Showing papers in "Central European History in 2003"
TL;DR: The new millennium appears to be ushering in a new view of the Enlightenment as discussed by the authors, where the authority of reason and science either fully displaced, or fundamentally challenged and thus forced the reconstruction of, the claims of belief and tradition.
Abstract: The new millennium appears to be ushering in a new view of the Enlightenment. The synthesis of the 1930s to the 1970s had posited a unitary Enlightenment that was the matrix of a modern secular or secularizing culture. The authority of reason and science either fully displaced, or fundamentally challenged and thus forced the reconstruction of, the claims of belief and tradition. From the 1970s a social history of ideas and institutions explored the Enlightenment's seemingly infinite regional and national variations, subverting the unitary notion and yielding a mass of new information. The works of J.G.A. Pocock and Jonathan Israel, James E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley, have begun to build on this accumulated scholarship, offering a new synthesis that rests on two related notions.
63 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that since no one subject of European history can possibly encompass all countries on the continent, it is clear that independent of the general topic there needs to be a certain selection of studies about more than one local or national case, no matter whether they cover political, social, or cultural history.
Abstract: The process of European integration is posing a challenge to scholars in the humanities and the social sciences to rethink their frames of analysis The once dominant nation-state has lost relevance while transnational processes and exchanges are receiving greater attention This is not only true for the social sciences and economics, but also for history The closer the European states are integrated, the more questions about Europe's past are asked But what is European history, and upon which methods and units of analysis can it be built? Is it the sum of national histories, just as the EU is a union of nation-states, or is it something more? Since no one subject of European history can possibly encompass all countries on the continent, it is clear that independent of the general topic there needs to be a certain selection of studies about more than one local or national case If those studies, no matter whether they cover political, social, or cultural history, are to be synthesized on a European level, comparisons need to be made at a certain stage of any given work The same holds true for the history of Central Europe, an area with a particularly high degree of internal differentiation
47 citations
TL;DR: In a recent contribution to this journal, Volker Berghahn regretted the fragmentation and lack of focus in the recent research on the German Empire as discussed by the authors, and pointed out that since Manfred Rauh's two volumes in the 1970s, little has been published.
Abstract: In a contribution to this journal, Volker Berghahn regretted the fragmentation and lack of focus in the recent research on the German Empire. While he may have overstated his case, his criticism certainly applies to the historiography of Germany's parliamentarization. The dearth of research, especially of recent vintage, has left the debate about the exceptionalism of Germany's governing institutions indeed “fragmented and decentered.” Since Manfred Rauh's two volumes in the 1970s, little has been published. His thesis about Germany's silent parliamentarization has been attacked, it seems, more for the haughtiness of its footnotes than the substance of its argument. As a result, Rauh's provocative interpretation coexists far too quietly with other accounts, and thereby preempts the sort of dialogue and scholarly integration Berghahn so misses. In her response to Berghahn, Margaret Anderson points out that such a dialogue can be found in, without being confined to, the new work of Germany's electoral politics, that looked anew and more skeptically at the exceptional political development of Imperial Germany. Its findings indirectly raise questions about why the development of Germany's governing institutions — the Reichstag, the Bundersat, and the chancellor — continue to be interpreted in much more exceptionalist terms than the evolution of electoral politics.
21 citations
TL;DR: In the past decade, quite a bit of attention has been paid to the fact that non-Jewish relatives publicly demonstrated against the feared deportation of their Jewish partners as mentioned in this paper, and the scholarly literature as well has pictured this protest as a unique act of resistance that prevented the deportation of these Jews living in mixed marriages.
Abstract: On 27 February 1943 in Nazi Germany the Gestapo brutally arrested more than ten thousand Jewish men and women. Martin Riesenburger, later the Chief Rabbi of the German Democratic Republic, recalled that day as “the great inferno.” This large-scale raid marked the beginning of the final phase of the mass deportations, which had been under way since October 1941. Also interned in Berlin were people who, according to NS terminology, lived in so-called mixed marriages. But new documents show that no deportation of this special group was planned by the Gestapo. In the past decade, in both the German as well as the American public, quite a bit of attention has been paid to the fact that non-Jewish relatives publicly demonstrated against the feared deportation of their Jewish partners. The scholarly literature as well has pictured this protest as a unique act of resistance that prevented the deportation of these Jews living in mixed marriages. The fact that during this raid an untold number of Jews, both women and men, fled and went underground has so far been ignored. Since we still know much too little, the following article will discuss all the events of the spring of 1943 and their background.
