German Tradition Research Articles

Technological Unemployment as a Coordination Problem: New Light on Emil Lederer's Work in Exile

Technological Unemployment as a Coordination Problem:New Light on Emil Lederer's Work in Exile Arash Molavi Vasséi (bio) INTRODUCTION Emil Lederer was a prominent economist and sociologist in the German Weimar Republic. Born in the Bohemian city of Pilsen in 1882, he died in political exile in New York City in 1939. According to Joseph Schumpeter, his lifelong friend, Lederer "may be described as the leading academic socialist of Germany in the 1920s" (Schumpeter 1954, 884, fn. 10). He was an esteemed colleague and well connected to the Republic's academic and political elites. Just before going into exile, Lederer held a prestigious chair at the University of Berlin, a chair previously held by the historical-school economist Gustav Schmoller. For 12 years (from 1922), he was the managing director of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, the most eminent German journal in the social sciences. However, as a leading social democrat and passionate participant in public affairs, he was exposed in the fight against the Nazis. For instance, in February 1933, only a month before Hitler's Enabling Act, he was engaged with Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann in the antifascist congress Das freie Wort [Free Speech] (Hagemann 2015, 119). [End Page 897] Unsurprisingly, Lederer was among the first to be dismissed by the Nazis from his academic position in Berlin on the basis of the Civil Service Restoration Act, which came into effect on April 7, 1933. Shortly after, the Archiv became the only leading journal in the field that was forced to cease publication. Anticipating the outcome, Lederer left Germany. In early April, he accepted the invitation of Harold Butler, the director of the International Labour Office in Paris, to prepare for future work on the pressing problem of technological unemployment. From Paris, Lederer traveled to London, where he later met Alvin Johnson, the director of the New School for Social Research in New York. Lederer had contributed work to the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, of which Johnson had been a coeditor, and Johnson knew Lederer would be a valuable member of the refuge for outstanding German academics he sought to establish in order to preserve their lives and the rich German tradition in the social sciences they represented. In October 1933, just half a year after his exile, Lederer became full professor at and founding dean of the University in Exile at the New School in New York.1 Lederer cared deeply for the "laboring class" and was one of its most passionate advocates. To contribute to the reduction of involuntary unemployment had always been his most pressing goal, and this commitment continued in the United States. Because he did not change his economic research program after leaving Germany, it is tempting to compare his work before and after emigration. Did exile affect his intellectual work, in particular his theory of capitalist dynamics and technological unemployment? If so, how?2 The confirmation (or rejection) of an "emigration effect" on Lederer's perception of the unemployment problem is a delicate matter, particularly because he had little time to adapt—he died of thrombosis on May 29, 1939, less than six years after emigrating. Lederer's post-emigration work shows refinements and extensions made for purely analytical reasons, based on literature already available before his exile, that leave little for emigration to explain. In particular, I will discuss below how he drew on Allyn Young's celebrated 1928 [End Page 898] article, "Increasing Returns and Economic Progress," in revising Technological Progress and Unemployment (1931, second edition 1938). Rather than having an overt effect, I believe, Lederer's political exile had a limited, unidentifiable impact on his work on technological unemployment. (This conclusion differs from the analysis in Esslinger [1993], who finds that Lederer's forced migration had a significant impact on his thinking.) I find that the major differences between his pre- and post-emigration contributions are not primarily in substance. He adapted his language to address a different audience; he also shifted his focus in reaction to his critics. However, he still maintained the view of David Ricardo, from the 1817 On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, that technological unemployment is...

