German Sense Research Articles

Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900, written by Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen

Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900, written by Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen

:Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900

:<i>Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900</i>

:Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900

:<i>Modern Historiography in the Making: The German Sense of the Past, 1700–1900</i>

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Hölderlin and Celan: A Fragmented Poetics of Remembrance

Hölderlin and Celan: A Fragmented Poetics of Remembrance Charles Bambach Purity, Homecoming, and the Poetics of Citation One of the defining moments in Celan’s signature poem “Tübingen, Jänner” is its focus on the Hölderlinian trope of “origin.” Drawing upon Hölderlin’s hymn,“Der Rhein”, and the opening line of stanza four—“A riddle is what is purely originated” (v. 16)—Celan undermines and compromises the very conceit of an origin as an Ursprung, an arche, or a pure beginning. For Celan, origin itself functions as a metonymy for the sense of something lost; it is nothing other than a fiction. Within Hölderlin’s poem, the source or Quelle of the Rhine offers the poet an occasion on which to reflect on the enigmatic origin of all that springs forth purely form nature. But even as this vision unfolds, the poet is, at the same time, confronted by the river as demi-god, a curious blend and opposition of both human and godly elements—hence, not “pure” in any simplistic sense. In “Tübingen, Jänner,” Celan will seek to dismantle the power of this arche by shifting its field of signifiers and placing them under a form of poetic erasure that, paradoxically, involves citing them again but in a parodic and distantiated way. Such a movement reenacts the experience of violence that this arche-discourse itself brings forth. Here the very act of citation occurs as a tearing out from one context and placing it, almost imperiously, in a new one that is often strange, foreign, and other. [End Page 635] Almost by definition, citation requires a double kind of tear/rip—of an excising from a longer piece that needs to be truncated and of a repositioning of this old text into a new configuration. What emerges from this process is a variation of the original that, in its repetition, challenges the originarity of the origin. In Celan’s staging of this Hölderlin citation from “The Rhine,” we are forced outside the frame of the poem itself. It is as if Celan wants to declare that the poem is never self-sufficient or in any way organically whole or pure; it comes to us as life itself, in fragments that are separated from each other, estranged parts dispersed by the rivenness of time and history. In the homophonic play of rein and Rhein, Celan crafts a poetics of dispersion that attends to the doubling implications of citation, repetition, and rehearsal. If the Hölderlin myth was built upon the riddle, enigma, and mystery of the pure origin, then Celan’s Widerruf of Hölderlin will draw attention to the split between origin and rehearsal, between primary utterance and secondary recitation, through which the origin becomes but another iterative repetition. But repetition, thought of in its German sense as Wiederholung, also invariably brings with it a sense of retrieval. Citation is one such form of retrieval that reiterates and repeats what was once expressed; yet it does so now in a wholly different and foreign context so that such an activity does not merely “fetch back” (wieder-holen) what was once written, since in the new iteration one moves away from the former site of expression. In Celan’s hands, then, citation—especially when underscored and attended by the repeated insertion of quotation marks, hyphens, parentheses, colons, enjambments, and other poetic devices—will function as a way to pluralize the purported singularity of the origin and to burst asunder the deadly metaphysical-political implications of the arche as source, inception, provenance, home (in its various forms as nation, race, state, Volk). For Celan, citation as repetition serves to destabilize the security and singularity of the origin by tearing it from its home, placing it into a kind of poetic exile and rendering the possibility of a homecoming as Heimkehr, Rückkehr, and Wiederkehr ever more problematic and uncertain. Given his deep interest in geological processes of decomposition, erosion, and the abrasive effect of wind and water on stone, soil, and sand, we can see how attuned Celan was to processes of change, transformation, and metamorphosis. Much as chemical particles get unsettled by...

Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne. Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht by Thomas A. Grischany

Reviewed by: Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne. Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht by Thomas A. Grischany Peter Thaler Thomas A. Grischany. Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne. Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015. Pp. 327. Cloth €50.00. ISBN 978-3847103776. After World War II the reconstituted Austrian republic defined itself as a victim of National Socialist Germany. According to official historiography, the country had been deserted by the international community and had fallen prey to German aggression in 1938. With the exception of a small minority, Austrians had resisted as best they could. From the very beginning, however, this historical interpretation faced questions about the role of Austrians in the institutions of the Third Reich. Most significant was the military. As German citizens, Austrians were subject to the draft. By the end of the war, 1.3 million of them had served in the German armed forces. More than 250,000 did not return. To counter this impression of active participation, many postwar interpreters emphasized the idiosyncrasies of the Austrian wartime experience. They argued that Austrian units had been dissolved and their members subjected to discrimination and special surveillance. It is this picture that Thomas Grischany contests. Based on a wide selection of both printed and archival sources, as well as on interviews with surviving veterans, Grischany traces the experience of Austrians in the German military between 1938 and 1945. Following a brief introduction to the history of Austro-Prussian military relations, the author zooms in on his core subject, expounding the initial challenges of military integration after 1938. Approximately one quarter of the existing Austrian officer corps was not carried over into the German military, and the remainder had to adjust to differences in terminology and training. To promote assimilation, the German army co-opted suitable icons of Austrian military history into its own pantheon. In this early phase, many Austrians nonetheless encountered questions about their soldierly capabilities. They felt a need to demonstrate their valor and prove that Austrian inadequacies during World War I had been based on the special conditions of the multinational Habsburg army. These efforts were not without success, and Alpine units gradually gained a reputation for toughness and courage. The conduct of predominantly Austrian mountain troops during the Norwegian campaign contributed significantly to this altered perception. The shared victories of the early war years accelerated integration. The author describes the allure of foreign countries during the relative tranquility of military occupations around 1940. Yet he also highlights the interplay of regional and national aspects in the imagery of German identity. At least on a symbolic level, the German military provided ample opportunity for regional identification. This applied to all groups, but it proved especially useful for newcomers such as the Austrians. The increased status of individual territories such as Tyrol—relative to the formerly dominant Vienna—appealed to provincial sentiments as well. [End Page 445] The attack on the Soviet Union changed the character of the war, but it did not disrupt the internal cohesion of the German armed forces. Whereas civilian dissatisfaction in Austria began to rise after 1943, the battle against communism motivated even conservative opponents of the regime. Grischany finds that shared hardships deepened the sense of comradeship and mutual dependency. With the growing diversification of the German military, Austrians also moved closer to the national center. Minority populations from eastern and southeastern Europe deviated appreciably from the German core, as did such reluctant draftees such as the Alsatians. By comparison with these later additions, Austrians had been absorbed into the German mainstream. The rediscovery of Austrian distinctiveness occurred primarily after the military defeat. Der Ostmark treuer Alpensöhne describes the successive phases of Austrian integration into the German armed forces during World War II. As explanations for the substantive success of this process, the study cites regional and professional pride, esprit de corps, a fundamentally German sense of self, ideological indoctrination, and not least the shared experiences of both military triumph and disaster. The author also invokes Götz Aly's argument in Hitler's Beneficiaries (2005) that the National Socialist regime gained much of its popularity...

Ulf Hannerz

Ulf Hannerz

The first record of Early Devonian ammonoids from Belgium and their stratigraphic significance

The first ammonoids from the Lower Emsian (Devonian) of Belgium are described. They belong to the Anetoceratinae, which show the most plesiomorphic characters of all ammonoids. This is the second report of Early Emsian ammonoids within the Rhenish facies of the Rhenish Slate Mountains (Belgium, Germany), in this case from the Belgian part of the Eifel (Burg Reuland). It highlights the possible importance of ammonoids for the correlation of the Emsian in its traditional German sense and the Emsian in the global sense as delimited by the GSSPs. Newly collected, age-significant brachiopods of the genera Arduspirifer and Euryspirifer and other previously reported fossils indicate a middle or late Early Emsian (Singhofen or Vallendar) age (in German sense) for this locality. We extend the range of Ivoites schindewolfi outside of the Hunsruck Basin and further corroborate an age younger than Ulmen for parts of the Hunsruck Slate.

