German Woman Research Articles

Rearticulating the Experience of War in Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin

Situating itself in the field of cultural memory studies, this article traces the slow emergence in German historical discourse of the narrative of an anonymous German woman who survived the Soviet occupation of Berlin in 1945. I will, firstly, conceptualize the historical condition of the Anonyma as a precarious liminal sphere of transition between competing sovereignties that dislodged her political status as citizen and reconstituted her as bare life in the sense of Agamben. Secondly, I direct focus to the relationship between the personal story of the Anonyma and a historical Master narrative pertaining to the period.The article argues for a close connection between the woman’s form of resistance that aimed at replacing unchecked rape with a form of coerced prostitution to reassert limited control over the borders of her body, and the negative reception her diary received after a first publication in Germany in 1959. Her story implicitly challenges a hegemonic discourse of war that treats mass rape as mainly an assault on the nation’s male defenders and that silences the victims’ traumatic experiences with reference to collective guilt and individual shame or treason.

West Nile Virus Meningoencephalitis Imported into Germany

To the Editor: West Nile virus (WNV) is a single-stranded RNA virus in the family Flaviviridae that is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. Approximately 80% of WNV infections in humans are asymptomatic, whereas ≈20% of infected persons experience fever, often accompanied by a rash. Less than 1% of infections are manifested as neuroinvasive disease, such as meningoencephalitis, polyradiculoneuritis, and polio-like flaccid paralysis (1). WNV is endemic in Africa, southern Asia, and northern Australia, and only sporadic cases or small epidemics are seen in Europe (2). In 1999, WNV emerged in North America. By 2010, ≈1.8 million persons had become infected, with 12,852 reported cases of meningoencephalitis and 1,308 deaths (2). In Europe, the last notable outbreak of WNV infection occurred in Greece in 2010; 197 persons were infected, and 33 died (3). The Czech Republic, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands reported laboratory-confirmed WNV infections in travelers returning from North America (1). We report a case of WNV meningoencephalitis in a 28-year-old German woman, who sought treatment the emergency department of a hospital in Potsdam, Germany, on September 7, 2011. She had a 3-day history of fever of up to 40°C and mental confusion. Six days before admission, she had returned from a 2-week holiday trip to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She had spent most of her time in the city of Ottawa. The patient’s medical history was unremarkable. She was in a reduced general condition because of a severe encephalitic syndrome characterized by somnolence, meningism, fever, and mental confusion. Laboratory investigations revealed leukocytosis with 15.000 leukocytes/µL (reference range 4,400–11,300 leukocytes/µL) and elevated C-reactive protein of 14.8 mg/L (reference <3 mg/L). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis on the day of admission showed pleocytosis, 430 cells/µL (72% granulocytes, 27% lymphocytes. and 1% monocytes); elevated levels for total protein, 1,023 mg/L (reference range 150–450 mg/L); an albumin level of 637 mg/L (normal range 0–350 mg/L); and a moderately elevated level of the albumin quotient of 20 (reference range <6.5). The CSF/serum diagrams demonstrated a moderate disturbance of the blood–CSF barrier and a substantial intrathecal IgM synthesis of 27.6% (6.15 mg/L) but no intrathecal IgA or IgG synthesis. Results of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain were unremarkable. No parenchymal lesions were found. Antimicrobial drug therapy was initiated with ceftriaxone and ampicillin. Acyclovir was administered empirically for herpes simplex encephalitis until this diagnosis was excluded. Molecular and serologic testing of serum and CSF samples revealed no acute infection with herpesviruses, enteroviruses, alphaviruses, orthobunyaviruses, and arenaviruses or with mycobacteria, Borrelia spp., Toxoplasma gondii, Chlamydia spp., Leptospira spp., and Mycoplasma pneumoniae. CSF and blood cultures were negative for fungi and bacteria, including mycobacteria. An encephalitic syndrome caused by N-methyl-D-aspartate antibodies was also excluded. On the basis of the patient’s travel history, the clinical symptoms, and the initial laboratory findings, WNV infection was suspected. Indirect immunofluorescence assays and virus neutralization tests (VNT) for WNV and other flaviviruses were performed as described (4). IgM and IgG against WNV were detected in serum and in CSF by indirect immunofluorescence assay with an 8-fold (IgM) and 32-fold (IgG) increase in serum titer from day 4 to day 26 (Table). WNV IgG and WNV IgM titers were higher than the titers of antibodies against the other flaviviruses tested (Table), indicating that the antibodies resulted from a WNV infection. The serologic diagnosis was further substantiated by detection of WNV neutralizing antibodies at day 11 (VNT titer 640). The VNT titer further increased to 2,560 on day 26 after onset of disease. Results of reverse transcription PCR were negative for WNV and members of genus Flavivirus in serum and CSF samples taken 4 days after disease onset. Attempts to isolate WNV from serum and CSF samples in cell culture failed as well. The patient recovered slowly and was discharged from the hospital in Potsdam on September 15, 2011. She was then referred to a neurologic rehabilitation center in Berlin and was discharged from there after 2 months with a characterization of restitutio ad integrum (i.e., full recovery, restoration to original condition). Table Results of indirect immunofluorescence assays performed on serum and CSF samples from patient with suspected WNV infection, Germany, 2011* We report a case of WNV infection imported into Germany that was unambiguously confirmed by laboratory testing. WNV meningoencephalitis was diagnosed on the basis of strict serologic criteria established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, GA, USA) (5). In 2011, 69 clinical cases of WNV infection were reported from the province of Ontario, although no cases in the city of Ottawa were reported (Public Health Agency of Canada; www.eidgis.com/wnvmonitorca). This imported case adds to these cases and suggests that travelers are at risk, even if they visit only Ottawa. Physicians in Germany should be aware of the risk for WNV infection among travelers returning from Canada, especially during late summer.