19 citations
TL;DR: Among the more durable tenets of postwar West German historiography was the widespread conviction that Catholicism and Nazism were, at some most basic level, mutually exclusive entities as discussed by the authors, which has remained essentially intact to the present day.
Abstract: Among the more durable tenets of postwar West German historiography was the widespread conviction that Catholicism and Nazism were, at some most basic level, mutually exclusive entities. While a flood of critical studies in the 1960s began to erode this conviction at least around the edges — as scholars subjected to greater scrutiny the actual responses of Catholic opinion leaders, the German episcopate, and the Vatican to the Nazi regime — the image of a fundamental, albeit not quite perfect, incompatibility between Catholicism and Nazism has remained essentially intact to the present day. The durability of this image has been due to some degree to the steady stream of primarily apologetic monographs produced by a large and energetic Catholic scholarly community in Germany, whose works have stressed the heroic oppositional stance and victimhood of the Catholic Church during the Third Reich.
18 citations
TL;DR: The story of the "All-Highest command" is well known in Germany as discussed by the authors, where the 57-year-old ex-convict Wilhelm Voigt dressed himself in the uniform of a Prussian captain, assembled from several second-hand stores, and ordered the soldiers to accompany him to the town hall of the Berlin suburb of Kopenick.
Abstract: Most Germans still know the story. One day in October 1906, the 57-year-old ex-convict Wilhelm Voigt dressed himself in the uniform of a Prussian captain, assembled from several second-hand stores. So equipped, Voigt intercepted two squads of soldiers who were going off duty, and ordered the soldiers to accompany him to the town hall of the Berlin suburb of Kopenick. There, claiming to act on “All-Highest command,” Voigt arrested the mayor and other town officials, and had the town's cash handed over to him in two large sacks. He departed with the money and sent the officials in a car to the police station at Berlin's Neue Wache, guarded by several of the soldiers. Only at the Neue Wache did the officials learn that the “All-Highest” had not in fact ordered their arrest.
10 citations
TL;DR: A thirteen-year-old boy by the name of Fritz Bruggemann wrote Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer-SS and head of the German police, asking for some theological advice as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In June 1937, a thirteen-year-old boy by the name of Fritz Bruggemann wrote Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer-SS and head of the German police, asking for some theological advice. Himmler, a leading “neopagan” in the Nazi movement, had formally left the Catholic Church in 1936, but had been lost to Christianity years before. Fritz Bruggemann had also left his church, which meant that he, like Himmler, formally went by the designation gottglaubig (literally “believing in God”). Those designated as “believing in God” did not just avoid church taxes; they were also making a statement about their rejection of Germany's two confessions and their interest in a new volkisch alternative. Still, for this young Hitler Youth squad leader from Schonebeck, a speech on religion delivered to his troop was causing him concern. He was not sure if he had heard correctly, but he thought he understood the speaker to say that Jesus had been a Jew. He wrote to see if the Reichsfuhrer-SS could perhaps enlighten him on this question. He received a reply from Rudolf Brandt, Himmler's personal assistant and a leading figure in his entourage. “The Reichsfuhrer is of the opinion,” wrote Brandt, “that Christ was not a Jew. You must certainly have misunderstood the speaker.”
9 citations
TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that the West German liberal consensus may have caused interviewees (particularly women) to reinterpret as apolitical cultural choices that initially constituted resistance to gender, sexual, and racial norms.
