German Girls Research Articles

For Want of Membership and Money: The 1936 Hitler Youth Law and the Hitler Youth's Home Procurement Campaign

Abstract This article offers a much-needed reconsideration of the Hitler Youth law's purpose and impact. It contends that Hitler's cabinet adopted the 1936 law for two reasons: first, to pressure boys and girls to join the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, and second, to compel municipalities to finance the construction of thousands of new Hitler Youth Heime (homes). The first part of the article focuses on the drafting of the Hitler Youth law and locates the origins of the Hitler Youth's Heimbeschaffung (home procurement) campaign. It argues that Nazi leaders deliberately inserted language into Article 2 of the final law that would pressure municipal and district authorities to fund the construction of new homes in their communities. The second part of the article documents Nazi leaders’ repeated efforts to persuade and compel municipalities to finance new construction, assume the costs of ongoing maintenance and, after 1939, pay rental and maintenance costs for temporary accommodations.

Friendship without Borders: Women's Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life across East and West Germany by Phil Leask

Reviewed by: Friendship without Borders: Women's Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life across East and West Germany by Phil Leask Kara Ritzheimer Friendship without Borders: Women's Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life across East and West Germany. By Phil Leask. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. Pp. ix + 326. Cloth $149.00. ISBN 9781789206555. On September 1, 1940, a group of teenage girls who were classmates in Schönebeck, a small town in central Germany, "made a solemn promise" to meet ten years hence at the Cathedral Square in nearby Magdeburg. And so, on September 1, 1950, fourteen of these girls, now young women, "gathered in the square, in the shadow of the damaged cathedral" (1). They made two important decisions. First, they would meet annually. Second, they would start and circulate a Rundbrief (circular). From 1950 to 2000, as many as thirty women contributed approximately a thousand letters to this Rundbrief. Nearly half of these former classmates migrated to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) while the other half remained in what became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). These letters form the basis of Phil Leask's 2020 monograph Friendship without Borders: Women's Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life across East and West Germany, alongside interviews the author [End Page 600] conducted with a handful of these women between 2012 and 2016 and photos these women pasted into the Rundbrief. Friendship Without Borders consists of three interwoven histories. The first is a history of these individual women. Contributors shared updates about their children, spouses, parents, homes and gardens, jobs, careers, health, travels, and everyday experiences. The second is a history of women, gender policy, and family policy in both the FRG and the GDR. And the third, which Leask uses to frame each chapter, is the political, social, and economic history of the two Germanies. The book is organized chronologically. It begins in the 1930s and ends in the early 2000s, and each chapter examines a different decade. Leask traces several themes over the course of these fifty years. The first of these is power and agency. Leask is interested in these "nonpolitical" (3) women's sense of agency, their ability and efforts to exercise agency, and the social and political restraints they encountered. He observes that as teenagers, most of these women belonged to the League of German Girls (BDM), an organization the Nazi regime used to "give power at a very local level to hundreds of thousands of young women who were group leaders" (6). It was this sense of power and their ability to build community, he suggests, that led these women to believe they could "build and sustain their own group long after the end of the Nazi regime" (6). The second theme is the shifting position of women in both Germanies and how these particular women understood, at different moments, "what their place was and should be in society" (3). The third theme is that of continuities and ruptures. Leask interestingly observes that women living in the GDR experienced reunification as a larger rupture than Nazi Germany's defeat. In 1945, they had been young and felt capable of starting anew; in 1990, many feared they were too old and financially insecure to start over. Another theme is that of unity. Leask argues that these women hoped that the unity of their group meant that Germany and its people "remained united" despite its—what they hoped was only temporary—division. And finally, Leask explains in the book's introduction that he is eager to identify moments when these women experienced humiliation. Leask uses the Rundbrief skillfully to write an everyday history of the two Germanies, one seen through the eyes of women passing through various life stages. And these women address details that political histories frequently neglect, such as the occupational challenges women encountered in both Germanies, the quality of education and childcare, and the pain of being separated from family members living on the other side of a political boundary. Leask does a fine job of underscoring key factors that increasingly differentiated the experiences of women living in the FRG from those who remained in the GDR. One...

Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence by Julie Pfeiffer

Reviewed by: Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence by Julie Pfeiffer Morgan Foster Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence. By Julie Pfeiffer. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2021. x + 198 pp. Paper $30, cloth $99. Literary scholars have long discussed the history of books, but few have delved into the research done by Julie Pfeiffer in Transforming Girls. Her focus on nineteenth-century German and American girls' literature immediately separates her work from other scholarship examining girls' books, making this essential to scholars and others interested in adolescent literature, literary studies, book history, children's literature, girls' books, and more. [End Page 456] Pfeiffer focuses her work on Backfischliteratur, the German word referring to literature of the Backfisch. Literally, a Backfisch is a fish too small to be sold at market but too large to use as bait, and they were thus thrown into a boat's "back." Over time this word began referring to "the liminal status of a girl in her teens" and was used to "highlight the category of female adolescence" (13). It is a word, Pfeiffer explains, that appeared frequently in German girls' books throughout the nineteenth century, and she uses it to examine the "paradox of the nineteenth-century girls' book," which both focused on adolescence as a time of freedom and exploration in a girl's life while preparing her for marriage and life in a "patriarchal framework to be happy" (4). From there, Pfeiffer investigates a number of nineteenth-century German and American girls' novels and how they approached adolescence by category: the moral tale, the family story, and the orphan novel. Propelling her inquiry is a comparison of adolescence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century girls' books. Much of the Backfisch literature Pfeiffer cites described adolescence as a time of creativity, growth, and exploration. Young women left their country homes to be mentored and looked after in the city by "Othermothers" or various women they mets along their journeys. Pfeiffer reminds readers that teenagers were often viewed as a "vessel for anxieties about wild teenagers . . . rather than as a metaphor for transformation and growth" (25). Backfisch books offered an alternate way of modeling adolescence, one that helped the girl reader to find her place in her community in a way where she is supported and nurtured. Intimate relationships between the Backfisch and other women were encouraged and are the focus of much of the literature examined by Pfeiffer. As she points out, the focus on same-sex relationships is curious, since much of the Backfisch's experiences were meant to make her a good wife and mother. Over time, however, especially into the twentieth century, the Backfisch was allowed less room for exploration and mistakes: her adolescence became less of a protected time and instead something to endure or suffer through. This shifting idea of adolescence had implications for girls in real life and in literature, a compelling point that Pfeiffer returns to throughout Transforming Girls. An extensive and perhaps overly long introduction to both the Backfisch and the book overall will help all readers understand the terms she uses. Pfeiffer defines not only concepts, such as the Backfisch, that may be new or less familiar to readers, but also how she uses concepts such as girls' books. Her writing is accessible for many readers, and chapters are organized into several sections. Images from original texts appear throughout; they don't add much but are enjoyable to look at, as many of the books are out of print. Brevity is one of [End Page 457] Pfeiffer's strengths; her economy of language is impressive—at under two hundred pages, she packs an incredible amount of information into each chapter. My only quibble is her conclusion, which is overly brief at five pages. In it, she points to new ways of understanding contemporary girls' books and devotes much of the space to analyzing three examples of the Backfisch in them, making the conclusion seem even more rushed given the new information that readers are getting. Nonetheless, Transforming Girls is a remarkable example of scholarship that points to new ways of understanding girls' books and adolescence in fiction, as well as...

Nawiązania do tradycji budownictwa wiejskiego w architekturze Wolnego Miasta Gdańska w dobie narodowego socjalizmu

After the establishment of the Free City of Danzig, the process of the renovation and inventory of arcaded houses (Vorlaubenhäuser) and timber -framed churches in the vicinity of Gdańsk began, along with the increasing scientific interest in them. At the same time, in numerous projects from the 1930s, the interest of architects in traditional rural construction, related to the orders of the Nationalist Socialist Party for certain types of structures, can be observed. In the suburbs of Gdańsk and Sopot, standard, posed as idyllic workers’ housing estates were founded, which were to combine the advantages of living in the countryside and in the city. The network of kindergartens of the National Socialist People’s Welfare (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt) as well as youth hostels used by the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) and the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel) was expanded. According to the Blut -und -Boden ideology, a network of camps for the Land Service (Landdienst) for the Hitlerjugend, community houses for members of the NSDAP Party, and exemplary farms were also founded.
 The repertoire of local materials, traditional architectural details, as well as references in interior design were intended as manifestations of the regional identity, used by the National Socialist authorities to serve the purposes of the Party propaganda, which was creating the myth of an idyllic, strong, homogeneous national community and proving the uninterrupted continuity of German culture in the Free City of Danzig, despite its separation from the German Reich.

The German Mission in Africa and Poland: Women, expansion, and colonial training during the Third Reich

