German-speaking World Research Articles

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Digitalization of Ecclesiastical Practice in the Pandemic

The international CONTOC study investigates which digital church formats were developed during the first wave of the Corona pandemic in spring and early summer 2020, and how pastors experience and assess the accelerated digitalization of church activities. First results indicate, on the one hand, a strengthening of participatory structures through the digital worship practice, but on the other hand a “top down” staging can also be observed. Did the new digital forms of communication bring about a change in ecclesial action in the German-speaking world during the first wave of the Corona pandemic, which began in the spring of 2020? What conclusions do pastoral personnel draw from their own experiences of this time with regard to worship, pastoral, diaconal and educational activities as well as with regard to their professional role and self-image? Will church activities be clearly transformed in the medium and long term towards more digital formats on the basis of these experiences and assessments?

Katie Sutton. Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s–1930s

Katie Sutton. <i>Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s–1930s</i>

Ulrich Fuetrer, Iban, ed. and trans. Joseph M. Sullivan. German Romance, VII. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2022, xxxix, 157 pp. 1 frontispiece.

Abstract: I could count with the fingers of my hand how many non-German medievalists there are who know of Ulrich Fuetrer and, moreover, who might have read his version of the traditional Yvain/Iwein story, originally composed by Chrétien de Troyes and rendered into Middle High German by Hartmann von Aue. Fuetrert, professionally a painter/artist at the Munich court of Duke Albrecht IV, had turned into a prolific author drawing from a wide range of medieval romances which he recreated during the 1480s and 1490s in his massive Buch der Abenteuer. Granted, a number of German medievalists have engaged with his texts, but Fuetrer proves to be really an unknown entity outside of the German-speaking world of scholarship. But his Iban, directly based on Hartmann’s version, constitutes an important witness of the reception process of this romance far into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Heinz Thoelen and Bernd Bastert published a good critical edition of this romance in 1997, and medievalists such as Hans-Joachim Behr (1986), Thomas Bein (1998), Wolfgang Harms (1974), Hans-Georg Maak (1967), Rudolf Voß (1994), and Horst Wenzel (1986) have contributed to the better understanding of Fuetrer’s works.

REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT HELD IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE INTERNET DISCOURSE

The article deals with the specifics of the use of the concept HELD in the Modern German-language Internet discourse. The archetype of the hero is an important structure of both the individual and the collective unconscious, an element of both social and political culture of the nation. The semantic content of this archetype for the German people can be explored through the prism of its reflection in the relevant HELD concept, which is presented in the linguistic picture of the world of native speakers of the German language and language culture. In our study, we will focus on the use of the concept HELD in the headlines of Internet content, because the global network is the fastest to reflect all the trends and changes in the modern world in general and in public discourse in particular. The aim of our study is to analyze the features of the objectification of the HELD concept in the German linguoculture based on Internet discourse. To achieve this goal we will set the following tasks: 1) to analyze the transformation of the semantic content of the HELD concept in historical retrospect; 2) to single out the compatibility of the Held concept in the German-language Internet discourse and to distribute the selected material by semantic groups; 3) to analyze the semantic content of the HELD concept in the German-language Internet discourse. This article analyzes the compatibility of the concept and identifies key contexts, formed semantic groups for the use of the concept HELD in the linguistic picture of the world of modern Germans. As a result, conclusions were drawn about certain aspects of the social process in the modern German-speaking world (and, to some extent, Western civilization), which are reflected in the use and semantic content of the concept HELD in Internet discourse. The study of the context of the use of the concept HELD in modern German-language Internet discourse allows us to trace its associative-derivational (epidegmatic) connections, which fully reflect the connotation of the word at a certain time and in the relevant socio-cultural space. Thus, the use of the concept HELD in modern German-language media discourse allows us to highlight the semantic content of the concept, the dynamics of the archetype in the German-speaking space, as well as to trace the dominant values and current problems of society.

Anthropology and development in Germany

The history of anthropology’s engagement with development in the post-World War II German-speaking world (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) can be divided into three phases: from being strongly rejected by most professorial chair holders (to around 1980), through the emergence of a subfield of anthropology (from 1980) and into the mainstream of the discipline (since around 2000). However, this perspective presupposes a broad definition of “anthropology of development” that encompasses more than the application of anthropological knowledge in development cooperation, as is often implied by the term “development anthropology”. In the slow modernisation process of German anthropology over the last fifty years – as defined by the discipline’s turn towards the modern world and its rapid internationalisation – the critical study of development as a field of professional practice has played a pioneering role by providing important theoretical and methodological stimuli. Together with their European colleagues, not least from APAD, German-speaking anthropologists have developed a particular style that has also been referred to as the “anthropology of development based on anthropology in development”. Today, the anthropology of development has evolved into an ethnographic inquiry of global social engineering.

Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s

Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s

Argumentative Skills

In this paper, we propose a framework for fostering argumentative skills in a systematic way in Philosophy and Ethics classes. We start with a review of curricula and teaching materials from the German-speaking world to show that there is an urgent need for standards for the teaching and learning of argumentation. Against this backdrop, we present a framework for such standards that is intended to tackle these difficulties. The spiral-curricular model of argumentative competences we sketch helps teachers introduce the relevant concepts and skills to students early on in their school career. The focus is on secondary schools, but the proposal can also be of use for learning and teaching in universities, especially in introductory classes.

German Encounters of Logic and Programming (1948–1958), Featuring Three Readings of Turing Machines

The early days of German and Swiss programming have been integrated into computing folklore as part of the prehistory of ALGOL. However, this narrative has bundled the many ways of trying to think about computing and programming in the German-speaking world into the royal main road leading up to ALGOL. This does not do justice to some interesting interactions between logic and programming happening in the 1950s. In particular, Turing's machines were read and interpreted in no less than three quite different ways during the short time span between 1952 and 1958. Using the institutional and personal context of this period, the encounters between logic and programming in these years are discussed.