The Art of Dialogue: J ewish– C hristian Relations in a P ost‐ S hoah W orld (The Jerome Cardin Memorial Lecture)

The Art of Dialogue: Jewish–Christian Relations in a Post‐Shoah World (The Jerome Cardin Memorial Lecture) Björn Krondorfer We wish, perhaps, that some events of the past would quietly fall into oblivion, be erased from collective memory for a fresh start. Surely, the Holocaust, or Shoah, would be such an event: The systematic attempt of Nazi Germany and its European collaborators to annihilate all European Jews and Jewish culture revealed modernity's darkest side, and it sobered the Enlightenment's belief in the steady progress of humanity toward moral improvement. The unleashing of unprecedented genocidal violence was made possible by putting modern technology and a bureaucratic apparatus into the service of a nation state ruled by a racial ideology. What started in the early years of Hitler's dictatorship as domestic terror evolved into a systematic genocidal campaign after the beginning of World War II in 1939. In hundreds of camps dotting the European map, the so‐called inferior and undesirable people labored, starved, suffered, and died. The abyss of this system of terror was reached when the six extermination camps started their operations in December of 1941. The name Auschwitz is seared into our collective conscience and consciousness. When we think about Auschwitz, the term dialogue does not readily come to mind. Auschwitz, it seems, is the antithesis to dialogue, to understanding, to reconciliation, and to life. Philosopher Theodor Adorno once wondered whether poetry can be written again after Auschwitz, and we may similarly ask whether dialogue can happen again in the face of such calamity. Auschwitz, one might say, is a negative space, a cemetery without graves, a house of death without traces—and this negative vortex cannot be mended or undone by dialogue. But Auschwitz today is no longer a death camp: It has become a memorial site, a tourist site, and a site of modern pilgrimage of millions of visitors each year. And if Auschwitz the death camp dampens any optimism about the prospect of dialogue, Auschwitz the contemporary memorial site demands us to engage a dialogical ethics. The importance of dialogue is the topic I want to address at this occasion. I want to show that there is an art to dialoguing, and this art calls us into an ethical commitment of relationality. I also want to show that the art to dialoguing involves, literally, the arts. In my life, I have experienced and practiced dialogue through the performance arts as well as the visual arts. The body of work that my artist friend Karen Baldner and I created over the years is one example of how the visual arts can facilitate dialogue and serve as a catalyst for restoration and transformation. Our collaborative effort (previously covered in CrossCurrents) has resulted in multiple objects of installations, prints, and book art that serve as witnesses to our ongoing dialogue between a Jewish German woman and a non‐Jewish German man, both of whom were raised in Germany but are now residing in the United States. The Cardin Memorial Lecture has, over many years now, offered ample occasions to publicly reflect on aspects of Jewish–Christian relations, and so I start there as well. As much as I have emphasized in my opening words that the annihilation of European Jews must be understood as a genocidal effort of a modern secular dictatorship, it is also true that the silence and complicity of the Christian churches contributed to the utter abandonment of the Jewish communities during the Holocaust. Soon after 1945, however, this fatal neglect triggered a process of soul‐searching among Christian communities and led to a thorough overhaul of Christian thinking about Judaism. Christians began to repudiate their anti‐Judaic, anti‐Jewish, and antisemitic traditions that have blinded and distorted their century‐old views of Jews and the Jewish religion (Fig. ). Click for larger view View full resolution Detail. pushmepullyou (2007). Baldner and Krondorfer. Unique book (7″ × 11″ × ¼”). The page reads: “My Cultural Portfolio” and shows a sacrificial lamb (Opferlamm) on one side and, on the other, an antisemitic woodcut of the Judensau. In his 2011 volume on church documents of post‐1945 Christian‐Jewish dialogue, Lutheran theologian Franklin Sherman summarizes those changes succinctly...