Abstract: collected far more information on what they saw as the highly political matter of youthful consumption of culture, and Poiger's analysis of the GDR accordingly focuses more on state and party activity. Poiger also did oral histories, but she suspects that the West German liberal consensus may have caused interviewees (particularly women) to reinterpret as apolitical cultural choices that initially constituted resistance to gender, sexual, and racial norms. This is a perceptive observation, and an insightful refinement of generalized warnings that changed political or social settings may affect interviewees' memories. Perhaps because of Poiger's concern about the reliability of oral histories, however, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels has relatively little to say about young peoples' experiences of American popular culture or the ways they interpreted their uses of it. This is a shame, for even carefully qualified insights into adolescents' claims for themselves might provide a useful counterbalance to the impressive variety of "authoritative" claims about youth that constitute the strength of this study. Yet even without a more prominent place for youth's own voice, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels accomplishes a great deal. It tells a fascinating story of early Cold War politics and postwar German identity, but more: it offers a model for the integration of cultural and international history.
6 citations
TL;DR: The authors make an extremely valuable, clearly argued, and firmly evidenced contribution to our knowledge of Wilhelmian political history, and make a strong contribution to the understanding of German domestic politics in the brief hiatus between the 1912 elections and the July Crisis.
Abstract: Republic (pp. 417, 419). These conventional formulations unfortunately halt the analysis before the wider-ranging and more penetrating discussion Tober's materials might have allowed, because the impasse of Germany's domestic politics in the brief hiatus between the 1912 elections and the July Crisis remains badly in need of some serious and imaginative analysis. But aside from this foreshortening, which bespeaks perhaps a wider intellectual caution constraining the more ambitious implications of Tober's account, this book makes an extremely valuable, clearly argued, and firmly evidenced contribution to our knowledge of Wilhelmian political history.
5 citations
TL;DR: Kreuzer as mentioned in this paper compares the various arguments that historians have made about whether by 1914 the Imperial Reichstag was already, or was developing toward becoming, a truly parliamentary regime, and categorizes historians into schools of interpretation, showing that, based upon evidence contained in the cumulative scholarship produced by historians, it ranks toward the more powerful end of the spectrum.
Abstract: Inspired in part by a recent exchange in Central European History in which Volker Berghahn and Margaret Lavinia Anderson debated trends in the historiography of the Wilhelmian era of the Kaiserreich, Marcus Kreuzer offers to historians the perspective of a political scientist on what he calls the neglected issue of the “parliamentarization” of the imperial regime over its last two decades. From the starting point of an interpretive dispute about German exceptionalism among historians, a dispute that to him seems easily solvable, Kreuzer compares the various arguments that historians have made about whether by 1914 the Imperial Reichstag was already, or was developing toward becoming, a truly parliamentary regime; he next categorizes historians into schools of interpretation; and he finally resolves the issue for historians by comparing the imperial Reichstag with an array of other parliaments, showing that, based upon evidence contained in the cumulative scholarship produced by historians, it in most cases ranks toward the more powerful end of the spectrum. In the end, he remains puzzled as to why this easily available method has remained too difficult for historians to grasp, concluding that it has been rather easy to drive a stake through the heart of the German Sonderweg , as it is with any exceptionalism.
5 citations
TL;DR: The Captive University as discussed by the authors is a pioneering work on the history of academic life under dictatorship in the English language, focusing on the role of the author and the author's colleagues.
Abstract: continuities of prewar to postwar political traditions and cultures, social structures and milieus. Some names — Ernst Bloch, Leszek Kolakowski, and Jan Patocka — are famous. Most are not and the array of many characters about whom we know relatively little can make for some dense reading. But this is the task of a pioneering study, namely to open up for English language scholarship an understanding of matters about which we know too little. The history of intellectual life under dictatorship has become and will remain one of the key themes in the history of twentieth-century Europe. Indeed, it will be a key theme of the history of universities under dictatorship around the world as well. As historians continue to work on the problem of scholarship under tyranny in comparative perspective, The Captive University is a work that will, or should, have a continuing and valuable impact on this important endeavor.
TL;DR: The fact that Jewish Studies is being done overwhelmingly by German Christian scholars, taught to German Christian students, and consumed in broader circles by a largely German Christian reading public is noted throughout.
Abstract: Jewish and non-Jewish communities? Or does it offer another means of greater Jewish and Christian, Jewish and German understanding and reconciliation? In the answers it offers, the essays here seem a bit timid or unadventurous. The fact that Jewish Studies is being done overwhelmingly by German Christian scholars, taught to German Christian students, and consumed in broader circles by a largely German Christian reading public is noted throughout. But the myriad challenges and implications of this for issues such as German identity, German politics (domestic and international), or German public culture are left largely unexplored. As Joseph Dan writes, that this is occurring in Germany (and throughout much of the rest of Europe) is exciting and worthy of attention; just what it means deserves a great deal more analysis.