The German Mission in Africa and Poland:Women, expansion, and colonial training during the Third Reich Rachel O'Sullivan In 1926, the Koloniale Frauenschule (Colonial Women's School) opened in Rendsburg in northern Germany and began training women for work in overseas colonies, although Germany had not possessed colonies since the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.1 The school remained open for a further 19 years, operating during the entirety of the Third Reich (1933–45). Despite extensive promotion and planning by colonial enthusiasts and official Nazi institutions like the Kolonialpolitisches Amt der NSDAP (NSDAP Office of Colonial Policy, KPA), founded in 1934 and lead by war veteran and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Bavaria Franz Ritter von Epp, Nazi Germany did not reclaim these overseas colonies. Instead, German expansion in Eastern Europe during the Second World War eclipsed the colonialists' efforts to promote the reacquisition of German territory in Africa. Apart from the colonial school's student cohort, German women also participated in similar types of training and tasks during the war, albeit for a geographical location within Europe. Various organisations, such as the Reichsarbeitsdienst der weiblichen Jugend (Women's Youth Labour Service, RADwJ) the NS-Frauenschaft (National Socialist Women's League), Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM, League of German Girls) and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft nationalsozialistischer Studentinnen (National Socialist Women Student Organisation) trained women in numerous domestic and agricultural tasks and assigned them work in annexed Poland. During such assignments, known as an Osteinsatz (Eastern Work Placement), German women helped with the resettlement and Germanisation of newly-arrived Volksdeutschen (ethnic Germans) throughout the war. The students' activities at the Koloniale Frauenschule and activities undertaken by German women in Poland both featured in two separate films released during the Third Reich. The documentary Die deutsche Frauenkolonialschule „Rendsburg" directed by Paul Lieberenz and released in 1937, featured the school and its students.2 Multiple locations in Germany screened the documentary, as did schools and clubhouses in Latin America and Africa.3 Mädel verlassen die Stadt (Girls Leave the City) was a Kulturfilm released in 1943 by Universum Film AG (UFA), a film production company under the control of the Propaganda Ministry.4 Although the two films are set in different locations, their release dates differ by six years and the women featured in each film were training for or working in different geographical areas, parts of the films are strikingly similar. The potential continuities or similarities between Nazi Germany's territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe and in overseas colonies in Africa have remained a subject of historical debate for more than a decade.5 Such research on the comparisons and contrasts of the Nazi regime to colonial models has thus far been largely dominated by the topic of violence and the Holocaust. Although historians have demonstrated that certain commonalities exist between the Nazi regime's methods of rule, domination, and violence, the extreme case of the attempted annihilation of the European Jews appears to break from patterns of colonial violence against Indigenous, colonised peoples.6 Mark Mazower and Shelly Baranowski have highlighted the interlinked nature of empire building and violence in regard to the similarities between Nazi Germany's expansion into Eastern Europe and European colonialism. However, traditionally colonial regimes often attempted to legitimise conquest and violence by using the notion of a developmental or "civilising" mission.7 Colonial intervention could be justified in the minds of the colonisers by the supposed benefits of colonisation for the colonised, like culture, education and healthcare. Mazower and Baranowski argue that Nazi Germany built and ran its version of empire without the pretence of any such civilizing mission.8 Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski have similarly argued that the Nazi regime did not initiate a developmental mission as evidenced by the treatment of European Jews and Poles.9 Conversely, my research has previously shown that certain facets of the Nazi regime's approach to the perception and treatment of ethnic German resettlers demonstrate Nazi Germany did perceive and promote some of its activity in Poland within a similar framework to colonial developmental missions.10 Additionally, the attempted assimilation of racially valuable Poles and Poles deemed loyal to Germany through the Deutsche Volksliste (German People's...

Vaspitno delovanje u periodu Hitlerove nacionalsocijalističke omladine

This paper reviews the educational activity during Hitler's National Socialist Youth and its two branches: Hitlerjugend and The League of German Girls. Both of these branches were established during the Weimar Republic, but acquired extreme features after 1933. The Nazis realized early on the importance of educating German youth to achieve the party's strategic goals-creating the pure Aryan race, Germany as the world's leading power in political, military, economic and cultural terms, and the German people to rule the world as the most civilized people with their superior tradition and culture. Educational activities from this period were focused on eugenics, totalitarian, militaristic, racist, ideological, anti-Semitic, occult and other inhuman, anti-human and anti-pedagogical principles. In addition to the numerous negative consequences, it left in the history of pedagogy; it contributed to the destruction of an entire generation of German children and youth. For this reason, there is the need for a more detailed study of this topic in order to warn of the consequences that would occur in the future if education was ever again based on the principles of Hitler's National Socialist Youth in Nazi Germany.

Vaspitno delovanje i učenje u Lebensborn projektu nacističke Nemačke

During the time of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, that is, to the end of World War II, the most horrific crimes in human history took place. Nazi Germany was based on militarism, racism, anti-Semitism, ideologism and occultism. First, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which led to the Holocaust, and on December 12, 1935, in Munich, by the order of the commander of the SS troops, Heinrich Himmler, a secret state Lebensborn project was established. The goal of this state project was to create a pure Aryan race, which was considered a key condition for Germany to become the world's leading power in military, economic and cultural terms, and for the German people to rule the world with their sublime tradition and culture. The Lebensborn project involved the birth of children from biological mothers carefully selected from the ranks of racially pure young, beautiful and healthy German girls and biological fathers from the ranks of SS troops, who would later be housed in Lebensborn homes or in the homes of SS officers or prominent purely Aryan families. Children abducted all over Europe, who met the criteria of seemingly belonging to the members of the pure Aryan race, were also accommodated in these homes. In addition to custody and upbringing, the educational activities and teaching of these children in Lebensborn homes were carried out under strict supervision, based on the principles of fascist pedagogy the point that will be discussed in this theoretical study.