"[...] über die outrirte, willkürliche Bezeichnung"

Instructive editions from the late 19th and early 20th century include various annotations regarding musical and interpretative aspects, such as articulation, bowings, fingerings, dynamics, note values, or vibrato As a popular medium at the time, instructive editions were often in the centre of contemporary discussions and attracted the attention of musicians and music teachers, bequeathing us a wide corpus of valuable sources. Joseph Joachim was arguably the most prominent violinist and a sought-after pedagogue in the German-speaking world at the time. Hitherto unknown letters as well as revisited statements by Joachim lead to new insights regarding his attitude towards instructive editions: he viewed them - despite his (few) publications in this genre - very critically, as he was convinced that detailed instructions would limit the freedom of the performer. He instead preferred editions without annotations, but interpreted the music freely andd variably in what he considered the spirit of the composer. Joachim's attitude thus poses general questions as to the role and freedom of performance and interpretation in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Über Ziele und Ansätze der angewandten Musikethnologie als Ausdruck sozialer Verantwortung

This article functions as an introduction to the following articles of this themed issue of Die Musikforschung. It frames the idea of an applied ethnomusicology, understood as an approach guided by principles of social responsibility, and as scholarship, knowledge and understanding put to practical use. The article discusses the emergence and relevance of applied ethnomusicology in Anglophone academia as well as the German-speaking world and gives insight into different fields in which applied ethnomusicology can be practiced: from traditional areas such as musical archives and museums to activism against social justice and for the rights of indigenous people and minorities, activism for musical and cultural sustainability or health, to musicological interventions in conflict situations and, finally, ethnomusicological contributions to music pedagogy. The authors do not claim to present a final definition of applied ethnomusicology, but rather aim to demonstrate the potential of this field and to show problems emerging in the course of ethnomusicological projects of an applied character.

Diaries as \u201cSoul Portraits\u201d? Interpretation and Theorization of Adolescents\u2019 Self-Descriptions in the German-Speaking Youth Psychology of the 1920s and 1930s

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access this inner life, they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis.

Mererid Puw Davies and Sonu Shamdasani (eds), Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World

Mererid Puw Davies and Sonu Shamdasani (eds), Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World

Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s.By Katie Sutton. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019. xv + 347 pages. $90.00 hardcover, $69.95 e-book.

Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s. By Katie Sutton. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019. xv + 347 pages. $90.00 hardcover, $69.95 e-book. In 2011, Lady Gaga released her global synth-pop hit “Born This Way,” which

Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the Germanspeaking World, 1890s–1930s. By Katie Sutton. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019. xv + 347 pages. $90.00 hardcover, $69.95 e-book.

Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the Germanspeaking World, 1890s–1930s. <i>By Katie Sutton. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019. xv + 347 pages. $90.00 hardcover, $69.95 e-book.</i>

Contemporary German Crime Fiction: A Companion.Edited by Thomas W. Kniesche. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. ix + 336 pages. $28.99 / €24,95 paperback or e-book

Contemporary German Crime Fiction: A Companion. Edited by Thomas W. Kniesche. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. ix + 336 pages. $28.99 / €24,95 paperback or e-book. German-language crime fiction long remained virtually unknown outside the German-speaking world. Yet accessible academic surveys of German

Katie Sutton, Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s-1930s

Katie Sutton, <i>Sex Between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s-1930s</i>

Reactionaries of the lectern: Universalism, anti-empiricism and corporatism in Austrian (and German) social theory

This article discusses one early manifestation of a recurring theme in social theory and sociology: the relationship between general (‘universal’ or ‘grand’) theory and empirical research. For the early critical theorists, empiricism and positivism were associated with technocratic domination. However, there was one place where the opposite view prevailed: science and empiricism were viewed as forces of social and political progress and speculative social theory as a force of reaction. That place was Red Vienna of the 1920s and early 1930s. We examine how this view came to be widespread among Austro-Marxists, empirical researchers and some members of the Vienna Circle. It focuses on the arguments and institutional power of their opponents: reactionary, universalistic and corporatist social theorists. The debate between Catholic corporatist theory and its empiricist critics is located not merely in Vienna but also within wider debates in the German-speaking world. Finally, we seek to link these lesser-known positions to more familiar strands of social thought, namely, those associated with Weber and, more briefly, Durkheim and Elias.

Katie Sutton. Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s-1930s. U of Michigan P, 2019.

Katie Sutton. Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s-1930s. U of Michigan P, 2019.

The Politics of Prophecy: Reformation Memory and German Exceptionalism in Weimar Thought

In the German-speaking world, the memory of the Reformation has often been closely connected to the theory of German historical exceptionalism, the idea that Germany’s historical development took a ‘special path’ (Sonderweg) to modernity. Yet considering how much attention has been paid to the question of a German Sonderweg and the significance of Weimar as a turning point in the story, scholars have paid little attention to the ideology of exceptionalism in the Weimar Republic itself. This article contributes to the historiography of the Sonderweg debate by examining the complex ways in which the poet Hugo Ball (1886-1927) and the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) traced a narrative of German exceptionalism back to the Reformation era. It argues that these writers appealed to the intellectual and political legacies of the Reformation in an attempt to explain the formative events of their own time: the First World War, and the Russian and German Revolutions. The divergent ideological conclusions they drew reveals much about the conflicted atmosphere of Weimar thought, in which German intellectuals struggled to bridge the gap between crisis and tradition.