Culture In Germany Research Articles

Alternative kulturelle Einrichtungen in deutschen Städten und Gemeinden. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik ökonomischer Perspektiven auf Kreativräume

In 2007 the German Bundestag issued an extensive parliamentary report on “Culture in Germany” that spurred broad debates about the role of cultural institutions in urban and regional planning. Subsequently, these infrastructures gained particular importance in discussions on the cultural and creative industries as nodes for professional activities and marketplaces for cultural goods. By analyzing the material and discursive trajectories of alternative cultural and community centres in Germany the paper argues that economic perspectives on spaces of creativity obscure important dimensions of creative practices. Firstly, conceptions of creativity as a defining feature of occupations and economic sectors imply that creative pursuits are ultimately determined by patterns of supply and demand. Mundane activities on a day-to-day basis however show that alternative creativities are frequently driven by voluntary engagements, personal desires and affection towards people and ideas. Secondly, as studies on the creative industries offer rather current diagnoses of cultural infrastructures the historical dimension of political discussions is often missing from theses analyses. Established since the 1960s, alternative cultural institutions are conceptualized as sustainable meeting places that offer spaces for communication, self-determination and free play. Finally, creative industry thinking emphasizes specific geographical contexts for creative production. The overriding observation is one of urban agglomeration and spatial clustering. The mapping of alternative cultural infrastructures reveals a more complex and nuanced geography of non-profit creativity that encompasses material spaces in suburban and more rural areas. Cultural and community centres offer an important and sometimes occasional anchor point for creativity in these peripheries lacking publicly funded and privately financed cultural infrastructures.

The adaptation research about ICS and Chinese management scenario

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to manifest how intellectual capital statement (ICS) adapts the Chinese management scenario. ICS has become a key management instrument for securing competitiveness and sustainable growth in European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, if the approach rooted in Europe can have a good effect in China is still unknown. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyzes the reasons why ICS appears in Europe on a macro-level including innovation culture, innovation policy and innovation paths. These aspects are also characterized for China to describe the Chinese management scenario and innovation environment. Further, the paper divides ICS into three parts: model layer, indicators layer and operating layer on a micro-level. For the management scenario of China, it explains the adaptation of the three layers for application in a Chinese context. Findings – The innovation culture, innovation policy and innovation paths are different in Europe and China. Therefore, the applications of model, indicator and operating layers of ICS are also different in China. The paper indicates that it needs some adjustments when applying ICS in Chinese enterprises. Research limitations/implications – There are no application practices of ICS in China until now, so the analysis of this paper is based on the theoretical level. Moreover, in the part of innovation culture, the paper is limited to comparing the cultures of Germany and China. Originality/value – This is the first paper which investigates the application of ICS in China.

Jewish pasts, German fictions: history, memory, and minority culture in Germany, 1824-1955

Jewish pasts, German fictions: history, memory, and minority culture in Germany, 1824-1955

“Benvenuti all’inferno”: aggressione neo-nazista e cultura hip-hop turco-tedesca negli anni Novanta

The article explores the trauma of the racist attacks of Hoyerswerda, Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Molln and Solingen in the early 1990s and their impact on the Turkish community in Germany using the example of rap lyrics composed during those years. Hip-hop culture in Germany is primarily appropriated by male immigrant youths, especially with Turkish roots. During the first years of German rap (early 1990s), it is thus natural that the themes of the rappers were dominated by issues of social integration, multicultural coexistence and, after traumatic events of the racist attacks, of xenophobia and racism. After a short introduction to Turkish-German hip-hop culture (general features, social and cultural implications, Kanaksta Rap and the Kanak Attak community), the article provides some lyrics (in German and Turkish) and an analysis of the reception of the attacks in German hip-hop culture, especially in the production of the rap formation Cartel, a merging of several hip-hop groups with mainly Turkish elements.

Hygiene im Operationssaal

Nosocomial infectionsThe problem of nosocomial infections is of great current interest despite the prevailing infection protection acts, hygiene guidelines and plans. Recent results in Germany show that postoperative wound infections are the main cause of nosocomial infections even though the hygiene culture in Germany is relatively highly developed.ConclusionChanges in awareness and a package of measures are the main targets for improvement in hygiene management and the subsequent rate of postoperative infections. The question in the title should therefore be seen only as rhetorical.

Kathleen Canning, Kerstin Barndt and Kristin McGuire, eds, Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects: Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s

Kathleen Canning, Kerstin Barndt and Kristin McGuire, eds, <i>Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects: Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s</i>

Entrustable professional activities - visualization of competencies in postgraduate training. Position paper of the Committee on Postgraduate Medical Training of the German Society for Medical Education (GMA).