The “Slavic spirit” and the opera scene in Olomouc, 1830–1920

In 1830, a new theater building was opened in the Olomouc Upper square. The stable theatrical life enriched enormously the cultural life of the city and encouraged the development of publishing activities in the field of music journalism and publishing. The public debates on the artistic value of theater performances, on abilities of particular artists and on other subjects gained new quality after the 1860 October diploma because Czechs living in and around the traditional German town put pressure on theater directors and demanded Czech plays on the stage. The fights for the national repertoire on the stage of the Olomouc Provincial Theater are demonstrated in this essay in two contrary ways: at first, the introduction of Czech dramas into the German scene during the 1860s is discussed, then the intensive promotion of German operas during the 1880s and 1890s when internationally played Slavonic operas were performed in all theaters. The director Carl König (1862–1868) offered a contract to many artists who were able to speak both German and Czech, so he could open an independent subscription for the Czech public. The relatively tolerant atmosphere allowed König’s company to give performances in both languages and connect the Olomouc theatrical life to the Prague Provisional Theater. However, Czech nationalism was getting stronger during the 1870s and provoked competitive and unfriendly reactions on German side. The arguments for refusal of Smetana’s and Tchaikovsky’s operas by the directors of the Olomouc theaters are discussed on the basis of archival sources as well as articles published in contemporary periodicals.

American Support for German Economists after 1933: The Kiel Institute and the Kiel School in Exile

American Support for German Economists after 1933:The Kiel Institute and the Kiel School in Exile Gunnar Take (bio) the widespread racially and politically motivated attacks on German scientists in the spring of 1933 came as a surprise to many, not only in the local academic community but also in America and elsewhere. Some institutions, among them the Rockefeller Foundation (the Foundation hereinafter), were forced to make rapid decisions about whether to adapt or to cease entirely their support for those organizations affected by "the full force of the German blast of intolerance" (Van Sickle 1933a). In many cases, it was the academic excellence of the expelled scholars themselves that had been the reason for the Foundation's engagement since the 1920s. Now, after the Machtergreifung—the Nazis' seizure of power—the questions were whether and how to support the refugees in exile and how to deal with their former employers. Other kinds of institutions, such as American universities, were faced with the choice of whether to react at all to the events on the other side of the ocean. Many chose not to, whereas some, most notably the New School for Social Research in New York, decided to employ huge numbers of German emigrants. One case in which the different attitudes and strategies can be analyzed and assessed is the Institute for the World Economy at the [End Page 809] University of Kiel (the Kiel Institute), which became one of the main "centers of expulsion" from Germany in 1933, when eight members of the Kiel School were forced into exile. In the two decades leading up to 1933, the Kiel Institute had profited from the already widespread antisemitism and political intolerance in the German academic community. Its director, Bernhard Harms, pursued a liberal policy and was therefore able to attract large numbers of highly talented scholars who did not see adequate career opportunities for themselves at more distinguished universities. From 1926 onwards, most of these scholars were employed in a new department for business cycle research, and thus engaged in one of the most promising fields of economics in the interwar period. During the following "seven years of world class" economics (Hagemann 2008), they made significant contributions, especially with regard to the empirical observation and theorization of business cycles, global structural change, and the problem of technological unemployment. It has been convincingly argued that the heads of the department, Adolph Lowe1 and Gerhard Colm, founded a "Kiel School" (Hagemann 1997, 298), which asserted itself against the traditional German Historical School as well as against the Austrian liberals. Among its most striking characteristics were the attempts to create a synthesis between a socialist form of economic organization and planning on the one hand and an open society with a liberal market on the other. As one of many national and foreign observers, the Foundation followed its scientific progress closely and made highly positive evaluations: The Kiel Institute constitutes one of the bright spots in German economics. … Much of the work of German university professors is philosophical speculation or minute historical investigation. The work of a more scientific character is carried on in relatively few places. Kiel is one of these and may perhaps be regarded as the most important. [End Page 810] (Van Sickle 1932) During the 1920s, the Foundation supported the Kiel Institute in its endeavor to enlarge its research capacity, to establish contacts with international scholars, and to develop the biggest social science library in Europe. When the budget of the Institute had to be cut by about 50 percent during the Great Depression, the Foundation stepped in and secured the continued existence of the department for business cycle research—and hence the Kiel School—through a large grant. In reaction to the Preußenschlag (Prussian Coup) in the summer of 1932, the Foundation concentrated its funding of German economics even more on larger institutes such as the one in Kiel, which it deemed "to offer reasonable guarantees of permanence" (Kittredge 1932). Hence, the Foundation was heavily invested financially in the Kiel Institute by the time the Nazi regime took power in early 1933. In the case of John Van Sickle and Tracy Kittredge, the heads of...