Educational and everyday realities of the Third Reich: memoirs and theoretical reconstructions

The everyday realities of educational practices of the Third Reich are reconstructed in the memoires of involved observers of these processes. The most of them can be used as a factual supplement to theoretical reflections on totalitarian transformations in education as their subjective perceiving. Despite of different origin and life attitudes all the authors of translated fragments are concentrated on those features of totalitarian educational innovations which show their completely incompatibility with the humanistic tradition in education. The everyday life of universities’ and school’s communities in the Third Reich was determined by the national-socialist ideology.
 The recalling on Heidegger’s activities as the rector of the University in Freiburg (H. Gottschalk, H. Jonas, K. Löwith, G. Cesar) expose the ambiguity of his way of thinking and acting, what was also noticeable in his habitus. His nationalism was not combined strong with the anti-Semitism in the university’s management. The race theory as a part of national-socialismideology wasn’t definitive for the everyday life in those educational institutions, where the educational traditions were connected with the humanistic values existing in families (L. Schmidt, G. Cesar). Some attempts to stimulation of the pro-social behavior of pupil and students (helping and solidarity) were not effective in the Third Reich because of their directive nature (G. Cesar). The comparison of the national-socialism model of the school and the Lichtwark School taking by L. Schmidt demonstrates the advantages of non-indoctrinated educational institutions withthe pedagogical and socialfreedom used for the all-side development of pupil personality. The experience of the membership in BMD (League of German girls), connected with the force working is critically analyzed by G. Cesar and L. Schmidt.
 The social status of women and their educational influence in the family of the Third Reich design is reconstructed by B. Vinken. She shows that the fascist ideology provides only the subordinated role of women in all spheres of the social life including the educational practices.

Mad Mädchen: Feminism and Generational Conflict in Recent German Literature and Film by Margaret McCarthy

Reviewed by: Mad Mädchen: Feminism and Generational Conflict in Recent German Literature and Film by Margaret McCarthy Alexandra M. Hill Margaret McCarthy. Mad Mädchen: Feminism and Generational Conflict in Recent German Literature and Film. Berghahn, 2017. 270 pp. Cloth, $120.00. Margaret McCarthy's Mad Mädchen uses the mother-daughter conflict as a framing trope for examining intergenerational tensions within feminism. As each generation of daughters rebels against its mothers, feminism is often presented as a teleological process of evolution, when in fact multiple [End Page 170] iterations of feminism coexist and shape each other. McCarthy's complex and nuanced analysis of literature, film, magazines (EMMA and Missy Magazine), and Internet-based media shows that the mother-daughter conflict—while still relevant—oversimplifies the complex processes by which feminist thought and politics in Germany evolve. Chapter 1, "German Feminism in the 2000s," is a broad survey of media and pop-culture discussions of feminism and women in contemporary Germany, including Katja Kullman's Generation Ally (2002), the books Wir Alphamädchen (2008; We alpha girls) by Meredith Haaf, Susanne Klingner, and Barbara Streidl and Neue deutsche Mädchen (2008; New German girls) by Jana Hensel and Elisabeth Raether, and the founding of Missy Magazine (2008). Although often taken together as evidence of third-wave feminism in Germany, these pop-cultural moments (and the responses they evoke) instead give voice to a variety of political agendas and neoliberal attitudes, and varying degrees of knowledge of and respect for second-wave feminism. McCarthy's careful readings of the texts' intent—and especially of the media's tendency to reduce them to binary relationships—illuminate the multiple layers of today's feminist landscape. Chapter 2 centers on three examples of women writing Popliteratur (an anomaly in itself): Zoë Jenny's Das Blütenstaubzimmer (1997; The Pollen Room, 1999), Alexa Hennig von Lange's Relax (1997; Relax, 1999), and Elke Naters's Lügen (1999; Lies). McCarthy reads these novels for their complicated and uninformed attitudes toward feminism and even ambivalence toward relationships with other women. The close readings of the texts are excellent, for example of the opening paragraph of Lügen (88–89). This thorough and nuanced approach continues in chapter 3, which focuses on Charlotte Roche's infamous Feuchtgebiete (2008; Wetlands, 2009) and the subsequent Schoßgebete (2011; Wrecked, 2013). McCarthy contends that in these novels (and in Roche's own media appearances) is "a manifest rejection of feminist mothers" but at the same time "a tacit embrace of some of their tactics" (103). In this way, Roche's texts exemplify the messy, tangled, and ambivalent attitudes of new feminists toward their feminist foremothers (most often symbolized by Alice Schwarzer, who appears both in Roche's novels and throughout McCarthy's book). The next two chapters shift the focus from literature to film. Chapter 4 looks at Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008) and Das wilde Leben (2007; Eight Miles High, 2007) with an eye to the portrayal of Ulrike Meinhof [End Page 171] in the former and Uschi Obermaier in the latter. While McCarthy is interested specifically in how mainstream film represents these wild women through the lens of today's pop-cultural understanding of feminism, this chapter seems the least connected to the concerns of the book. Perhaps because the directors of both films are men, the idea of the mother-daughter dialogue inherent in feminism's evolution is missing here. The films discussed in chapter 5, Die innere Sicherheit (2000; The state I am in) and Auf der anderen Seite (2007; The Edge of Heaven, 2007), are also directed by men but thematically feature intergenerational conflict among women. Fatih Akin's Auf der anderen Seite is perhaps the best example for McCarthy's analysis of multigenerational feminisms. Her beautiful reading of the character Susanne, a white German mother, leads her to conclude that the film posits "women, bolstered by humanist and revolutionary ideals as well as psychic mother-daughter bonds that extend beyond a German frame, as the contemporary agents of '68" (196). In chapter 6, after an analysis of the conversations between EMMA and Missy magazines—roughly representing two different but not oppositional generations—McCarthy...