Entrustable professional activities - visualization of competencies in postgraduate training. Position paper of the Committee on Postgraduate Medical Training of the German Society for Medical Education (GMA).

Security Culture in Germany: The Changing Role of the Bundeswehr and Conscription

Security Culture in Germany: The Changing Role of the Bundeswehr and Conscription

Cultural Studies and Sociology of Culture in Germany: Relations and Interrelations

Over the last three decades, attitudes towards cultural studies in Germany have developed within contexts of contact and conflict with a variety of disciplines, e.g. ethnology, anthropology, sociology, as well as the sociology of culture, liter-ary studies and Kulturwissenschaft(en). On the one hand there is a strong academic interest in how cultural studies perceives and analyzes media culture, popular culture and everyday life. On the other hand boundaries with humanities and social science remain, which leads to criticism and conflicts with cultural studies and its achievements.&#x0D; I will discuss some of the problems concerning the perception and reception of cultural studies among representatives of Kulturwissenschaft(en) and sociology of culture. Furthermore I will draw on the role of cultural studies in thematizing cultural change and conflicts, and its ability to do so in a way that shows the importance of culture and politics.

Evolution and Normalization: Historical Consciousness in Germany

German political culture has been undergoing gradual but significant changes since unification. Military engagements in combat missions, the introduction of a professional army, and a remarkable loss of recent historical knowledge mostly within the younger generations are hallmarks of the new millennium. Extensive education about the Holocaust is still prevalent and there is a strong continuity of attitudes and orientations toward the Nazi era and the Holocaust reaching back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, a lack of knowledge about history-not only the World War II period, but also about East and West Germany-in the age group of people under thirty is staggering. The fading away of the generation of victims who are the last ones to tell the story of persecution during the Holocaust and a parallel rise of new actors and technologies, present challenges to the educational system and the current political culture of Germany.

Monarchy, Myth, and Material Culture in Germany, 1750-1950

In the nineteenth century, acquiring royal memorabilia occupied an increasingly conspicuous place in the widespread culture of collecting. Antiquarians and auction houses scrambled to meet the demand for items of clothing worn by monarchs, letters penned by their hands or tea cups graced by their lips. Print shops seized on the craze for collecting royal goods by selling portraits, photographs and postcards of princes and princesses. Museum directors too went hunting for royal relics to satisfy the public demand and proudly announced their success when a piece of royal underwear, a toothbrush or other bric-a-brac associated with the royal family entered their collection. It is precisely this rush for royal relics, souvenirs and sightings that Eva Giloi turns to in her work, Monarchy, Myth, and Material Culture. Giloi traces the circulation of the material culture of monarchy in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Prussia and twentieth-century Germany. Against the dual backdrops of the nineteenth century’s emerging consumer culture and burgeoning leisure industry, the book investigates who produced royal memorabilia and with what motives; those that bought it and why; what collectors did with their acquisitions; and how the Hohenzollerns responded to this public intrusiveness into monarchy.

Continuing professional development in context: teachers' continuing professional development culture in Germany and Sweden

This article investigates the continuing professional development (CPD) culture of teachers, and asks how it is influenced by properties of the school system. It reports the results of a questionnaire study with 418 secondary teachers from Sweden and Germany. The results show highly significant differences between Swedish and German teachers’ practice of and beliefs in teachers’ CPD. This implies a relevant effect of properties of the school system on the teachers’ CPD. The differences are explained by varying perceptions of sources of knowledge for CPD, the influence of different school governance instruments, and different historically developed role definitions of teachers in both countries.

Professional work and the timing of family formation among young lawyers in US and German cities

There is little cross-national empirical research on which to develop our understanding of the relationship between family formation among lawyers and the organization of work in the legal profession. This study compares young German lawyers practicing in Frankfurt and Berlin with young US lawyers practicing in New York and Washington, DC at similar career stages when they are most likely to marry and have children. The sampled lawyers are about 10 years into practice. We examine the effects of work on women lawyers' childbearing in German and American cities. We find that although the onset and timing of childbearing is much the same in Frankfurt and Berlin, and also in New York and Washington, DC, there are major differences in the onset and timing of fertility between these German and American cities. A discrete-time event history analysis suggests that the more traditional legal culture of Germany offers women greater autonomy for parenting but also reduced economic rewards, while the mega-law culture of America offers women less autonomy for parenting but enhanced prospects for economic rewards. The findings underscore that there is much to be learned from the cross-national study of legal professionals.