Mapping inclusive education within the discipline of Pedagogy. Comparative analysis of new study programmes in Slovenia

ABSTRACTIn the research in the field of inclusiveness it is often neglected how inclusiveness is constructed differently within the so-called Anglo-American and continental educational contexts. In Slovenia, the field of educational studies has historically developed within the continental, particularly German tradition, as a discipline called Pedagogy at the Faculty of Arts. Since Pedagogy is fundamentally theorising the processes of becoming a free human being and does not take a particular interest in the issues of vulnerable social groups, a complementary area of tertiary study emerged in today's Faculty of Education (e.g. Special needs Pedagogy). However, recently we can identify a trend of emerging new study programmes, the so-called inclusive education. Because of this separation between scientific fields, this paper is dealing with a question of which of the disciplines is offering a more convincing answers to the question of how to conceptualise and implement the inclusiveness. Using qualitative analyses of the concept of inclusiveness and content analyses of Slovenian study programmes and courses related to inclusive education, we attempt to show that discipline of Pedagogy provides a conceptualising of inclusiveness that is more complex through successfully interweaving the humanistic and social paradigm.

GRUPOS DE PODER, SEGREGAÇÃO E COOPERAÇÃO: OS SUÁBIOS DO DANÚBIO EM GUARAPUAVA/PR / GROUPS OF POWER, SEGREGATION AND COOPERATION: DANUBE SWABIANS IN GUARAPUAVA/PR

doi: 10.12957/geouerj.2017.22330 Este texto busca compreender como os suabios do Danubio, imigrantes do leste europeu (Iugoslavia, Hungria e Romenia) se constituem como grupo de poder politico-economico e a contribuicao destes para o desenvolvimento da regiao de Guarapuava, no Centro-Sul do Parana. Os suabios do Danubio sairam compulsoriamente do sudeste da Europa para viver em campos de refugiados na Austria, apos a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em decorrencia, 500 familias inscreveram-se em um projeto que visava a criacao de uma cooperativa agricola no Brasil a partir de incentivos governamentais do pais e do exterior. Com a chegada ao Brasil fundaram a Cooperativa Agraria, em 1951. O texto foi elaborado a partir da investigacao qualitativa obtida pela coleta de dados documentais sobre a cooperativa, a vida cultural e politico-economica dos imigrantes, dados secundarios de orgaos institucionais e entrevistas. Como resultados desta investigacao podemos afirmar que a instalacao do grupo cooperou economicamente para o municipio, mas nao de forma equânime. Houve, ainda, um processo de segregacao (ou auto segregacao/diferenciacao) territorial e intensa valorizacao da tradicao e cultura germânicas.

Professional psychology in Germany, National Socialism, and the Second World War.

Hundreds of positions for psychologists were established after the National Socialists seized power in 1933. It has accordingly been asserted that professional psychology in Germany experienced significant growth during the National Socialist period. An analysis of archival materials and of a recent collection of biographies indicates otherwise, however. German psychology, in fact, declined because of systematic persecution and a surge of emigration, a deficit that subsequent cohorts were barely able to make up until 1945. The new positions for psychologists were mainly in the military testing service, and could only be filled after manpower was shifted from the civilian to the military sector. In 1941, the Ministry of Science and Education released regulations for an innovative practice-oriented national curriculum for psychology. The move was in line with Nazi policy, but it was initiated by a group of protagonists from psychology under the aegis of the German Psychological Association, not the National Socialist German Workers Party, the government, or the military. The present article elaborates how the conception of practice-oriented, state-approved studies was part of the traditional German dual system of academic and professional qualification, and thus actually predated 1933. The new curriculum was largely not implemented because of the exigencies of the war. However, as a regulatory framework it marked a turning point in the merging of academic and professional psychology in Germany. The relationship between academic and professional psychology is also discussed, along with the role of German psychology vis-à-vis National Socialism and the German military. (PsycINFO Database Record