TL;DR: In this article, the author surveys the situation of black U.S. soldiers in Germany, which mirrored contemporary racial policies at home, and finds that black troops in Germany found themselves in the strange and uncomfortable position of being better treated by their German hosts then by their fellow Americans.
Abstract: incapable of carrying out Washington's goals for thoroughly getting rid of the cartels and Nazis that had run things before and during the war. Equally pressing was the second question: what to do with American troops stationed there? Without combat to motivate and unify, gender and racial issues came to the fore. As for gender, the key to the whole situation was the badly unbalanced gender ratio in Germany during this period. For example, among young adults, ages 25—30, there were almost twice as many women as men. Add to this the disastrous German economy, in which an industrious American soldier could turn a hundred dollars into an annual income of almost twelve thousand — a good salary in 1946 America — by reselling items purchased at the Army PX to impoverished customers outside the American compound. This gave American GIs an awkward advantage. As for black U.S. soldiers in Germany, the author surveys the situation, which mirrored contemporary racial policies at home. Only, in this case, according to Willoughby, black soldiers in Germany found themselves in the strange and uncomfortable position of being better treated by their German hosts then by their fellow Americans.
TL;DR: In this article, Kreuzer's systematic comparison demonstrates the potential of universalizing social science approaches to disputed historical questions, such as the power or powerlessness of the democratically elected Reichstag of Imperial Germany.
Abstract: MARCUS Kreuzer's vigorously-argued essay on the progress of par? liamentarization in Imperial Germany is an innovative interven? tion into a long-running scholarly debate about a central assertion of the Sonderweg thesis, namely the power or powerlessness of the democratically elected Reichstag of Imperial Germany. Plausibly dividing historians who have studied the topic into three groups: "optimists," who perceive a steady increase in parliamentary power and a move toward democratic and parliamen? tary government, particularly in the Wilhelmian Era; "pessimists," who deny the power ofthe Reichstag vis-a-vis the executive increased at any point in the his? tory of the empire; and "skeptics" who point toward an increase in the power of the Reichstag, once again primarily in the Wilhelmian era, but deny that such an increase in power was leading toward democratic or parliamentary gov? ernment. Kreuzer points out that underlying aU three arguments is an implicit assumption of what a powerful parliament should be. Blinded by the "Westminster model" of British parHamentary government, he suggests, pes? simists and skeptics have condemned the imperial Reichstag for not resembling the House of Commons. Yet the British governmental system represented just one possible form of parliamentarization. By systematicaUy comparing the powers of the Reichstag with those of today s West European and North American legislatures, Kreuzer ascertains that the Reichstag was a politicaUy influential parliament, thus demonstrating that the optimists have had the better of the argument about parliamentarization. Kreuzer's systematic comparison demonstrates the potential of universalizing social science approaches to disputed historical questions. His account of significant, but little considered (by historians at least) aspects of parliamentary proceedings, such as the Reichstag's right to set the legislative agenda, offers new perspectives on the functioning of government in the German Empire. At certain points, though, Kreuzer's argument seems to be carried along by a num? ber of empirically questionable statements, dubious comparisons, and contradictory assertions. These weak points can be grouped together under three broader rubrics: (1) the powers ofthe Reichstag; (2) the role and position ofthe
Abstract: Invisible Man. In that book, Ellison writes how white Americans, "even when they were polite . . . hardly saw me." This was Ika Hugel-Marshall's experience as well: people saw her skin color, not her. Sitting next to her fiance on the day they registered to marry, the bureaucrat in charge asked her fiance where his bride-to-be was! This invisibility, the ultimate insult, makes this stunningly intense autobiography all the more poignant — and maddening. Ika Hiigel-Marshall has taken us on an immensely moving journey in search of herself. It is her personal story, but it is also a microcosm of racism in contemporary Germany.