Chinese and Western Cultural Differences Embodied in Industrial Design

This article mainly describes the development of Chinese design culture and the impact of culture in Germany, Italy and Scandinavian countries on industrial design. Then it analyzes differences from perception of nature, value, thinking mode and aesthetic point between China and the West. It compares the difference of industrial design in different countries and impact of different cultures on industrial design. It systematically studies the relationship between culture and industrial design. The key point in design is use of culture. The innovative point in this article is to apply the cultural elements to industrial design. In design, the combination of cultural elements and products should be natural and proper. The cultural elements and products should have something in common. People should not superficially impose cultural symbols on the appearance of product.

Identity Construction Strategies in Muslim hip-hop. A multimodal analysis of the work of the German rapper Sahira

The aim of Nadja Thoma's paper is to explore how young Muslim artists construct identity within contemporary hip-hop culture in Germany. Using the example of the rapper Sahira,the author focuses on the following questions: Which strategies are used to express religious identities in hip-hop? Which modifications of the traditional hip-hop culture can be observed within and through elements of Muslim culture and religion? The data used in the paper ranges from visual resources (a CD cover and the logo of the record label) to song lyrics and interview excerpts. In the first section of her paper the author offers an orientation towards hip-hop culture, introducing a number of important cultural concepts for the successive discussion. Then she provides an overview of discussions about the permissivity of music, especially hip-hop and Islam. Finally, Thoma deals with identity construction in German hip-hop culture and discusses of how cultural and religious identity is constructed in the work of the German rapper Sahira. At the conclusion, Nadja Thoma states, that multimodal analysis shows that German Muslim rap is the achievement of a recontextualization process, wherein a global cultural model has been adapted to a specific audience in a different reception country. Beyond the mere use of different languages as markers for ethnic belonging, Sahira uses religious visual codes and linguistic phrases in order to transgress ethnic differences and monocultural, monoreligious or Islamophobic conceptions which, in her opinion, could restrict communication. Furthermore, the different visual and linguistic elements are a demonstration of Sahira's ability to insert new elements into the existing hip-hop culture, one of the abilities which label someone a good and real rapper.

20세기 현대미술에서 표현주의와 신표현주의 연관성

독일은 19세기 후반기에 통일을 이루었지만 급격한 도시화와 물질주의 속에서 많은 혼란을 겪으며, 정신적인 혁명을 통해 독일적인 문화를 찾고자 하는 움직임이 지식인층을 중심으로 퍼져나갔다. 현실 속에서 발생하는 분노, 슬픔, 억압 등의 심리적 상태를 본능적인 감성에 충실하며, 그대로 표현하게 됨으로써 자연스럽게 형태가 왜곡되거나 과장되며, 강렬하고 어둡고 내성적인 분위기의 낭만주의적 전통을 잇게 되었다. 파시즘의 나치에 의해 '퇴폐미술'로 낙인찍히며 막을 내렸던 표현주의 미술이 20세기 말에 다시 독일을 중심으로 일어났다는 사실은 주목할 만한 일이다. 비록 신표현주의자들이 다양한 오브제와 매체를 적극적으로 사용하기는 하지만, 그들은 인간 내면세계를 표출하고자 과거 표현주의자들이 즐겨 썼던 인물, 신화, 상징을 거친 붓 터치와 풍부한 색채 등으로 다시 화면에 등장시키며 독일의 문화와 사회에 대한 희망을 은유적으로 표현하고 있다. 따라서 신표현주의의 근원이라고 할 수 있는 표현주의에 대해 살펴보며 이들이 독일 전통 낭만주의와 어떠한 맥락에서 일치하며 현대 미디어콘텐츠로 계승 발전 되었는지를 논하고자 하였다. Although having only become a unified nation in latter 19th century, Germany saw a movement centered on intellectuals to find culture via mental revolution after experiencing much confusion amidst rapid urbanization and materialism. Having expressed as they are such psychological states as anger, sorrow, repression, etc., which arise in reality, by remaining faithful to instinctive sensibility, the form naturally becomes distorted or exaggerated and continues on the tradition of romanticism of a powerful, dark, and introverted atmosphere. Having been discontinued after being branded as 'decadent art' by the Nazis of Fascism, expressionist art has returned in latter 20th century mainly centered on Germany, and this merits our attention. While neo expressionists actively use various objets and media, they metaphorically express hope about Germany's culture and society by again placing on the screen figures, myths, and symbols using rough brush touch, rich colors, etc., which past expressionists enjoyed using to represent the inner world of humans. As such, by examining expressionism, which can be seen as the origin of neo expressionism, we will discover the context in which these people conform to Germany's traditional romanticism and how they inherited and developed it.