Reduced Prenatal Weight Gain and/or Augmented Postnatal Weight Gain Precedes Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Adolescent Girls.

Hepato-visceral fat excess is a feature of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Risk factors for such excess include low prenatal weight gain and high postnatal weight gain. This study examined whether adolescent PCOS was preceded by a relatively low birth weight and/or a relatively high BMI at diagnosis. Study participants included 467 girls with PCOS (298 without obesity and 169 with obesity), diagnosed, respectively, in Spain and Germany; 87 healthy girls were controls. Z scores for weight at birth and BMI at PCOS diagnosis were derived, and their differences were calculated. Spanish girls with PCOS and without obesity and German girls with PCOS and obesity had mean birth weight z scores of -0.7 and 0.0, respectively, and mean BMI z scores of + 0.4 and +2.7, respectively, so that mean z score increments amounted to +1.1 and +2.6 (P < 0.001 vs. controls). PCOS in adolescent girls was preceded by marked z score increments between weight at birth and BMI at PCOS diagnosis, thus corroborating the notion that PCOS development is driven by a mismatch between prenatal weight gain and postnatal weight gain.

ATTITUDES TO FUTURITY IN NEW GERMAN FEMINISMS AND CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S FICTION

Drawing on Clare Hemmings’ work on feminist narratives, this article explores attitudes to the future in recent German-language pop-feminist volumes, including, amongst others, Meredith Haaf, Susanne Klingner and Barbara Streidl’s Wir Alpha-Mädchen: Warum Feminismus das Leben schöner macht [We Alpha-Girls: Why Feminism Makes Life More Beautiful] (2008) and the feminist memoir Neue deutsche Mädchen [New German Girls] (2008) by Jana Hensel and Elisabeth Raether. After analysing the rhetoric of linear progress deployed in these texts and the ways in which their authors consign second-wave feminism to the past in the name of a normative future, I go on to examine future-thinking in two complex first-person novels: Helene Hegemann’s Axolotl Roadkill (2010) and Antonia Baum’s Vollkommen leblos, bestenfalls tot [Completely Lifeless, Preferably Dead] (2011). I demonstrate how these novels invoke a sense of disorientation and asynchronous temporality that is productively queer. Their disruptions of time and space, of language and form, combine with decentred central protagonists to throw doubt on the figure of the coherent sovereign subject who lurks persistently behind the new German feminists’ configuration of the self-empowered “individual.” Finally, this paper contends that the queer refusal of normative futures enacted by the novels allows the opportunity to imagine alternative modes of being that are potentially politically transformative.

Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944 by Sarah Gensburger

Reviewed by: Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944 by Sarah Gensburger Michael E. O’Sullivan Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944. By Sarah Gensburger. Translated by Jonathan Hensher with the collaboration of Elisabeth Fourmont. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 216. Paper $35.00. ISBN 978-0253017444. Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews artfully examines an album of photographs taken by Germans plundering the property of French Jews. The album was arranged by Allied occupation forces after the war and preserved by the Federal Archives in Koblenz. These pictures document Operation Furniture (Möbel Aktion), the institutionalized robbery of French Jews, directed first by Alfred Rosenberg’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and then by Colonel Kurt von Behr’s Dienststelle West (of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) from 1942 to 1944. This evidence, likely compiled originally by Rosenberg and von Behr as proof of their productivity, showcases the massive theft of everything from valuable art to the kitchenware, radios, light bulbs, and mattresses from 38,000 homes “abandoned” by Parisian Jews during [End Page 225] the height of their incarceration and deportation. In presenting us with this material, Sarah Gensburger blends analysis of historical photographs with an impressive collection of survivor testimony and displays a sweeping familiarity with both the documentary evidence and historiographical context of Germany’s pillage of Jewish assets during the Holocaust. This book’s most meaningful scholarly intervention is to revise academic work privileging the economic utility of the Holocaust. In opposition especially to Götz Aly’s controversial Hitler’s Beneficiaries (2005), Gensburger interprets these photos as proof that Operation Furniture and other forms of mass pillage never benefitted the Third Reich materially. Rather, systematic looting belonged to the larger process of complete annihilation, eliminating the physical traces of Nazi victims by transforming personal possessions into goods that were frequently destroyed due to their shabby condition and lack of functionality. Instead of propping up the economy of everyday Germans during the war, the ransacking of all Jewish possessions resulted from the overwhelming ideological urge to destroy every remnant of European Jewry. Gensburger supports her interpretative claim in part by critiquing the ways in which textual historians of the Holocaust use archival images. Pointing out mistakes by well-known historians like Martin Dean in Robbing the Jews (2008) and others, she does much more than highlight the errors of colleagues. In one case, she shows how Aly mislabeled photos from the album under review: his captions misrepresented images of packed crates of art as material goods intended for transport to the civilian population of Germany. In this manner, she directly weakens his assertions of a strong economic dimension to the genocide (64–65). Gensburger also strengthens the book’s central point by contextualizing each photo. In one example, she identifies the illusory nature of an image of interned seamstresses turning stolen garments into skirts for German girls of the Reich. She quotes former inmate Erna Herzberg, who suggested that almost no skirts were ever actually produced. Herzberg and others only reused fabric for occasional items made to order by National Socialist elites. What appears to be evidence of targeted plunder was actually a photo staged by von Behr or Rosenberg so that they could maintain autonomy over their economically unproductive action and retain laborers who fulfilled their personal requests (106–107). Such layered analysis unveils the complexity of using photographs as primary sources, illustrating the rigorous scrutiny that such analysis requires. The depiction of Jewish victims frequently excluded from historical narratives constitutes another intriguing element of this book. Gensburger fills a “memory hole” that devalues the Jewish spouses of gentiles and so-called Mischlinge that inhabited the internment camps of Paris and whose conditions were more tolerable than most forced labor facilities. As comparably fortunate Jews who largely escaped both deportation to Auschwitz and the horrors of the notorious Drancy concentration camp, internees at camps like Levitan, Austerlitz, and Bassano formed the primary labor force of Operation Furniture. The gaze of National Socialist photographers frequently [End Page 226] relegated these prisoners to the margins of the images, making plundered goods the...