Colonialism, antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish descent in imperial Germany

Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial examines the relationship between the colonial and antisemitic movements of modern Germany from 1871 to 1918, examining the complicated ways in which German antisemitism and colonialism fed off of and into each other in the decades before the First World War. Author Christian S. Davis studies the significant involvement with and investment in German colonialism by the major antisemitic political parties and extra-parliamentary organizations of the day, while also investigating the prominent participation in the colonial movement of Jews and Germans of Jewish descent and their tense relationship with procolonial antisemites. Working from the premise that the rise and propagation of racial antisemitism in late-nineteenth-century Germany cannot be separated from the context of colonial empire, Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial is the first work to study the dynamic and evolving interrelationship of the colonial and antisemitic movements of the Kaiserreich era. It shows how individuals and organizations who originated what would later become the ideological core of National Socialism---racial antisemitism---both influenced and perceived the development of a German colonial empire predicated on racial subjugation. It also examines how colonialism affected the contemporaneous German antisemitic movement, dividing it over whether participation in the nationalist project of empire building could furnish patriotic credentials to even Germans of Jewish descent. The book builds upon the recent upsurge of interest among historians of modern Germany in the domestic impact and character of German colonialism, and on the continuing fascination with the racialization of the German sense of self that became so important to German history in the twentieth century.

The Terms on Which Jews and Muslims Join Western Civilization

The Terms on Which Jews and Muslims Join Western Civilization

POLYGNATHUS ROSAE N. SP. (CONODONTA) AND ITS BIOSTRATIGRAPHICAL CORRELATION POTENTIAL (LOWER EMSIAN, LOWER DEVONIAN)IN THE SPANISH CENTRAL PYRENEES

The problems around the Pragian/Emsian (P/E) boundary have been widely discussed by several authors, who have pointed out that the present Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) in the Zinzilban section (Kitab Reserve, Uzbekistan), is much older than the traditional German Siegenian-Emsian boundary, a fact that considerably reduces the duration of the traditional Pragian Stage. A comprehensive conodont study of two important sections (Isabena 1 and Baliera 6) demonstrates the presence of the conodont indexes for the P/E boundary in both senses (official and traditional) in the Spanish Central Pyrenees (SCP). Within the important conodont faunas registered, the presence of a new early polygnathid species Polygnathus rosae n. sp. stands out. Its stratigraphic range in the two sections is restricted to a short interval around the traditional beginning of the Emsian Stage. This particular distribution permits direct relation between both indexes, a better characterization of the P/E boundary in the traditional German sense and increases the palaeontological knowledge of this stratigraphic interval. Conodont records in the SCP suggest that Po. rosae n. sp. could be a good local index, too. In addition, Po. rosae n. sp. represents the last known step of the lineage Po. pireneaePo. rosae n. sp., a new early polygnathid lineage that supports the early radiation of the genus around the P/E boundary.

Measuring sense of community in the military: cross‐cultural evidence for the validity of the brief sense of community scale and its underlying theory

AbstractIn this article, the authors present a German Sense of Community (SOC) Scale for use in military settings. The scale is based on the translation and field‐testing of an existing U.S.‐based measure of neighborhood SOC (Peterson, Speer, &amp; McMillan, 2008). The methodological intricacies underlying cross‐cultural scale development are highlighted, as are the strategies used to overcome them. Administered in a navy context (n=270), the newly developed German measure improves the psychometric credentials of the existing scale by confirming the principal theory of SOC and its applicability across borders and contexts. Future research is encouraged to build on the strength and flexibility of the existing U.S. instrument for further cross‐cultural scale development, thus enabling SOC theory to attain its full international potential. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Imagining Richard Wagner: The Janus Head of a Divided Nation

