present in literature, film and public commemorative discourse. Split into four sections, the volume discusses the representation of Germans as victims in post-war literature and film, the current memory politics of the Bund der Vertriebenen, the public commemoration of the air raids on Hamburg and Dresden and their representation in film, photography, historiography and literature, the impact and reception of W.G. Sebald's Luftkrieg und Literatur, the representation of flight and expulsion in contemporary writing, the problem of empathy in representations of Germans as victims and the representation of suffering and National Socialism in Oliver Hirschbiegel's film Der Untergang.
Download or read book The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans written by Radomír Luža and published by [New York] New York University Press. This book was released on 1964 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fleeing from Sudetenland written by Brigitte Lenz and published by Ebozon Verlag. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The closer the end of Second World War came, the louder the voices of those who demanded the displacement of the Sudeten German population became. The Czechs' ever greater hatred of everything that was German became noticeably clear. Terrible attacks on the civilian population followed. Experience a piece of contemporary history with this book. The author describes moving experiences and the escape from the Sudetenland - up close. No food, Czech military everywhere and all that remained was an escape plan. Based on a true story. Based on what happened in 1945. An insightful book about human destinies and traumatic events.
Download or read book Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918 1945 from the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry written by Germany. Auswärtiges Amt and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 1012 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War written by Marina Cattaruzza and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few years after the Nazis came to power in Germany, an alliance of states and nationalistic movements formed, revolving around the German axis. That alliance, the states involved, and the interplay between their territorial aims and those of Germany during the interwar period and World War II are at the core of this volume. This “territorial revisionism” came to include all manner of political and military measures that attempted to change existing borders. Taking into account not just interethnic relations but also the motivations of states and nationalizing ethnocratic ruling elites, this volume reconceptualizes the history of East Central Europe during World War II. In so doing, it presents a clearer understanding of some of the central topics in the history of the war itself and offers an alternative to standard German accounts of the period and East European national histories.