Evident Bias in Thomas J. Kehoe and E. James Kehoe, “Crimes Committed by U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1945–1946”

The horrifying record of rape by Soviet troops in postwar Germany has long been a matter of record. What is new is the argument that the behavior of American GIs in the European Theater of Operations was little better than that of the Russians. Inspired by a new study alleging that some 190,000 German girls and women were raped by U.S. servicemen, the Kehoes maintain that official military statistics from 1945-46 confirm such high levels of sexual predation. It can now be said with confidence, they assert, that “U.S. soldiers raped and assaulted civilians with frightening abandon.” Yet this generalization and others like it are not supported by the authors’ own data, which instead repeatedly display low rape figures. The Kehoes’ reliance on theorizing to overcome this deficiency is clearly unconvincing.

Modelling activity novelty and adolescent females’ subjective well-being during a winter holiday

ABSTRACTLeisure research on adolescent females’ holiday experiences, and how these experiences may contribute to their happiness is scarce. Recent work in the area of positive psychology has suggested that novelty within an experience may enhance positive emotions and life satisfaction which together comprise subjective well-being (SWB), a common conceptualization of happiness. The purpose of this paper was to test the direct influence of activity novelty and the mediating influence of emotion balance (the balance between positive and negative emotions) on life satisfaction for a group of adolescent females on a winter holiday. As part of a larger study, participants (n = 74) were German girls aged 12–17 years who completed a diary-based questionnaire for 21 consecutive days (before, during, and after their holiday). A conditional process analysis indicated that activity novelty may have a positive or negative influence on emotion balance depending on pre-vacation activity novelty patterns. Furthermore, while novelty does not have a direct influence on life satisfaction, it has a positive indirect influence through emotion balance. This study provides evidence that holiday experiences can contribute to young women’s SWB and highlights the important role of emotions during such experiences. In addition, results support the use of a positive psychology framework to understand adolescent vacationers’ experiences.

Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War ed. by Lissa Paul, Rosemary Ross Johnston, Emma Short