Over course of its turbulent history, German nation has defined itself time and again in terms of a constructed Other. The Other--depicted variously a political, ideological, or racial opposition to existence of imagined German Self--has served a common enemy against which nation can unite, essentially a vehicle for promoting national spirit. Discussing historically exclusive nature of German nationalism, Christian Joppke observes, the German concept of nation thus became more like a weapon than a unifying symbol, property of some but not of others. (1) Implicit in this is perception of an enemy within, a construct of nation in which Self and Other are two sides of same coin. Thomas Mann famously asserted in 1945 that one could not speak of two separate Germanys, an evil one represented by Hitler and a good one that encompassed Kultur. (2) Yet Cold War progressed, identity-formation processes were dependent on narratives of separate Germanies: Germany oppressed and oppressor, perpetrator and jury, and, most obviously East and West. The political scientist John Keane notes that crises are times during which living do battle for hearts, minds and souls of dead, an observation that is pertinent here. (3) Uniting various postwar definitions of nation, intimated by Thomas Mann, was shared cultural heritage, which inevitably emerged a focal point in ideological combat of Cold War. Amid abject poverty in Berlin in 1946, an incredulous cultural correspondent from Time magazine revealingly acclaimed city the current theatrical and musical capital of Europe, noting that theaters with their roofs blown off and their walls caved in are housing productions ... that would shame a good deal of stuff shown on Broadway. (4) Birthdays and anniversaries of Germany's dead musical luminaries were seized upon nation-building and propaganda opportunities; in both East and West numerous years (Gedenkjahre) and other smaller festivals were organized to honor, and exploit, pantheon of Germany's cultural heroes. The 200th anniversary of Bach's death in 1950 gave rise to a year-long series of festivities; a Beethoven-Gedenkjahr to celebrate 125th anniversary of composer's death followed in 1952, and commemorative celebrations for Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, and Handel followed in quick succession. (5) The Canon in a Divided Nation The commitment to canon by Soviet and American occupying forces played in their favor by confronting widely held perceptions of both culturally challenged nations. (6) It also tapped deep into German psyche; culture, and in particular music, was intrinsic to German sense of self and national identity. Robert Schumann, for example, observed in 1839: as Italy has its Naples, France its Revolution, England its Navy, etc., so Germans have their Beethoven symphonies. (7) The response to this conviction was strikingly different in East and West Germany. The Americans were adamant that Third Reich had been no chance occurrence but a product of an innate German chauvinism that was manifest in their attitude toward their musical heritage. A reoccurrence of war was inevitable unless these basic flaws in German character were addressed. (8) Consequently, in immediate aftermath of war, focus in West Germany was on denationalization of canon. Radio programs and concerts interspersing German music with compositions from Allied nations, accompanied by promotion of non-German performers, aimed to reduce German certainty about their musical supremacy. David Monod describes American attempts to attack Nazi sentiments in music sector by showing Germans that Americans could sing Wagner better than they. (9) Similarly, Bach and Beethoven were no longer discussed in terms of their German heritage but depicted products of an international humanism, one to which Germany had no greater claim than any other nation. …