179th ENMC international workshop: Pregnancy in women with neuromuscular disorders: 5–7 November 2010, Naarden, The Netherlands

Sixteen doctors and scientists met in Naarden, The Netherlands, from 5 to 7 November 2010 to review current knowledge in the field of pregnancy in women with neuromuscular disease. The group was joined by three patients and their families. Participants were from eight countries, namely Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. A variety of disciplines were represented, including neurology, clinical genetics, cardiology, respiratory medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, epidemiology, ethics, a nurse specialist, and a representative from the ENMC research committee. Parenthood is a highly desirable aim in life for many couples, and increasingly this also applies to women affected by neuromuscular disorders (NMDs). Little is known about the effect of individual NMD on the course of pregnancy and delivery and conversely the effect of pregnancy on muscles themselves [1]. In the past, many patients have been discouraged from undertaking pregnancy for a variety of reasons. The overarching aim of the workshop was to harness knowledge about pregnancy in NMD with the intention of improving maternal and fetal outcomes. The workshop was structured to first review existing knowledge in the field, and second to propose practical recommendations for each stage of pregnancy, both in general terms and also specific to individual or groups of conditions, for use by all

A GERMAN JANE EYRE? AMELY BÖLTE AND THE ENGLISH GOVERNESS NOVEL

This article examines the influence of English literature and English women authors on the governess novels by the German author and women's rights campaigner Amely Bölte. Following Norbert Bachleitner's argument, who read Bölte's novels about governesses as examples of the productive reception of Jane Eyre (1847) and Shirley (1849) in Germany, this article analyses how Bölte, who between 1839 and 1851 lived and worked as a governess and translator in England, while being in very close contact with the literary scene in London, used the genre of the English governess novel, “translating” it into the German context in order to develop her own form of the social novel to promote women's rights and thus allowing her to find a voice in the political discourse. The article first examines Bölte's early texts, Louise oder Die Deutsche in England (Louise or a German Woman in England, 1846) and Visitenbuch eines deutschen Arztes in London (Visiting Book of the German Doctor in London, 1852). The analysis of these texts shows how Bölte, who was especially impressed by the English female social novel, experiments with the possibilities the figure of the governess can offer her to illustrate women's struggle for economic independence. In these texts, Bölte's German governesses in England seem marginalized in more than one aspect: as working middle-class women, they cross boundaries of gender and class; as foreigners, they have to assert their own national identity. In the later novels Harriet Wilson (1862) and Elisabeth oder Eine deutsche Jane Eyre (Elisabeth or a German Jane Eyre, 1873), which were both written after Bölte's return to Germany, Bölte develops her use of the genre further, now choosing a German setting and a German context. In these novels, Bölte uses the governess to illustrate her demand for a better female education and to condemn the marriage of convenience. By referring to English governess novels such as Jane Eyre—texts her readership was familiar with and approved of—Bölte could promote her feminist programme of the economically indepent woman without alienating her readership, thus keeping a balance between emancipation and convention.

D. H. Lawrence’s Wartime Adversities andTheir Impacts

As a biographical study of D. H. Lawrence’s life and work in the crisis of the First World War, this essay aims at placing Lawrence in the political and cultural context of the period. Through reading The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Kangaroo along with biographical literature on Lawrence and other figures concerned, the present essay examines the spy scandal and jingoist fervor, suppression on his work, social isolation, and loss of audience. The affliction Lawrence suffered was, to a great degree, attributed to his marriage to a German woman and his indiscretion, which turned many of his acquaintances against him not to mention the British authorities. This made him vulnerable to a witch hunt. He refused to support the chauvinist hysteria rampant in England and distanced himself from the pacifist movement as well. As a maverick intellectual, he did not believe the grand rhetoric of war propaganda, and criticized the sham slogans of love of humanity, the war to defend the free world and end all wars. For him such myths were just an excuse for the worship of power and interests. The experience of the wartime agony and victimization shifted the direction of his life in a serious way. The traumatic memory left its mark on his subsequent work such as Aaron’s Rod, Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which were replete with bitterness against his native culture and society.

Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New (review)