TL;DR: The War Come Home as mentioned in this paper explores the conditions for political stability in interwar Western Europe, and explores this problem through the comparative analysis of the different regimes established for providing for disabled veterans in Britain and Germany.
Abstract: Deborah Cohen's aim in The War Come Home is to explore the conditions for political stability in interwar Western Europe, and she approaches this problem through the comparative analysis of the different regimes established for providing for disabled veterans in Britain and Germany. Cohen's analysis is organized neatly around a central paradox: how is it, she asks, that in Britain, where the national government rejected all direct responsibility for the care of disabled veterans and relied instead upon the inadequate efforts of voluntary associations to provide for these men, disabled veterans were so thoroughly integrated into the established order, while in Weimar Germany, where the republican welfare state made provision for disabled veterans into one of its highest priorities and set up the world's most advanced system of rehabilitative care to help reintegrate these men into society as productive citizens, the radicalization of disabled veterans contributed so greatly to the overthrow of the republic and the rise of Nazism? Cohen's answer is that the relative degree of political radicalism of veterans in the two countries depended on the extent to which the public recognized the sacrifices they had made during the war and reintegrated them symbolically into the community. Her thesis is that the voluntarist regime established in Britain proved to be far more successful in meeting the symbolic needs of these men and depoliticizing potential conflicts than was the case in Germany, where a state monopoly on assistance to disabled veterans intensified these political antagonisms while rendering public recognition of their sacrifice much more problematic. This is a conceptually elegant and eminently testable thesis for a comparative study.
TL;DR: In this paper, Cohen's analysis of the fortunes of the voluntary sector in Germany and their impact on national politics is based on a very small sample of failed or marginal charities that is in no way adequate to support the interpretive burden placed upon them.
Abstract: first, by limiting her claims to charities serving disabled veterans (to the exclusion of the much larger number of organizations devoted to the many other groups of welfare recipients) and, second, by disqualifying the huge number of charities organized in the seven major welfare corporate organizations, which she sees as kowtowing to state control. As a result, Cohen's analysis of the fortunes of the voluntary sector in Germany and their impact on national politics is based on a very small sample of failed or marginal charities that is in no way adequate to support the interpretive burden placed upon them. In the end, it is not clear that the differences between the provision for disabled veterans in Britain and Germany are as stark as Cohen would have us believe or that the differences that she does identify are in fact capable of explaining the (de)politicization of veterans. It seems as if she has been misled into overstating her arguments not only by the need to establish a viable comparison, but, more importantly, by the fact that her interpretive framework is, to a large degree, an uncritical restatement of the principles of nineteenthcentury liberalism, which idealized the role of voluntarism in promoting social reconciliation and demonized state intervention, a claim that Cohen takes as whole cloth. Moreover, I would suggest that in Germany it was so difficult for disabled veterans to achieve reconciliation with the state and the public less because of a stunted voluntary sector than because the polity itself was so deeply divided over the war, the revolution, and the postwar settlement, and it is difficult to see how a greater degree of voluntarism could have solved these problems. Ultimately, it might be more fruitful to analyze the complex forces that shaped the different welfare regimes rather than viewing these regimes as independent variables capable of explaining the political dynamics of the welfare state in interwar Europe.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors investigates the role of the University of Heidelberg in the Third Reich in the screening of music and musicians in the American zone by U.S. cultural officers, as undertaken by David Monod.
Abstract: Much enlightening work has been done on the political changes in Germany after 1945, beginning with the volumes by Lutz Niethammer, James Tent, Clemens Vollnhals and, more recently, Norbert Frei. Some of these accounts include social change, insofar as it did occur, but there is a remarkable deficit of insight into culture, in the widest sense. Currently, this is being remedied within well-defined compartments, such as the screening of music and musicians in the American zone by U.S. cultural officers, as undertaken by David Monod. For the universities, the suggestive new study by Steven Remy is beginning to fill the gap, although I have reservations about what he chooses to call \"the Heidelberg myth.\" But for the University of Heidelberg in the Third Reich alone Remy has done a better job than the ambitious multivolume work by
TL;DR: Forster as discussed by the authors studied the role of state and church intervention in Catholic life after the Reformation in the Austrian territories in the southwest of the Old Reich and concluded that local practices consistent with late medieval Catholic tradition provided the foundation for an emerging Baroque Catholic identity and spirituality.