Reviewed by: Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War ed. by Lissa Paul, Rosemary Ross Johnston, Emma Short Michael Joseph (bio) Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War. Edited by Lissa Paul, Rosemary Ross Johnston, and Emma Short. New York: Routledge, 2016. Aptly, this impressive collection begins with a foreword by Michael Morpurgo, who notes that while the names of the soldiers are passing from memory, we should never forget the point of their sacrifice: “to create a world where their kind of suffering and dying is no longer necessary” (xiv). As the introduction reminds us, children are no longer noncombatants, but suicide bombers, soldiers. War is their milieu. For the West in 1914, this was not so. For a long time, children were “situated on the fringes of war culture.” In this book, “they are at the center” (6). The scholars gathered here are for the most part liminalizing the narrative, augmenting, complicating, even challenging our prevailing intellectual history: as Margaret Higonnet declares, all “narratives matter.” The nineteen essays divide into four sections, “Writing War,” “Propaganda and Experience,” “Education and Play,” and “Activism.” They originated as papers in an extended minuet: three conferences in three countries on three continents over three years, in Sydney (2011), Ontario (2012), and England (2013). The book draws to a close with an afterword by Peter Hunt, one of the conference shapers. At a hefty 347 + xviii pages, it’s a substantial thing. (There’s even writing on the back cover.) Readers get a lot of bang for the buck. [End Page 334] Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War properly begins with a magisterial example of literary criticism by Paul Stevens, who argues that Winston Churchill had an appetite for war that originated in his childhood reading of H. Rider Haggard, in whose novels a key association is forged between heroism and technology. Stevens emphasizes the hold upon Churchill of what Leo Marx called “the technological sublime,” the perception of power, even miracle, in the operations of the machine. Hopkins had his Windhover, Job his War Horse; Churchill had munitions. Two fine, engaging essays on Italian children’s literature by Lindsay Myers and Francesca Orestano follow, noting that such books were meant to inculcate patriotic feelings in child readers while depicting warfare as a necessary evil. Under the pressure of war, Italian children’s literature shifted from fantasy to realism, a balance that other writers reprise. Noting the near absence of the child in the documentation of war experience, Andrea McKenzie plumbs the pages of St. Nicholas magazine for clues to how girls aged ten through seventeen “perceived, imagined, and wrote the First World War” (61). Expounding on the formidable cultural schemata that reinforced gender roles, she nimbly argues that they persisted in asserting their individuality, struggling against the magazine’s generalizing tendencies. Delineated by a similar struggle are the young black readers in Katharine Capshaw’s adroit discussion of Our Boys and Girls, a journal that she has niftily rescued from oblivion. Here, she argues, is a “deeply ideological and critical voice . . . articulated clearly and directly to young [black] people” without deference to “inter-racial commonalities” following the war (87, 89). No less of a probing analysis of a children’s magazine is Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńowska’s discussion of Ungdomsvännen: Illustrerad Tidskrift för Hemmet (The Youth’s Friend: Illustrated Magazine for Home), which concerns “the experiences of the First World War as conveyed in ethnic writings of Swedish immigrant youth in the United States” (93). Stasiewicz-Bieńowska also mulls over identity construction, and her essay is an illuminating work of cultural criticism on an under-studied topic. Whereas McKenzie finds that the war influenced girls to critique dominating national narratives, according to Stasiewicz-Bieńowska it ushered Swedish-American youth toward greater “un-hyphenated American identity” (102). The focus on the reading and writing lives of young girls is reinforced and complicated by Andrew Donson’s essay on young German girls, who apparently had no problem imagining brutal military engagements or relishing the proposition that victory was predicated on military superiority (Siegfriede). Donson describes a (postliminal) turn toward greater...

Implementation of the IDEFICS intervention across European countries: perceptions of parents and relationship with BMI.

The primary aim of the present study was to obtain insight into parents' perception of the IDEFICS intervention at the school or preschool/kindergarten and community levels and whether they received specific materials related to the intervention. The secondary aim was to analyse whether parents who reported higher levels of exposure to the IDEFICS intervention had children with more favourable changes in body mass index (BMI) z-scores between baseline and after 2 years of intervention. Process evaluation of the IDEFICS intervention investigated the implementation of the 2-year intervention in the intervention communities. Intervention group parents (n = 4,180) in seven countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden) answered questions about their exposure to the IDEFICS study. To analyse the relationship between exposure and BMI z-score, a composite score was calculated for exposure at the setting and at the community levels. The frequency of parental exposure to the IDEFICS messages not only through the community but also through the (pre)school/kindergarten was lower than what was intended and planned. The dose received by the parents was considerably higher through the (pre)school/kindergarten settings than that through the community in all countries. Efforts by the settings or communities related to fruit and vegetable consumption (range 69% to 97%), physical activity promotion (range 67% to 91%) and drinking water (range 49% to 93%) were more visible and also realized more parental involvement than those related to TV viewing, sleep duration and spending time with the family (below 50%). Results showed no relation of parental exposure at the setting or the community level on more favourable changes in children's BMI z-scores for the total sample. Country-specific analyses for parental exposure at the setting level showed an expected positive effect in German girls and an unexpected negative effect in Italian boys. Parental exposure and involvement in the IDEFICS intervention in all countries was much less than aimed for, which might be due to the diverse focus (six key messages) and high intensity and duration of the intervention. It may also be that the human resources invested in the implementation and maintenance of intervention activities by the study centres, the caretakers and the community stakeholders were not sufficient. Higher levels of parental exposure were not related to more favourable changes in BMI z-scores.