Reviewed by: Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New Marsha Bryan Edelman Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New, edited by Philip V. Bohlman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 218 pp. plus music CD. $35.00. Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New is the end-result of an endowed series of Jewish Studies lectures presented at the University of Chicago in 1999. Conceived initially as an exploration of the intersection between modern Jewish history and the arts, the offerings took on a somewhat musical cast but never completely surrendered that broader conception. As such, the present volume contains essays that deal with essentially musical concerns, as well as others whose musical content appears peripheral at best. [End Page 193] In his foreword, Sander Gilman notes the Jews' attempts, especially in the nineteenth century, to become truly "modern" by adopting the musical styles of the larger "civilized" European community. Gilman documents the antipathy that greeted composers of "Jewish blood" and points to the similarly negative reception given to more general efforts at Jewish music-making in a Western context. Mitchell Ash asks whether there might actually be "Multiple Modernisms" to be addressed before one can consider the role of music in it. Ash is most interested in the history of science, and his references to music are only tangential. He echoes Gilman's (and others') observation that Jewish prominence in the arts and sciences in the period 1900-1945 is a strategy for acculturation, and admits that most of their work was decidedly secular and unrelated to the accident of their birth. Pamela Potter's essay takes up the earlier question of the "Jewish" identity of the Jews making music in Germany. While she does point to ethnomusicological activity in Russia and Palestine, Potter observes that antisemitism led the German Jews to reject the idea of cataloging their own musical culture. She observes that the Nazis' designation of music by Jewish composers as "degenerate" resolved the question of a "racial" component in Jewish music; the residue of such "scholarship" appears to have left its mark even on contemporary German scholarship regarding Jewish music. In a volume that otherwise focuses entirely on European music, Kay Kaufman Shelemay's essay on the role of music in the transformation of the Beta Israel community is a welcome contribution. She offers a comprehensive history of the musical influences that affected the group's liturgy, documenting the acculturation of the Beta-Israel to the modern world, and the linguistic as well as ritual evolutions in their contacts with Europe, Israel, and America. Most interesting is the observation that this "exotic" community is having an effect on Western cultures as it rewrites its own history in the modern era. Edwin Seroussi's essay on "Sephardic Fins des Siecles" is most clearly related to the notions of both modernism and Jewish music. Seroussi describes the musical response of the Spanish-Portuguese exile community to modernizing pressures from Salomon Sulzer and the Ashkenazic majority of Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century. He acknowledges the community's inevitable acceptance of modernity, but points to its return to Sephardic tradition in the inter-war years as ultimately a rejection of modernism. Seroussi's claim is buttressed by evidence that the historic, Arabic origins of the Sephardic community are making a decided comeback as a new, pan-Sephardic community asserts its cultural identity in twenty-first-century Israel. By contrast, the most curious essay in the volume is by Michael Steinberg, who examines the "Singspiel" of Charlotte Salomon. The artist used the constructs [End Page 194] of musical theater to structure her collection, and incorporated "song lyrics" into some of her paintings, but her "musical" references are to Bach and Wagner rather than to Jewish sources. The many examples of her work that are included as illustrations in the volume (and on its cover) are a welcome addition to what is generally a handsomely produced book, but the essay is about art produced by a young German woman "exiled" to live with her grandparents in France after Kristallnacht, and not really about Jews or music. In his epilogue, Bohlman adopts the Five Books of Moses as the ultimate metaphor with which...

Holocaust and Genocide Cinema: Crossing Disciplinary, Genre, and Geographical Borders: Editor's Introduction

Holocaust and Genocide Cinema:Crossing Disciplinary, Genre, and Geographical Borders: Editor's Introduction Lawrence Baron (bio) Inundated by a spate of new Holocaust movies released at the end of 2008, New York Times writer A. O. Scott cleverly titled his column "Never Forget. You're Reminded."1 Despite predictions that media overexposure to the Holocaust eventually will dampen public interest in the subject or reduce its disturbing horrors to comfortable clichés,2 filmmakers continue to gravitate to stories about how Gentiles and Jews responded to the Third Reich's persecution and attempted liquidation of European Jewry before and during World War Two and about how the surviving bystanders, perpetrators, resisters, and victims of this onslaught and their children have coped with the ethical, political, and psychological repercussions of the event since 1945. Over the past decade, nearly 190 feature films employing the Holocaust as their primary or secondary plotline were produced. While constituting thirty fewer Holocaust movies than released in the 1990s, this corpus of works demonstrates the fascination that the "Final Solution" still holds for audiences and directors more than sixty years after it occurred.3 [End Page 1] Beyond the sheer quantity of such movies, many of them have garnered critical and popular acclaim on global scale. Consider the diversity of countries of production, genres, and themes of the following admittedly idiosyncratic list of one outstanding Holocaust film from each of the last ten years: Divided We Fall, directed by Jan Hrebejk (Czech Republic: 2000). An infertile couple encounter humorous and terrifying situations sheltering a Jewish man in their home under the nose of their collaborationist landlord. Oscar Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of fifteen international film awards. Nowhere in Africa, directed by Caroline Link (Germany: 2001). A German Jewish family finds refuge from Nazi persecution in Kenya where they are temporarily interned as enemy aliens by the British. Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film and of seventeen other international film awards. The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom: 2002). A renowned Jewish pianist survives the Warsaw Ghetto and hides on the Aryan side of the city with the aid of Polish friends and the spiritual sustenance he derives from music. Winner of three major Oscars, the Golden Palm from the Cannes Film Festival, and over forty other international film awards. Facing Windows, directed by Ferzan Ozpetek (Italy, Portugal, Turkey, United Kingdom: 2003). An unhappily married woman gains perspective on a contemplated affair with an attractive neighbor through her conversations with an elderly Holocaust survivor racked with guilt for deciding to warn the Jewish community about an impending round-up before he told his gay lover. Winner of nineteen international film awards. The Ninth Day, directed by Volker Schlöndorff (Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg: 2004). The SS releases a priest from Dachau and promises him permanent freedom if he can convince the Bishop of Luxembourg to cease criticizing Nazi policies. Otherwise, he will be sent back, his family will be arrested, and the other interned clerics from Luxembourg will be executed. Winner of five international film awards. Fateless, directed by Lajos Kostai (Hungary, Germany, United Kingdom: 2005). A teenage boy interned in German concentration and labor camps recalls both his suffering at the hands of his oppressors and the support he received from fellow inmates. Winner of two international film awards. Black Book, directed by Paul Verhoeven (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands: 2006). A Jewish woman whose family was betrayed and murdered while trying [End Page 2] to escape Holland joins the Dutch Resistance and infiltrates the local Gestapo by seducing its commanding officer. Winner of eleven international film awards. The Counterfeiters, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (Austria, Germany: 2007). The SS recruits a Jewish counterfeiter to lead a team of other concentration camp inmates involved in a project to forge the British pound and American dollar. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and three other international film awards. The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry (Germany, United States: 2008). An adolescent boy and an older German woman strike up an unlikely affair. As a law student years later, he subsequently attends her trial for serving as a guard at Auschwitz...