Emigracja litewska w badaniach etnologicznych na Uniwersytecie Mikołaja Kopernika: kultura litewska w Niemczech powojennych

The research on ethnocultural and ethnopolitical processes in the environment of the Lithuanian post-war immigration and the specific situation that was faced by authors of Lithuanian culture in Germany in the second half of 1940-ies, meet the main direction of research in the Faculty of Historical Sciences of Nicolas Copernicus University, which traditionally has close relations with Lithuania. This article provides an outline of modern Polish historiography on Lithuanian emigration, pointing out works, which both methodologically and factographically are an essential complement, broading the image of “Lithuanian culture in Exile”, which was created by Lithuanian researchers in last decades. Based on existing literature and archival research taken by the author in the Institute of Lithuanian Culture in Germany (Huttenfeld-Lampertheim) author presents outline of the development of Lithuanian art in the camps for displaced persons in Germany, shows the history of creation of the World Union of Lithuanian artists (publishing materials of the First Congress, held in Germany in 1948), the works of the Institute of decorative arts and crafts in Freiburg, which continued the tradition of Kaunas school of art, describes the exhibitions of Lithuanian art, shown in Germany and the main trends in the works of Lithuanian artists, who tried to preserve the values of national culture and were simultaneously integrating Lithuanian art to the European artistic processes in the middle of 20th century.

Inverse gender gap in Germany: Social dominance orientation among men and women

Across cultures studies show that men score higher on social dominance orientation than women. This gender gap is considered invariant, but conflicting explanations are discussed: Some authors refer to evolutionary psychology and perceive the gender gap to be driven by sociobiological factors. Other authors argue that social roles or gender-stereotypical self-construals encouraged by intergroup comparisons are responsible for attitudinal gender difference. In Study 1 we analyzed sex differences in social dominance orientation in three German probability surveys (each n > 2300). Unexpectedly, the analyses yielded an inverse gender gap with higher values for social dominance orientation in women than in men. Interactions with age, education, political conservatism, and perceived inequity indicated that the inverse gender gap can be mainly attributed to older, conservative, (and less educated) respondents, and those who feel they get their deserved share. In Study 2 we replicated the well-known gender gap with men scoring higher than women in social dominance orientation among German students. Results are interpreted on the basis of biocultural interaction, which integrates the sociobiological, social role, and self-construal perspectives. Our unusual findings seem to reflect a struggle for status by members of low-status groups who consider group-based hierarchy the most promising option to improve their status. While younger women take advantage of a relational, feminine self-construal that leads to lower social dominance orientation in young women than in young men, older women are supposed to profit from an agentic self-construal that results in stronger social dominance orientation values. Specific characteristics of the culture in Germany seem to promote this strategy. Here, we discuss the female ideal of the national socialist period and the agentic female social role in the post-war era necessitated by the absence of men.

Populare Geschichtsschreibung. Historiker, Verleger und die deutsche Offentlichkeit (1848-1900)

While the history of historiography is a well-established field in German history-writing, it has concentrated almost exclusively on professional historians and their work. Hence, little is in fact known about popular forms of history-writing. The current volume is therefore an extremely welcome addition to the increasing body of work dealing with a wider historical culture in Germany. Originating in a doctoral dissertation at the Humboldt University in Berlin, the book under review asks what was special or different about popular forms of history-writing when compared to professional history-writing. It demonstrates that up until the 1880s professional history remained by and large popular in the sense that the works by professional historians were widely celebrated and received among the German middle-class public. Professional historians saw themselves as national pedagogues, which fostered a sense among them that they should cater not only for the interests of their fellow historians but also for the education of a wider public. And yet, from about the last third of the nineteenth century there emerged a greater need for popular accounts of history, as professional historical research became too specialized and was increasingly difficult to bring to an educated public unmediated. Its loss of popular appeal around 1900 coincided with the rise of other disciplines, such as psychology, sociology and national economics, which seemed to provide greater orientation knowledge for the present than history.

Between Judaism and German Enlightenment: Recent Work on Moses Mendelssohn in English

AbstractMoses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) is generally recognized as the first German‐Jewish philosopher. The past forty years have witnessed the appearance of five major book‐length interpretations of Moses Mendelssohn in English: Michael Meyer’s The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany 1749–1824 (1967); Alexander Altmann’s Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (1973); Allan Arkush’s Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (1994); David Sorkin’s Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (1996) and Edward Breuer’s The Limits of Enlightenment: Jews, Germans, and the Eighteenth‐Century Study of Scripture (1996). These works have generally been guided by a single interpretive question namely whether or not Mendelssohn was able to harmonize his commitment to Judaism with his commitment to Enlightenment. I review these five interpretations of Mendelssohn.