Abstract: In this detailed study of Catholic practices and an emerging \"Baroque\" Catholic identity in the Austrian territories in the southwest of the Old Reich, Marc Forster takes the current debates over the \"confessionalization\" model as a starting point for his analysis, but goes well beyond that model in both substantive and theoretical terms. Building on his earlier important monograph on the diocese of Speyer, Forster seeks to capture the interplay between Catholic spirituality as it was experienced in Swabia, and the changing but flexible agendas of post-Tridentine church officials, including Rome, the Bishop of Constance, the abbots of the important imperial abbeys in the region, and Austrian government officials. His central conclusion — that local practices consistent with late medieval Catholic tradition provided the foundation for an emerging Baroque Catholic identity and spirituality — is not intended simply to illustrate another \"failure\" of confessionalization (as other scholars such as H. R. Schmidt and C. S. Dixon have argued), but rather encourages us to set the important role of state and church intervention in Catholic life after the Reformation in broader perspective. Forster acknowledges the importance of Tridentine reform, state-building and social discipline for shaping religious developments in this region after 1550, but insists that we see them as merely part of a larger story in which community action and tradition play an equal or larger role.
TL;DR: Evans as mentioned in this paper argues that despite its size, the Zentrum was not a success as a Catholic party, and that it was unable to solve the issue of state support for schools, for example.
Abstract: more effectively than the Zentrum. Evans suggests that, despite its size, the Zentrum was not a success as a Catholic party. Lacking alliances with Protestant, it was unable to solve the issue of state support for schools, for example (p. 222). Austria, a majority Catholic country, resembled France, Spain, and Italy rather than democratic Belgium in its authoritarian Catholicism (pp. 180—95). In Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany, Catholics' minority status encouraged suspicion of the state and lessened the seductiveness of dictatorship. Belgium's distinctiveness lies, first, in the early Catholic-liberal alliance in the mid-nineteenth century that accepted religious toleration, state support for the Catholic Church, and constitutional government despite condemnation by the Pope in Mirari Vos (pp. 21—26) and, second, in the Catholic democrats' unusual success in creating a powerful non-Socialist labor movement (p. 175). Conservative Catholic monarchism everywhere, outside of Switzerland, was not, Evans argues, the same as authoritarianism. In Austria during the 1920s, \"the Christian Socialists were the only political group to express regret for the fall of the Hapsburg dynasty\" and \"these feelings mirror exactly the feelings of many German and Dutch Catholics who remained loyal to their dynasties in spite of the close connection of the Houses of HohenzoUern and Orange to established Protestantism\" (p. 188). Despite the lack of synthesis, Evans has provided historians and social scientists alike with a rich, thoroughly-researched comparative study that advances our knowledge of European Catholicism and political history.
TL;DR: Ross as discussed by the authors argues that the state's ability to shape social forces was limited, in at least two ways: first, the very grandness of its social vision tripped up the party's plans, and second, the state was never completely sealed off from the people and their unimproved opinions.
Abstract: Corey Ross, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, has written a noteworthy addition to the growing number of studies of state-society relations in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Especially welcome is Ross's concentration on the formative decades of the GDR, a focus motivated by his conviction that by 1965 the basic social and political features of \"real existing socialism\" were in place. His study is not, Ross emphasizes, a classic social history or a history of everyday life. He has trained his sights tightly on the interaction between the policies of the SED/state and popular reception of those policies (p. 3). This perspective signals Ross's rejection of \"totalitarian\" theory and its assumption that the SEDstate was not only politically, but also socially, all-powerful and immune to popular influence. The state's ability to shape social forces was limited, Ross argues, in at least two ways. First, the very grandness of its social vision tripped up the party's plans. By intervening in virtually every aspect of people's lives, state policy set off all sorts of unintended consequence that the SED then had to surmount, contain, circumvent, or assimilate. Over time, the SED diverged, step by small step, ever more widely from its original social plan. Second, the state was never completely sealed off from the people and their unimproved opinions. Local functionaries of the SED, unions, management, and various state agencies were not only in constant contact with popular opinion, but were often \"infected\" by it.