Personal Accounts: State Hospitals and Getting Stuck in a Train

Personal Accounts: State Hospitals and Getting Stuck in a Train

Papillary thyroid cancer associated with syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis: a case report

IntroductionThe syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis is the most common cause of euvolemic hypo-osmolality. This syndrome is associated with a wide variety of diseases. However, its most frequent causes are related to malignancies, especially lung cancer. In this case report, we describe an unknown association of the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis with papillary thyroid cancer.Case presentationWe present the case of a 71-year-old Caucasian, German woman with marked hyponatremia and neurological symptoms. After a detailed clinical investigation, the common causes of syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis and other malignancies were ruled out. A thyroid nodule was detected by ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. Although fine needle aspiration cytology showed negative results, our patient underwent surgery. Papillary thyroid cancer was later diagnosed. After total thyroidectomy, a complete remission of the clinical symptoms occurred and our patient subsequently had iodine-131 radioactive therapy. Hyponatremia was no longer observed during the follow-up investigations.ConclusionThis is the first reported case of paraneoplastic syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis caused by papillary thyroid carcinoma. Since its symptoms occurred before the development of local symptoms, total thyroidectomy may provide a timely and efficient treatment for the underlying malignancy.

Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 1783-1830 (review)

Reviewed by: Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 1783-1830 Michael Ritterson Alison E. Martin , Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 1783–1830, Studies in Comparative Literature 13 (Oxford: Legenda, 2008). Pp. xi,187. $89.50. In her chapter "Sympathy and Spectacle: Visual Representation in Johanna Schopenhauer's Reise durch England und Schottland," Alison E. Martin notes: "Goethe, [the aesthetician Carl Ludwig] Fernow, and many like them had been magnetized by the form and the light of the Italian countryside in the classical arcadian visions embodied by Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain. However, as the eighteenth century drew to a close, it was increasingly the landscape of Britain that caught the imagination of German travellers" (115). Much of the British Isles' appeal lay in their rugged, irregular, somber landscapes and views that charmed with nature's imperfections.more consonant with the Romantic sensibilities of the new century than the "form and light of the Italian countryside." But even before the time of Schopenhauer's travels in England and Scotland (1803–05), there had been more than captivating landscapes to stimulate German interest in and travel to Britain: the Enlightenment had brought technological breakthroughs, "new intellectual and moral values, new canons of taste, forms of sociability, and views on human nature" (7). Martin's study is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of German travelogues on England in the fifty years under consideration; rather it offers detailed analysis of six accounts from a variety of political, social, and stylistic positions within German culture of the period. She notes in her introduction that "the claim of travel writers to speak with an authentic voice was . . . closely bound up with the discourses they employed. . . . The ability to engage affectively with the subject by means of imaginative projection was . . . paramount in this creation of a new style of travel writing" (4). Her twofold aim is therefore to analyze certain rhetorical practices in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century German travel writing "to demonstrate how the traveller.the moving figure.was also moved by what he or she observed," and "to capture something of the range of impulses that travel writing gained from other aesthetic practices (not necessarily literary) for the purposes of sympathetic representation and in so doing to better understand the range of representational devices on which travel writers of this period drew" (5). The six writers thus selected are not best remembered for their travel accounts. Besides, and often obscuring, their activity as travel writers, they pursued interests and careers as educators, classicists, theologians, journalists, novelists, translators, essayists, salonnières, and theorists of music and painting. Three—Karl Philipp Moritz, Sophie von La Roche, and Johanna Schopenhauer.are still familiar names from the period; Esther Domeier (née Gad), Carl Gottlieb Horstig, and August Hermann Niemeyer are probably all but forgotten. All six seem to have shared a belief that vitality in travel writing, leaving a warm, vibrant impression on the readership, was necessary for a convincingly "truthful" account of the traveler's experience. Martin analyzes the modes these German visitors employed in presenting their observations, seeking to revivify scenes in the mind's eye of their readers rather than to lay out objective, informative, but ultimately lifeless collections of facts and descriptions. She takes these six case studies in the order of publication of their travel accounts, beginning with Karl Philipp Moritz's of 1783. Moritz, then a budding [End Page 278] novelist experimenting with character dialogue, reproduced scenes from the debates in Parliament and exchanges on the streets of London, with less concern for the content of oral discourse than for the rhetorical effect he had observed, creating a sense of immediacy and authenticity for his German readers. Sophie von La Roche, author of the quintessential German sentimental novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), exemplifies for Martin the "problem of sensibility," that is, La Roche's attempt, as the first German woman to publish an account of travel to England, to balance "female" sentimental reflection with empirical narrative, description, and the rational ordering of evidence.all generally considered the preserve of male discourse. Though she sometimes failed to achieve...