Towards the Inner History of the Nation: Defining ‘Cultural History’ in Nineteenth-Century Finland

This article contributes to the discussion on the European roots of cultural history by exploring the nineteenth-century understanding of cultural history from a Finnish perspective. The article argues that the Finnish case opens a fresh perspective to the history of cultural history by connecting it with the French historiography instead of German Kulturgeschichte. In Finland there is a special tradition of cultural history dating back to the early twentieth century, inspired by the German tradition of Kulturgeschichte. This article focuses on the earlier period, on the mid-nineteenth-century discussion concerning the scope of history and the ways the works of several European historians were reviewed in Finland. In this discussion the orientation was not so much in the German tradition but towards the French way of writing history. An important element in the Finnish discussion was the separation of political or official history from the so called inner history of the people, which was considered as more fundamental and comprehensive than political history. This orientation towards the history of the people was considered as cultural history. The article explores the question of ‘cultural history’ in Finland by drawing on the writings of influential Finnish thinker Johan Vilhelm Snellman (1806–1881).

Radicalising philosophy of education—The case of Jean-Francois Lyotard

The origins of philosophy of education as a discipline are relatively late, and can be traced in the Anglo-American academic world from the 1960s and a specific emphasis on conceptual problems deriving from the analytical tradition of philosophy. In more recent years, however, there has been a notable ‘Continentalist’ turn in the discipline, leading to a re-evaluation of key texts and philosophers from the French and German traditions and their relation to the discourse of education. One paradigmatic example here is the work of the French postmodernist thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard. In this essay, I explore how Lyotard’s powerful critique of education in his early work, especially with regard to his influence on the May ‘68 events at Nanterre University, can be seen as crucially important, now again, to a current crisis in educational philosophy in the Western world. Moreover, Lyotard’s post-’68 work, with his paradigmatic The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge as especially important, can be seen as providing a very challenging riposte to both ‘managerialist’ and instrumentalist philosophies on the one side but also to overly simplistic ‘liberatory’ educational critiques on the other side.

Emancipate the Quartertone: The Call to Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Music Theory

In 1852, the theorist Johanna Kinkel urged musicians to “emancipate the quartertone [for] a new world of sound!” Her call to arms was quickly countered by Wolfgang Heinrich Riehl, who denigrated such “enharmonic” sounds as “effeminate” in contrast to traditional German diatonicism. This debate occurred during the contemporaneous development of experimental keyboards that could enable Kinkel’s musical “emancipation,” featuring up to fifty-three equally tempered divisions of the octave in approximation of the pure intervals of just intonation. This article describes two such instruments as case studies: T. P. Thompson’s enharmonic organ for the “abolition” of temperament, and Tanaka Shôhei’s enharmonium for the restoration of music’s “natural purity.” I show how the language these theorists used reveals the larger political and cultural forces shaping the late nineteenth-century development of music theory and comparative musicology and trace how their instruments were construed as tools for transnational exchange and the global promotion of European civilization.

LANDSCAPES OF UNREST: HERBERT GIERSCH AND THE ORIGINS OF NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism at Kiel through the work of the institute's founder, Bernhard Harms, and Giersch's influences, including Johann Heinrich von Thünen, August Lösch, and Alfred Weber. We argue that Giersch's neoliberal economic geography emerged out of two perceived necessities in the 1970s. On the one hand, he saw a need to reorient German industry through import competition with the global South. On the other hand, he felt the need for an ethically defensible global imaginary to pose against both traditional German social democracy and the promise of the global South's New International Economic Order. In his metaphor of a landscape of so-called Schumpeterian volcanoes in which regions were locked in perpetual struggle for temporary monopoly positions against competitors, Giersch provided a powerful distillation of the geographic imaginary at the heart of the neoliberal movement since the 1970s.