TL;DR: Browning as mentioned in this paper argues that when Hitler ordered his subordinates to pursue the wholesale destruction of European Jews in the mid-summer of 1941, what they were being asked to accomplish was at the time totally unprecedented.
Abstract: In his collection of essays, The Path to Genocide (1992), Christopher Browning contends that when Hitler ordered his subordinates to pursue the wholesale destruction of European Jews in the mid-summer of 1941, what they were being asked to accomplish was at the time totally unprecedented. At this stage every step was uncharted, every policy an experiment, every action a trial run … Murder was in the air; many avenues were being explored, but little was settled other than at least Himmler and Heydrich now knew what they were looking for — a way to kill all the Jews of Europe.
Abstract: OVER the last decade, historians have made steady inroads into the fre? quently static social sciences as they are trying to understand the changing post-Cold War order and the even more rapidly changing global and domestic political economies. Such softening of discipHnary bound? aries is also observable in the other direction. Jonathan Sperber's work on nine? teenth-century electoral politics and Kenneth Ledford's study on German lawyers offer two examples among many of historians borrowing concepts and methods from the social sciences.1 Yet, these encouraging signs of discipHnary trespassing cannot mask the fact that these two disciplines continue only infrequently to publish in each others' journals, intelligently review each others' works, or jointly reflect on the payoffs of interdisciplinary scholarship. Given this limited dialogue, it is a particular pleasure to reply to two such thoughtful and constructive respondents. In subtly tackling the problems inherent in comparing, Kenneth Ledford ventures into the disciplinary borderlands of history and the social sciences while Jonathan Sperber stays more closely in the historical corner and ? to use Ledford's apt characterization of his coUeagues ? "picks cautionary holes in the appHcability" of comparisons. Let me begin with the issue of comparison since it is Ledford's central theme and Sperber aUudes to it on two occasions. Ledford nicely explicates the pro? fessional disincentives and epistemological qualms underlying the historians' reluctance to compare. I think Ledford is correct with respect to cross-national comparisons but I wonder whether he is not selling historians short, given their frequent comparisons across multiple points in time. Such so-caUed longitudinal comparisons structure Sperber's analysis of quadrennial voting choices in Imperial Germany, Ledford's study of the German bar associations in Imperial and Weimar Germany, and many other historical studies. The question there? fore is not whether one discipline compares while the other does not; but
TL;DR: Einzelgdnger launched on a hopeless crusade as discussed by the authors and his foreign policy was condemned by the simple fact that he possessed neither right nor recognition as a spokesman for Germany, and his federalism was rejected even by those non-Prussian states whose interests would have been best served by it.
Abstract: Einzelgdnger launched on a hopeless crusade. His foreign policy was condemned by the simple fact that he possessed neither right nor recognition as a spokesman for Germany. His federalism was rejected even by those non-Prussian states whose interests would have been best served by it. And his sponsorship of the Rate as a new form of direct democracy was nullified by the Majority Socialist domination of them. Accordingly, Grau's ambivalence about Eisner is evident from his broad swings between sharp criticism and virtual hagiography. Whether Eisner is finally to be dismissed as an idealist or praised as a pragmatist hence remains moot, much as it has been ever since he was gunned down in the streets of Munich nearly a century ago.
TL;DR: Rozenblit's tenacious campaign to prove that Austrian Jews were only patriotic Austrians, with no interest whatsoever in being "nationally" German (which she defines in ethnonational terms that would have surprised a reader of the Neue Freie Presse, or indeed of the Arbeiter Zeitung), leads her into overreaching in a very odd way.
Abstract: In the end, Rozenblit's tenacious campaign to prove that Austrian Jews were only patriotic Austrians, with no interest whatsoever in being \"nationally\" German (which she defines in ethnonational terms that would have surprised a reader of the Neue Freie Presse, or indeed of the Arbeiter Zeitung), leads her into overreaching in a very odd way. She is so intent on the idea of the assertion of Jewish identity by Austrian Jews that she writes of \"ordinary Jews who asserted their Jewish ethnicity consciously or unconsciously\" (p. 38). Karl Kraus would understand, but surely \"unconscious\" assertion of identity does not bespeak the sort of liberal environment that Rozenblit describes the monarchy as being. She is also so intent on showing that Jews were against the Anschluss in 1918-1919 that she makes the assertion, while admitting that the Zionist press was neutral on the matter, and that she could find no debate at all on the issue in the rest of the Jewish press. Her only evidence for the assertion is three memoirs, one against, one neutral, and one for Anschluss. This is held to be evidence for overwhelming Jewish opposition.