Opętanie ekspiacyjne po staropolsku? Przypadek Zofii Tomickiej

The work Wzór i wizerunek [...] dziwnej świątobliwości [...] Zofii z Tylic Tomickiej [The Paragon and Image o f the Strange Holiness o f Zofia Tomicka o f Tylice] written by a Jesuit Stanisław Brzechwa (1588-1649) and published in 1634 is a unique biography not only in old Polish literature. The heroine is a wealthy noblewoman who lived in the years 1595-1633 and she is portrayed as a charismatic Catholic and at the same time one possessed by the devil. Tomicka herself as well as her biographer saw in this possession a paradoxical grace of God and a most efficient way of expiation for sins - a very rare case in the history of Christian spirituality. It seems comparable only with the history of a Frenchwoman Marie des Vallées (1590-1656), the protege of Jean Eudes (1601-1680), a well known saint and author of her two biographies, hitherto unpublished. In reflection on such cases it seems appropriate to employ a theologically controversial concept of expiatory possession, which gained popularity much later on in the wake of interest in the life and death of a German woman Anneliese Michel (1952-1976). The 17,h century Jesuit Stanisław Brzechwa was well aware o f the controversial nature of his work which bordered on hagiography. Being convinced about the authenticity of Tomicka’s experiences he nevertheless acknowledged their hybridity and ultimate unverifiability, deciding in some measure to step outside the paradigm of dogmatic theology and his own Church.

Osseous hemangioma of the seventh cervical vertebra with osteoid formation mimicking metastasis: a case report

IntroductionWe report the case of an osseous hemangioma located in the seventh cervical vertebra with reactive osteoid formation and non-typical findings in the radiological and the histopathological examination, mimicking metastasis of a malignant tumor. To our knowledge, this is the first description of such a case in the literature.Case presentationA 44-year-old otherwise healthy Caucasian German woman presented with a discrete sensorimotor loss of both upper limbs. Radiologically, an osteolysis in the seventh cervical vertebra suggestive of metastasis of a malignant neoplasm was diagnosed. After performing corporectomy and cage implantation of C7 on the patient, the histopathological examination was complicated by marked osteoid formation obscuring the true diagnosis of an osseous hemangioma with reactive osteoid formation.ConclusionThough hemangioma of the bone is a rare tumorous lesion in the cervical spine, it has to be taken into consideration as a reason for neck pain and sensomotoric loss of the upper limbs. Atypical radiological and histopathological presentations may hinder determination of the correct diagnosis. The treatment of such lesions must follow clinical guidelines but may be difficult to define in some cases when the correct diagnosis is not known at the time when therapy starts.

‘The White Wife Problem’: Sex, Race and the Contested Politics of Repatriation to Interwar British West Africa

Based on archival research in Ghana and Britain, this article documents the sustained but failed attempts of working‐class West African seamen to repatriate to the colonies with their European wives during the interwar years. Colonial authorities crafted policies to prevent these couples from making British West Africa home because they feared that the presence of European women living ‘in native fashion’ with their African husbands would destabilise colonial race relations. After discussing the origins of this policy in the context of the 1919 race riots that swept Britain's port cities, the article draws on the case of a West African man married to a German woman to illuminate how concerns about race, sex, gender, nationality and class informed the politics of repatriation to British West Africa during the interwar years.