The search for identity in recent German productions of <i>Twelfth Night</i>

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night creates a world which is full of self-deception and characters who have lost touch with reality. As a result, they are forced to self-reflect and feel compelled to embark on various quests in order to search for their own identities, struggling with questions of both essential and existential nature: Who am I? What am I missing? Who can make me whole? While this search for identity certainly is one of the main motifs of the comedy in question, often an additional focus is placed on staging the psychology of the characters and on depicting them lost in the dreamlike fantasy of Illyria. Loneliness, confusion and a lack of knowing their true self as well as the self of the other characterises their being. As a consequence of the ‘psychological disorders’ of the characters, their ‘love play’ is presented as an attempt to overcome this state by forming a bond with another person. I will focus on two recent German productions, both staged in 2014 on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, in order to analyse how these heavily revised adaptations engage with conflict in terms of gender as well as identity. After locating both performances within the German tradition of staging the play, the article sets out to trace the identity struggles of and the psychological engagement with the characters of Twelfth Night in these productions.

Trapped in the Land of Liberty: Monika Maron’s Animal Triste (1996)

Monika Maron’s Animal Triste (1996) was widely understood as a response to German unification. This reading of Maron’s critically acclaimed novel places the text in the context of the literary discourse of the so-called New World. The United States have long enticed the German literary imagination and have served as a screen for projections of (utopian) promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The narrator’s exploration of her freedom, symbolized in a trip to New York City, are juxtaposed with feelings of imprisonment, expressed through seemingly endless remembering. Maron’s novel connects with the tradition of German writing about love, another powerful trope of freedom and captivity, and resonates with other women’s writing about the U.S. after 1989.

L’ambassadeur parisien de la nouvelle musique hongroise, Géza Vilmos Zágon Sa carrière et sa correspondance choisie

A forgotten figure of the new Hungarian musical movement of the 1910s, Géza Vilmos Zágon (1889–1918) was a talented composer, pianist and music writer. He belonged among those young composers who turned toward French culture instead of the traditional German orientation and searched for new inspiration in Paris. He was, at the same time, one of the few to be personally acquainted with leading personalities of the city’s musical life: letters by Claude Debussy, Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, Louis Laloy, Émile Vuillermoz and Albert Zunz Mathot have survived in his legacy. During his stay in France between 1912 and 1914, he acted as the representant of the former UMZE (Új Magyar Zene Egyesület, New Hungarian Music Association), and did not only bring attention to himself as a performer of his own works, but was also instrumental in promoting those by Bartók and Kodály. In the present study, I seek to demonstrate that Zágon served as an important liaison for Bartók’s circle with some of the most influential groups of French avant-garde, the Société Musicale Indépendante, as well as Calvocoressi. In an effort to document these important relationships as well as Zágon’s activity, I publish a selection of his correspondence in original language, with French translation provided where appropriate.

Gravestones speak – but in which language? Epitaphs as mirrors of language shifts and identities in Alsace

ABSTRACTThis study examines how language choice in epitaphs in Alsatian cemeteries mirrors language shifts in Alsace, a region in Eastern France that changed nationalities between France and Germany four times between 1870 and 1945. Language choice on tombstones was expected to be made according to the language of the ruling power, but the results show that it could also be made in opposition to the prescribed norm, thus becoming both legally and ideologically transgressive. This was especially the case when one opted for French under German rule. Historically, epitaphs in High German, the written norm of the Alsatian variety, can be considered as corollary to the traditional Germanic cultural tradition. In the linguistic landscape of Alsatian cemeteries, epitaphs can harbour both an informational function (name of the deceased, dates, etc.) and an ideological one conveying beliefs and convictions. So the epitaphs can reflect an allegiance to France or to a Germanic cultural tradition and also assert different identities. The general language shift to French since the Second World War in recent years has entailed that French has become the non-transgressive choice, while German has become an exception. Also, other languages like, for example, Arabic can increasingly be observed among sampled tombstones, reflecting a society becoming linguistically more heterogeneous.