Performing Boredom inEffi Briest:On the Effects of Narrative Speed

Effi Briest is a book. This is not the kind of critical judgment one normally makes, and for two reasons. First, comes across as negative and banal, and academic criticism's task is generally not to disparage its object but rather to unfold that object's complexity. Second, and more important, it is an emotionally laden appraisal that ventures away from the work itself and into the realm of affective response. For both these reasons, declaring a work boring is bad critical form. But what if one could develop a concept of boredom that is both positive and based on textual evidence? What if one could show that boredom is pre cisely the point of a book like Effi Briest? Boredom, in this sense, would denote not a narrative defect but a narrative strategy; it would become an object of interest. In what follows, I attempt to locate just this notion of boredom in Effi Briest, one based on Langeweile, the German equivalent of boredom. Langeweile literally means a long while, and it describes a particular rela tionship to time in which time seems to stretch and drag on. This specific sense of boredom permeates all levels of Effi Briest. My argument for the centrality of boredom in Fontane's novel has three stages. First, it expounds in more detail this specifically German sense of boredom and shows how Effi suffers not only from a lack of distraction but also and primarily from a time that has grown long. Second, it treats the per formative dimension of boredom in the novel. By analyzing the relationship of narrative time to narrated time, it demonstrates how the novel effects the very boredom that it describes in its eponymous heroine. While the novel casts boredom as a problem of time becoming long, it also calibrates the act of narration such that the time of reading becomes longer when Effi is bored. Finally, on the basis of these findings, I return to the frequently discussed gaps, or lacunae, in Fontane's narrative style. Scholars have noted that the novel never describes its most important events directly. It prefers merely to hint at the intimate affair that remains obscure until Innstetten discovers the com promising letters. These gaps and ambiguities have often been studied as interesting aberrations within a novelistic practice that is supposedly realis tic. Only once their function is located within a narrative calculus of boredom,

Different Images: A Case Study on Bartók Reception in Denmark

This paper addresses the early Bartok reception in Denmark in the 1920's and 1930's. The Danish Bartok reception undergoes significant changes and constitutes at least two distinct Bartok images. First we meet the 'international', 'modernist' Bartok, seen as one of the representatives of the 'Neue Musik', in the German sense of genuinely new, contemporary music. This is due to the fact, that Bartok's music from the first moment on was well represented in the repertoire of the Danish societies for contemporary music. The second image is quite different. It emerges in the late 1920s and is present at the latest in the reception of the three concerts, Bartok gave in Copenhagen in 1929. This is an image referring to Bartok as one of the leaders of what is referred to as the 'real new music', which has overcome the destructive powers of modernist expressionism and has formed a genuinely new music founded on the vital forces of unspoiled, original folk music. This second image includes other works as important ...

The political suspension of ethics: proposals for a historical study of reversal of values in a situation of martial conflict in Lanka

The overall aim of this project is to focus on the general socio-economic and political conditions leading to martial conflict in relation to religious and secular values, value systems and ideologies in Īlam/Lankā, with special regard to their transformation. It deals with the extent of reversal and re-reversal in the course of the conflict and reconciliation respectively. These values are reversed through political decisions in a martial situation. It is true that martial conflicts arise over the distribution of resources and territory and not over theological issues. When, however, religion is placed in a martial context and related to the interests of one group, then even a sophisticated theology can take the form of an identity-bestowing ideology and adopt martial doctrines such as the concept of just war. Territorial and social definitions of citizenship are replaced by definitions relating to sacred boundaries. Christianity may turn into German Christianity or Serbian Christianity, Hinduism into Hindūtva and Buddhism into Sinhalatva. The overall martial context is finally symbolised in religion as an identity marker alongside sacralisation of language, history, and territory, etc. This martial context generates a religious surplus even within secular ideologies and leads both to a suspension and a reversal of values in established religions. The proponents are ideologues, including monks and priests, and politicians in the widest sense. They become warmongers in a martial situation, where they become ‘authentic’ and authoritative. In a non-war situation they are marginalised as extremists. During war, they suspend fundamental human values, but they ‘suspend’ in the specifically German (Hegelian) sense of aufheben, meaning to elevate, to save and to call off. They do not annihilate these values, only to recall and retrieve them during truces and cease-fires, in situations of non-war, and diplomatic or ecumenical encounters, or during academic conferences. In times of martial conflict, ideologues, as advocates of war, actualize ways of integrating violence into non-violent traditions. In this article five ways of rationalizing violence, which have global parallels in martial societies, are referred to. The first way is the well-known and popular reasoning about the holy ‘end’ that justifies the less holy ‘means’; the second line of reasoning points to an alleged connection between present and past ideal persons or events; the third way of rationalizing violence introduces a de-eschatologizing distinction between preliminary and final ‘ends’; a ourth way is to make a distinction between an elite and the common people; the latter are allegedly not capable of following the noble principles of the elite; a fifth a