HPV vaccination coverage in German girls: results of the KiGGS study: first follow-up (KiGGS Wave 1)

In Germany, vaccination against HPV infection has been recommended for girls aged 12-17 years since 2007. The aim of this paper was to provide an overview of the current status and determinants of HPV vaccination uptake in Germany. Analyses included data from 14- to 17-year-old girls (n =1,337) of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents - First Follow-up Survey (KiGGS Wave 1). Standardized telephone interviews included questions for girls on the number of HPV vaccine doses and visits to a gynecologist. Parents were asked about their socioeconomic status (SES) and the girls' participation in the J1 adolescent health check-up. Descriptive analyses of the HPV vaccination status with respect to social, demographic, and health-care utilization factors were performed. Factors associated with vaccination were identified and odds ratios (OR) were estimated by means of logistic regression analysis. The prevalence of vaccination with at least one HPV vaccine dose was 52.6% (95% confidence interval 48.5-56.6). Three-dose HPV vaccination coverage was 39.5% (35.3-43.9). Vaccine uptake increased with age, was higher in girls with middle and low SES compared with high SES, with residence in eastern Germany, in those who had already seen a gynecologist, and who participated in the J1. Multivariable logistic regression revealed a twofold increased chance of being vaccinated for girls with middle SES (OR 1.9) compared with high-SES girls and for those who had yet seen a gynecologist (OR 2.1). School-based vaccination programs and multi-tier vaccination campaigns have led to high vaccination rates in some European and non-European countries. In Germany, however, such high vaccination rates have not been achieved. To fully realize the potential of HPV vaccinations to reduce HPV-related cancer incidence at the population level, vaccination coverage in Germany must be increased. In absence of school-based vaccination programs, medical doctors should use each visit to check and complete the girl's vaccination status.

The Case of Helene Hegemann: Queerness, Failure, and the German Girl

Helene Hegemann’s 2010 novel Axolotl Roadkill, whose author was seventeen at the time of publication, provoked an instructive controversy. The debates the novel triggered tell us a great deal about contemporary German literary and cultural ideals, especially as far as girls and young women are concerned. Hegemann’s work in fact “queers” such ideals, evoking though its sixteen-year-old heroine Mifti a traumatized yet defiantly perverse subject. The novel’s content, however, has been overshadowed by media discussions of its author, a contested and provocative figure who herself challenges established models of femininity. In this article, I consequently begin by discussing the reception of Hegemann, concentrating on the questions of age, gender, and Germanness. I go on to examine Axolotl Roadkill, asking how the novel itself conceives of subjectivity, generationality, and nationality. In addition, I discuss the novel as a queer text. I suggest that Mifti – and the novel itself – illustrate what Judith Halberstam terms “the queer art of failure.”Mifti and Hegemann are triumphant failures as German girls. They thus ask us to consider critically what passes for normality and success in our times. Hegemann’s youth unsurprisingly attracted comment in media coverage of the author, but other factors contributed to the furore surrounding the publication of her novel. The autobiographical status of her work was the subject of speculation, with the prominence of the author’s father, the dramatist Carl Hegemann, serving only to add piquancy (see Marz). But Hegemann attracted even greater attention when it was revealed that her novel quotes passages from a blog by a writer known as Airen (now published as a book, see Airen), a revelation that led to a flurry of articles in the press about plagiarism and the internet, authorship and intertextuality, and to either condemnation or defence. Hegemann’s lack of repentance in the face of the revelation drew criticism. Some commentators, however, have situated the writer in a tradition of “borrowing” that goes back to Thomas Mann and Shakespeare (Graf).1 There is an interesting contradiction here: on the one hand, Hegemann’s work has widely been viewed as autobiographical; on the other, it has been seen as an example of derivativeness or even theft. This contradictoriness points to the unresolved status of literature in

Decreased External Skeletal Robustness in Schoolchildren – A Global Trend? Ten Year Comparison of Russian and German Data

ObjectivesObesity and a reduced physical activity are global developments. Physical activity affects the external skeletal robustness which decreased in German children. It was assumed that the negative trend of decreased external skeletal robustness can be found in other countries. Therefore anthropometric data of Russian and German children from the years 2000 and 2010 were compared.MethodsRussian (2000/2010 n = 1023/268) and German (2000/2010 n = 2103/1750) children aged 6–10 years were investigated. Height, BMI and external skeletal robustness (Frame-Index) were examined and compared for the years and the countries. Statistical analysis was performed by Mann-Whitney-Test.ResultsComparison 2010 and 2000: In Russian children BMI was significantly higher; boys were significantly taller and exhibited a decreased Frame-Index (p = .002) in 2010. German boys showed significantly higher BMI in 2010. In both sexes Frame-Index (p = .001) was reduced in 2010. Comparison Russian and German children in 2000: BMI, height and Frame-Index were different between Russian and German children. German children were significantly taller but exhibited a lower Frame-Index (p<.001). Even German girls showed a significantly higher BMI. Comparison Russian and German children in 2010: BMI and Frame-Index were different. Russian children displayed a higher Frame-Index (p<.001) compared with Germans.ConclusionsIn Russian children BMI has increased in recent years. Frame-Index is still higher in Russian children compared with Germans however in Russian boys Frame-Index is reduced. This trend and the physical activity should be observed in the future.

The “Nazi Detective” as Provider of Justice in Post-1990 British and German Crime Fiction: Philip Kerr's The Pale Criminal, Robert Harris's Fatherland, and Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister's Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht

The “Nazi Detective” as Provider of Justice in Post-1990 British and German Crime Fiction: Philip Kerr's <i>The Pale Criminal</i>, Robert Harris's <i>Fatherland</i>, and Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister's <i>Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht</i>