ELIZABETH DEARNLEY. Translators and Their Prologues in Medieval England

Elizabeth Dearnley’s study provides a rich, informative, and often sensitive discussion of a wide range of questions regarding translation and multilingualism in medieval Britain, with particular focus on the evolving function of translators’ prologues. The core of the book is constituted by an analysis of prologues in French > English translations during the period of ca. 1200–1500. The monograph begins with three focused chapters arguing for the importance of considering translators’ prologues as a distinctive subgenre. Chapter 1 concentrates on prologues to Latin works and early French translations, followed by a chapter on Germanic and Anglo-Saxon translators’ prologues, and a third chapter on the emergence of a new kind of prologue specific to later, French > English translations in the period of ca. 1200–1500. These are in many ways the most rewarding and most compelling chapters of the volume, and provide an illuminating comparison of the different developments of the Romance tradition of translation on the one hand, and of the Germanic tradition on the other. Both of these traditions can be shown to have influenced the emergence of the later prologue to Middle English translations of French or Anglo-Norman texts, produced in the uniquely complex environment of multilingual post-conquest England. The author emphasizes in particular the tendency of Germanic languages to consider Latin as a conceptually distinct foreign medium, allowing translators to assert the autonomy and authority of their own vernacular, and its suitability for addressing complex, intellectually challenging questions. This self-confidence is clearly reflected in the development of pre-conquest ‘English’ translators’ prologues, which are largely free from any apologetic formulations. Romance languages, by comparison, were marked by a far closer, often more uncomfortable and conflicted relationship with Latin because of linguistic proximity. On the one hand, this could be exploited to the advantage of the vernacular, since it enabled the transference of Latin terms to ennoble the vernacular, and in turn led to the emergence of French as a prestige vernacular. At the same time, this very procedure presupposes an awareness of the ‘inferiority’ of the vernacular in relation to Latin. Chapter 3 discusses how these earlier traditions interact and combine to shape the environment in which a new kind of Middle English translators’ prologue can emerge. While this new kind of prologue was never fixed or formalized, a number of recurrent features can be identified (p. 64), and the author proceeds to discuss a representative selection of 26 Middle English prologues in chronological order, first listed on pp. 10–11. The chapter traces the gradual emergence of English as a ‘national’ vernacular, and the corresponding development of a more elaborate and self-conscious form of translator’s prologue. Many other issues are touched on in these three chapters, such as the interrelation of practices of enarratio and translation in early texts, the precocity of Anglo-Norman translation more generally, the emergence of French as a prestige vernacular, and the continuities and parallels between Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and later Middle English translation practices.

Acculturation of prospective German physical education teachers

Studies of prospective physical education teachers’ (PPETs’) acculturation have been useful in terms of facilitating the development of effective physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes because they provide teacher education faculty with a description of incoming recruits’ values and beliefs and an understanding of how these values and beliefs are shaped. Research exclusively focused on the acculturation of PPETs is, however, scarce. Research on pre-service and in-service physical education (PE) teachers that has included an acculturation component has mostly been completed in the United States. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the acculturation of 10 German PPETs. The two research questions we attempted to answer were: (a) “What were the PPETs’ values, beliefs, and perspectives regarding PE?” and (b) “What factors shaped these values, beliefs and perspectives?” Data were collected using three types of interviewing. Analysis involved coding and categorizing data with analytic induction and constant comparison and reducing them to meaningful themes. Findings revealed that eight PPETs had well-developed and comparatively sophisticated conservative teaching orientations primarily focused on teaching traditional German sports. Two PPETs had more progressive teaching orientations in that they favored teaching a wider range of content and were more focused on health-related fitness. The key subsidiary attractors to a career in PE for this group of PPETs were remaining connected to sport and working with young people. Three factors that shaped the PPETs’ values and beliefs were similar to those revealed in previous research. These were family and friends, the apprenticeship of observation, and youth sport. The people and institutions that comprised these factors, however, operated in different modes within the German context. In addition, PPETs’ career choices were solidified by their experiences of teaching, coaching, and officiating, and the type of teaching orientation they possessed reflected the timing of these choices. The study also revealed that the PPETs entered PETE with a solid foundation of beliefs, values and perspectives regarding PE on which faculty could build. Findings also suggested, however, that German PETE faculty may have to deconstruct their charges’ conservative teaching orientations to some extent in order to create space in which to teach them new instructional models. The most important implication of this study for PETE in other countries is that the PPETs’ teaching orientations resulted primarily from a system that did not pit curricular PE against extracurricular sport.