TL;DR: Stark as discussed by the authors reported that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Hungarian Jewish population was massacred during World War II, and that the emigration of the survivors was unstoppable: between 1946 and 1952 roughly 30,000 Hungarian Jews emigrated (17,000 to Palestine (Israel), 7-8000 to the United States), and in 1956 another 25,000-30,000 fled.
Abstract: other words, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the Jewish population was massacred. In the present territory of the country this ratio is somewhat more than half of the prewar Jewish population (since the majority of the Budapest Jews survived). Stark does not enter into a political-historical evaluation of the Horthy regime and the role of the regent. He does, however, quote the most authentic person, Adolf Eichmann, who stated in September 1942: \"I do not endorse the mobilization of the complete deportation machinery to deport merely the Jews who have taken refuge in Hungary . . . Here we are of the opinion that it would be better to wait with this operation until Hungary shows itself willing to extend the regulation also to Hungarian Jews\" (p. 17). In 1944, after the German occupation of Hungary, this \"willingness\" and collaboration made possible the entire \"operation.\" The last census, which counted the Jews in 1949, reported 134,000 Jews in the country. The emigration of the survivors was unstoppable: between 1946 and 1952 roughly 30,000 Hungarian Jews emigrated (17,000 to Palestine (Israel), 7-8,000 to the United States), and in 1956 another 25,000 to 30,000 fled. In 1962, the chairman of the National Representation of the Hungarian Israelites estimated 84,000 Jews by religion, and Stark maintains that it is \"entirely plausible\" (p. 169). End of story. Numbers followed numbers . . . Tamas Stark's book is not an interesting read but an important quantitative record of an incredible human tragedy.
TL;DR: Johannes Kepler's most important publication on questions of religion and confession appeared in 1623 when the universal scholar Matthias Bernegger had an edition of one hundred copies printed in Strasbourg at Kepler's expense as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Johannes Kepler's most important publication on questions of religion and confession, his Profession of Faith appeared in 1623 when the universal scholar Matthias Bernegger had an edition of one hundred copies printed in Strasbourg — at Kepler's expense — under the title: Glaubensbekandtnus vnd Ableinung allerhand desthalben entstandener vngutlichen Nachreden. With this booklet, Kepler intended to demonstrate that his religious convictions did indeed stand in harmony with the Bible; in addition, he strove to refute the accusations of heterodoxy brought against him, the “gossip” or “Nachreden” as he called it. His argument peaks in the next passage: “It is indeed quite an irksome matter, and one very much a matter of great agitation for the average, uninformed man, that someone could be so foolhardy, proud, and swollen-headed as to join no [religious] party. But I swear by God that I have not found joy in the situation nor found any peace therein. It causes me great grief that the three large factiones have torn the truth so terribly among themselves that I am forced to search and piece the truth together where I find it.”
TL;DR: Schulte as mentioned in this paper tried the reader's confidence when he repeatedly makes mistakes in the few Hebrew expressions that he transliterates, misspells names of prominent rabbis, and doesn't know that enjoyment of alcohol is perfectly admissible in Judaism and that Hebrew poetry is always punctuated.
Abstract: emancipation-seeking German Jewry. Yet Maimon, it is generally held, was the more profound philosopher. Regrettably, Schulte tries the reader's confidence when he repeatedly makes mistakes in the few Hebrew expressions that he transliterates (for example, min HaSinai for miSinai or Kabbah Maschiith for Kabbala Ma'assit), misspells names of prominent rabbis, and doesn't know that enjoyment of alcohol is perfectly admissible in Judaism and that Hebrew poetry is always punctuated. However, sometimes a relative outsider to a field can provide some new insights in specific areas, and that Schulte has indeed accomplished.