Reduction in ECG abnormalities and improvement of regional left ventricular function in a patient with Fabry’s disease during enzyme-replacement therapy

A 65-year-old German woman was admitted to our hospital with signs and symptoms of an acute coronary syndrome (NSTEMI). On admission, she reported progressive cervical and chest pain, since a few hours. On physical examination, there was a non-specific cardiac murmur with punctum maximum at Erb0s point. Lung sounds were normal, and blood pressure was 115/70 mmHg. The following laboratory data were obtained: creatine kinase of 282 U/L (reference level \171 U/L), troponin I 4.5 lg/L (reference level \0.04 lg/L), lactate dehydrogenase of 250 U/L (reference level \248 U/L), creatinine of 0.82 mg/dL (reference level 0.7–1.2 mg/dL) and C-reactive protein of 0.29 mg/dL (reference level \0.5 mg/dL). The ECG demonstrated repolarization abnormalities in leads I, II, III, aVF and V4-V6 (Fig. 1a). Cardiac catheterization excluded a significant macroangiopathy. A transthoracic echocardiogram was consistent with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy of the apical type without significant LV outflow obstruction (Fig. 2a) prompting routine screening to exclude secondary origin of LVH. A decreased a-galactosidase A activity was found and triggered further molecular genetic workup. A Fabry-specific mutation C.559.A[G (M187V) in the a-galactosidase gene was identified. In addition to symptomatic medical treatment, and in cooperation with a regional center for Fabry’s disease, the patient received continuous enzymereplacement therapy with Agalsidase-b [1]. After 1 year, the clinical status of the patient was stable. Both regression of the ST segment abnormalities (Fig. 1b) on ECG, and improvement of regional LV function (Fig. 2b) by speckle tracking echocardiography was documented [2, 3]. This report illustrates the potential of a causal therapy in patients with cardiac manifestations of Fabry’s disease.

THE INTERCONNECTIONS OF DISCRIMINATION

ABSTRACT Relations between race, nation, class, and gender as categories of social inclusion and exclusion have been subject to contemporary international debates in the social sciences. Critically reflecting upon these debates, this article examines the complex interplay of patterns of discrimination based on race, nation, gender, and class in an international racist campaign in the early 1920s. It was conducted by a wide range of organisations and individuals from different backgrounds in objection to the use of black French colonial troops in the Allied Rhineland occupation. These were denounced as a ‘Black Shame’, a primitive alien element in ‘civilized’ Europe. Patterns of inclusion and exclusion referring to the four categories were not strung together in a purely summative way. Gender, race, nation and class presented flexible, interlocking categories, and could even substitute for one another, when the ‘Black Shame’ was condemned as French aggression against white womanhood, the German nation, European civilisation, and the white race, and used as an ideological call for the cohesion of all Germans and ‘Whites’. I focus on the central role of the category gender in the campaign, and argue that campaigners used the German woman figuratively as an embodiment of the German nation and white race, seemingly threatened by desecration. German women, who refused to play this role and had relationships with black soldiers, were socially excluded from both imagined communities – nation and race. The discourse on the ‘Black Shame’ is an example of the intensive connections of the categories race, nation, gender, and class in modern racism and racist discrimination. My research advocates their conceptually combined and historically reflexive analysis.

Adele Steinwender's Diary: Gendered Observations on a Berlin Mission Station in Bethanie

ABSTRACT In this article I explore ways in which the private diary of a single German woman in a southern African colonial environment can shed light on both the missionary domesticity she had entered into, as well as the ways her own feminine identity was defined and changed by this encounter. Adele Steinwender's diary provides one with an inside perspective of a German woman who settled in a Boer Republic in 1885 as the teacher of the missionaries’ children. Her writings reflect an emotional observation of daily occurrences on a Berlin Mission Station in the Orange Free State. She lived with the Grützner family, and the majority of her entries during the period of 1885 to 1889, pertain to the relations she developed with her host parents and their children. This diary offers one voyeuristic insight into the mission society as perceived by someone who often felt ostracised by the small missionary community. Her feelings of exclusion were exacerbated by her being unable to connect with the inhabitants of the station. Yet the reduction of the missionised's (and other African) presences in Steinwender's diary to intriguing descriptions of white women's management of relationships with black household servants, is revealing in itself of the gendered and racialised hierarchies among station inhabitants. Considering the strong focus on domestic matters in so many of her inscriptions, this diary reveals an aspect of missionary society that was often neglected in the writings of the male missionaries.

Pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis of the ascending colon related to acarbose treatment: a case report

IntroductionPneumatosis cystoides intestinalis is characterized by the presence of multiple gas-filled cysts in the intestinal wall, the submucosa and/or subserosa of the intestine. The term pneumatosis cystoides coli is synonymous with pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis when the disorder is limited to the colon. It is a secondary finding caused by a wide variety of underlying gastrointestinal or extragastrointestinal diseases but rarely occurs in the course of treatment with an α-glucosidase inhibitor. This is the first report of pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis after 12 years of treatment with the α-glucosidase inhibitor acarbose.Case presentationA 65-year-old Caucasian German woman was referred to our hospital for hemicolectomy. She had been treated for type 2 diabetes mellitus with an α-glucosidase inhibitor (acarbose, 150 mg daily) for 12 years. Three months before referral, she had complained of left abdominal pain. 'Polyposis coli' in the ascending colon and diverticulosis were diagnosed. Colonoscopy and computed tomography scans of the abdomen were repeated and revealed pneumatosis cystoides coli located in the ascending colon, whereas diverticulosis of the sigmoid colon was confirmed. Histological examination of a biopsy specimen only showed colon mucosa. After discontinuing administration of the α-glucosidase inhibitor for 3 months and on repeated colonoscopy, the polypoid lesions had completely disappeared.ConclusionThis case illustrates that pneumatosis cystoides coli can be a source of diagnostic confusion. Pneumatosis cystoides coli must be considered in the initial differential diagnosis of patients especially in the presence of multiple colonic polypoid lesions. It is important to take pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis into consideration when prescribing α-glucosidase inhibitors to patients with diabetes who have diabetic autonomic neuropathy with decreased intestinal motility, or to patients taking steroids.

Musikpsychologie: An autobiographical historical perspective.

(TRANSLATED BY BRUNO H. REPP) ABSTRACT-As the historical birthplace of psychology, musicology, and music psychology, Germany has been an important center for the development of our field. In this article the author traces the development of all three disciplines in Germany and Austria from the 1940s to the present. She discusses the difficulties of being a woman in academia, especially during her early years as a student and faculty member, and includes fascinating personal experiences with important founding fathers of music psychology (such as Albert Wellek) and musicology (such as Carl Dahlhaus). She also describes the formation of the national journal, Jahrbuch Musikpsychologie, and the German Society for Music Psychology, as well as the publication of many monographs and articles. Her contributions to the establishment of the field of systematic musicology are also discussed, including the editing of the Handbuch der systematischen Musikwissenschaft [Handbook of Systematic Musicology] (2004-2007). The Handbuch includes an extensive volume on Musikpsychologie. Memory actively processes information by selecting, categorizing, and creating associations. An autobiographical document is therefore limited as a historical source; rather, it is a document of impression management behind which intimations of a self are hidden. It seems certain to me that I am a typical example of a German woman born in 1938. This type is usually quite flexible because the conditions of war during childhood caused frequent changes of domicile; such women are also able to adapt to unfamiliar situations and are at the same time - despite urban influences - somewhat provincial because they have grown up with few external contacts and have had little access to educational institutions. Typically, these women were educated by their mothers to be prepared for possible independence in a profession, but at the same time the traditional image of the homemaker was transmitted to them. This had the consequence that they were rather unemancipated as adults but nevertheless were able to assert themselves professionally, even though (in West Germany at least) the traditional sex role stereotypes had been increasingly re-established by that time: When I received the page proofs of first publication, in which I had not yet used appended maiden name (Haber), first name (Helga) was crossed out and replaced with that of husband (Diether). YEARS OF STUDY In 1957 I began to study psychology at the University of Mainz, a medium-sized town in southwestern Germany. The Professorial chair for psychology in Mainz had been occupied since 1946 by Albert Wellek (1904-1972). He was a representative of holistic psychology (Ganzheitspsychologie) of the Leipzig school, which shared with Gestalt theory of the Berlin school a focus on holistic organizational processes. The Leipzig school's emphasis was on experience and emotions. It attempted to explain the impression of a Gestalt as arising from an incremental construction during stimulus processing, the so-called Aktualgenese. One way in which this was investigated experimentally was through brief tachistoscopic presentations. The concept of Aktualgenese has disappeared; however, research on the interaction of data-driven bottom-up processes and knowledge-driven top-down processes is still important today. The founder of holistic psychology was Felix Krueger, the successor of Wilhelm Wundt. Wellek, who was born in Vienna and had studied composition, musicology, and psychology, became Krueger's assistant in 1933, perhaps because Krueger, who himself had conducted research on musical consonance, was interested in investigating the psychology of music further. Krueger was dismissed from his post in 1936 and died soon afterwards. In view of their brief collaboration it is remarkable that Wellek never mentioned Krueger's name without adding my revered teacher. Some of his colleagues ridiculed him because of this. …

Japanese encephalitis in Western Europe

Japanese encephalitis is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in Asia. In Western Europe, however, Japanese encephalitis has not been reported so far. We report on a 59-year-old German woman with typical neurological symptoms and clinical presentation 8 days after a journey to northern China. The case report summarizes the patient's clinical course as well as pathological findings in blood samples, the cerebro-spinal fluid, MRI scans, and EEGs.