PISA and its consequences: Shaping education policies through international comparisons

AbstractAs the field of education has become a highly internationalised policy field in the last decade, international organisations such as the OECD play an ever more decisive role in the dissemination of knowledge, monitoring of outcomes, and research in education policy. Although the OECD lacks any binding governance instruments to put coercion on States or to provide material incentive, it has successively expanded its competences in this field. OECD advanced its status as an expert organisation in the field of education mainly by designing and conducting the international comparative PISA study. With PISA, the OECD was able to greatly influence national education systems. Basically, States were faced with external advice based on sound empirical data that challenged existing domestic policies, politics, and ideas. One prominent case for the impact of PISA is Germany. PISA was a decisive watershed in German education policy‐making. Almost instantly after the PISA results were publicised in late 2001, a comprehensive education reform agenda was put forward in Germany. The experienced reform dynamic was highly surprising because the traditional German education system and politics were characterised by deep‐rooted historical legacies, many involved stakeholders at different levels, and reform‐hampering institutions. Hence, a backlog of grand education reforms have prevailed in Germany since the 1970s. The external pressure exerted by PISA completely changed that situation.

Visualizing the Victorian Christmas: Evolving Iconography and Symbolism in the Wake of Nineteenth-Century Commercialism

This essay traces the enduring aesthetic of the Victorian Christmas back to nineteenth-century England and explores the emergence of the ostensibly “traditional” Christmas celebration. The expansion of commercial opportunities in the nineteenth century gave rise to new symbolism within the celebrations of Christmas in England that had, previously, been primarily influenced by religious observances and imported German traditions. By looking at a range of different sources, including literature, diaries, and advertisements, this essay highlights shifting interpretations of Christmas, especially after the 1830s and towards the end of the nineteenth century, caused and accelerated by rising consumerism. Ultimately, material culture became a crucial component of the English celebration of Christmas, from attractive advertisements in newspapers to the seasonal decoration of shopping centres to the consumption of sumptuous fare, through which the Victorians produced new symbolic and iconographical values for Christmas within the secular domain.

Mário de Andrade e a Alemanha: aproximações

Na obra de Mário de Andrade podem ser encontrados diversos traços de uma influência alemã. Em romances, poemas, cartas e textos esparsos. Em um deles, “Teutos mas músicos”, publicado no volume Música, doce música, Mário resume sua vivência com a língua, a cultura e os modos alemães.

Cultura e formação: os anos de aprendizado de Wilhelm Meister e o desencantamento de Goethe frente ao mundo burguês.

No presente artigo, gostaríamos de apresentar uma caracterização do contexto histórico que subjaz ao romance de Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Os anos de aprendizado de Wilhelm Meister (1796). Uma vez que o romance viria a se tornar uma peça-chave do gênero “romance de formação”, o contexto histórico do romance pode nos ajudar a entender justamente como a noção alemã de formação se cristalizou a partir da experiência histórica dessa nação. Mais especificamente, a cristalização da noção alemã de Bildung relaciona-se tanto com a posição da intelligentsia burguesa na estrutura social alemã, como também com o contexto mais amplo da emergência do mundo burguês. O romance em questão também relaciona-se intimamente com o percurso social de seu autor, e procuraremos analisar as possíveis influências desse percurso para a visão que o romance apresenta da modernidade emergente. A reconstrução do contexto histórico é feita a partir da obra de Norbert Elias 'O processo Civilizador', bem como a partir dos livros 'The German tradition of self-cultivation: Bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann' e 'Culture and Socitey in Classical Weimar 1775-1806' do historiador Walter Bruford.