The Impact of Two Reunification-Era Debates on the East German Sense of Identity

The Impact of Two Reunification-Era Debates on the East German Sense of Identity

The role of general education in teacher education

Teacher education aims at good teaching. However, research findings concerning good teaching and good teachers are ambiguous. The paper reflects on the Finnish curriculum for teacher education. In this curriculum, there are two levels, one focussing on a basic domain of teacher education, i.e. methodology, subject matter instruction, pedagogical content knowledge et cetera. This level is enriched by a second level which is identified as general teacher education. In this respect, teacher education focuses on the intricate mix of normative and descriptive elements in the interaction between teaching and learning, on the combination of declarative and procedural knowledge and their relation to professional beliefs and attitudes, on ethics of education et cetera. For both levels, it is assumed that instruction should be research-based, and that a research-based approach should be practiced for everyday teaching as well. Practice teaching, therefore, is closely linked to curriculum studies, to teacher research (in the German sense of Lehrerforschung durch die Lehrerinnen und Lehrer, not in the American sense of teacher research), and educational theory.

From Ideal to Ambiguity: Johannes von Muller, Clausewitz, and the People in Arms

In the debate at the end of the Enlightenment over the place of armed forces and war in society, Johannes [von] Müller's Histories of the Swiss attracted attention as a work of historical interpretation and as a political statement. Müller's idealization of the free "people in arms" is contrasted with Clausewitz's argument that ideals and self-interest contrary to the ideals may be expressed simultaneously by individuals and societies, both qualities made historically effective by people's innate willingness to use violence. Müller's and Clausewitz's positions are paradigmatic of views that continue to influence historical interpretations and political expectations to this day.

The Vöhrum section (northwest Germany) and the Aptian/Albian boundary

Prior to 1947, the Aptian/Albian boundary was placed at the base of the Nolaniceras nolani ammonite Zone. From (Trav. Lab. Géol. Fac. Sci. 26 (1947) 17), until (Cret. Res. 20 (1999) 609), the base of the Albian stage has been taken at the first appearance of the ammonite Leymeriella ( Proleymeriella) schrammeni, a species known only from a limited area of northwest Germany. The early succession of Leymeriella and its relationship with ammonite taxa from the underlying Hypacanthoplites jacobi ammonite Zone can only be determined in the northwest German sections, all of which are ephemeral clay pits. Thus, the definition of the base of the Albian on these criteria cannot be used in a global context. The positioning of the boundary has been the subject of intense discussion in the last years. After the second International Symposium on Cretaceous Stage Boundaries in 1995 (Bull. Inst. R. Sci. Nat. Belgique, Sci. Terre 66 (1996) 45). (Cret. Res. 20 (1999) 609) lowered the boundary to the base of his Hypacanthoplites rubricosus ammonite Subzone without describing a global boundary stratotype section. (Cret. Res. 21 (2000) 591) raised the boundary to the alleged first occurrence (FO) of Leymeriella tardefurcata in a permanent section, but neither proposals can be accepted globally (Cret. Res. 23 (2002) 1). (Cret. Res. 22 (2001) 677) supported by (Cret. Res. 23 (2002) 1), suggested a radical solution by raising the boundary to the base of the geographically widespread Lyelliceras lyelli ammonite Subzone, currently the base of the Middle Albian. In order to document accurately the classical northwest German succession of the Aptian/Albian boundary, a detailed multidisciplinary study has been made of a new section at Vöhrum (clay pit no. 4) with respect to its content of calcareous nannofossils, benthic foraminifera, planktonic foraminifera, ostracods, ammonites, as well as its clay mineralogy, gamma ray signature and tuff geochemistry. The ammonite succession, in particular the Callizoniceras–Leymeriella lineage, is discussed in detail. The FO of Leymeriella ( Proleymeriella) schrammeni anterior, 0.65 m below a tuff horizon near the base of the section is taken as the Aptian/Albian boundary in the classical German sense. Sections in France are discussed and the Leymeriella lineage is reviewed.