German Life Research Articles

CAREGIVING TRANSITIONS AND LIFE SATISFACTION OF INFORMAL CAREGIVERS

In the Western world, about two third of care recipients are in home care. This fact holds also for Germany: 70 percent of care recipients are cared for at home. Most of the caregivers are family members without any professional background in caregiving. To date, little is known about how caring for a close relative influences life satisfaction of caregivers in the long run. This study seeks to fill the gap by focusing on the process of transitions into and out of their caregiver role. Further, I examine how the caregivers’ life satisfaction develops after these incisive life events. The analyses are based on the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel, which provides annual information about caregiving situations in German households and life satisfaction since 1997. Using panel data allows to capture intraindividual changes by controlling time constant unobserved heterogeneity. The longitudinal research design also enables to identify effects of adjustment processes in terms of life satisfaction with respect to transitions into and out of caregiving situations. As expected, life satisfaction decreases after transitioning into the caregiving status and—in contrast to the findings of the vast majority of cross-sectional studies—remains stable over the time of caregiving. When analyzing the period that marks the transition out of caregiving, the picture is rather heterogeneous. It seems that women recover more quickly than men from this strenuous event that is often associated with the death of the care recipient. After recovery, life satisfaction increases constantly for both genders.

JOHN WHITE'S SCHOLARSHIP. AN APPRECIATION

German Life and LettersVolume 70, Issue 3 p. 295-299 Article JOHN WHITE'S SCHOLARSHIP. AN APPRECIATION Jeremy Adler, Jeremy Adler King's College, LondonSearch for more papers by this author Jeremy Adler, Jeremy Adler King's College, LondonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 June 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.12153Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume70, Issue3Special Issue: ADVENTURES IN MODERNISM: A SPECIAL NUMBER IN HONOUR OF JOHN WHITEJuly 2017Pages 295-299 RelatedInformation

German population of Ukraine in the conditions of occupation (1941-1944): episodes of everyday

The article highlights the key aspects related to the daily life of ethnic Germans in Ukraine during the occupation period. Particular attention is paid to the causes, nature and forms of collaboration, as well as the relationship of the German ethnic minority with representatives of other nationalities. It also briefly describes the mutual perception of the occupation authorities and the ethnic Germans. Furthermore, an additional emphasis is put on activities relating to the political indoctrination of Volksdeutsche during the occupation

Diverging views of epigenesis: the Wolff-Blumenbach debate.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) is widely known as the father of German vitalism and his notion of Bildungstrieb, or nisus formativus, has been recognized as playing a key role in the debates about generation in German-speaking countries around 1800. On the other hand, Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734-1794) was the first to employ a vitalist notion, namely that of vis essentialis, in the explanatory framework of epigenetic development. Is there a difference between Wolff's vis essentialis and Blumenbach's nisus formativus? How does this difference influence their overall understanding of the epigenetic process? The paper aims to provide an answer to these questions through the analysis of a little-known document, which contributes to shed light on a crucial chapter of the German life sciences in the late eighteenth-century, namely the decisive phase of the process that led to the formalization of biology as a unified field of inquiry at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Entry of men into the labour market in West Germany and their career mobility (1945\u20132008)

This study analyses how the long-term modernisation process as well as ups and downs of business cycles affect the entry of men into the labour market in West Germany and their career mobility. Combining longitudinal data from the German Life History Study and the ALWA study, we first reconstructed men’s job histories continuously for the period between 1945 and 2008. As a measure of men’s ‘goodness of jobs’ at entry into the labour market and across the job career, the magnitude prestige scale (MPS), has been employed. Then, we used the time series data obtained from official statistics to perform factor analysis and suggest a more substantially grounded approach than the conventional approach to the analysis of age (A), period (P) and cohort (C) effects. In particular, we assessed how the modernisation process and continuously changing labour market conditions affect men’s entry into the labour market across successive cohorts. Based on their further occupational careers, we used a multi-level event-history model to study how placements in first jobs (cohort effect) and the continuously changing macro structure (period effect) influence men’s upward, lateral, and downward career mobility, controlling for men’s individual-level resources, such as educational attainment and changing labour force experience (life-course or age effect). This fully dynamic analysis shows that there was improvement in the quality of entry-level jobs and increased mobility across men’s birth cohorts. This allows us to gain a better understanding of how long-term macroeconomic trends have influenced social inequality in West Germany across several generations.

Повседневная жизнь немцев в Петербурге и Санкт-Петербургской губернии во второй половине XIX - начале XX в.: историография вопроса

Повседневная жизнь немцев в Петербурге и Санкт-Петербургской губернии во второй половине XIX - начале XX в.: историография вопроса

“I Danmarks Interesse”. Minerydningen pa den jyske vestkyst 1945

“I Danmarks Interesse”. Minerydningen pa den jyske vestkyst 1945

Other ’68ers in West Berlin: Christian Democratic Students and the Cold War City

AbstractMany of the most iconic moments of Germany's “1968” took place in the walled confines of West Berlin, the emblematic Cold War city often referred to as the “capital of the revolt.” Most accounts portray the events in West Berlin as having been characterized by confrontations between the leftist student movement, on the one hand, and a conservative press and generally hostile, older, urban population, on the other. This article rethinks and refines existing historiographical narratives of the 1968 student movement in West Berlin, as well as of West Berlin's place in the student movement. It examines the actions and experiences of student activists in West Berlin, who rarely feature in the familiar narrative—namely, Christian Democratic activists, particularly those from the Association of Christian Democratic Students (RCDS). Using oral history interviews, memoirs, and a wide array of archival sources from German and US archives, the article sheds light on the background of some of the most important conservative players and discusses the manifold ways in which they engaged with the goals of the revolutionary left in the city. The analysis pays special attention to the effects that German division and life in West Berlin had on Christian Democratic activists, to the sources of their anti-Communism, and to their views about the US-led war in Vietnam, a major Cold War conflict that carried special resonance in the divided city. The article concludes that there were important (yet shifting and often porous) dividing lines in West Berlin's “1968” other than those that separated politicized students from an older and more conservative city leadership and population, a conclusion that calls for a modification of the familiar storyline that simply pits Rudi Dutschke and others on the left against the city's “establishment.” The article suggests that this has repercussions for interpretations of the student movement that center on generation. It argues, in short, that Christian Democratic students—activists who were, in effect, other ’68ers—helped to shape and were, in turn, shaped by the events that took place in West Berlin in 1968.

Tendencies in German Life and Thought since 1870

As expressed in our previous issue, we intend this subsection on Intellectual History to advocate the legacy of those authors who have been our support and with whom we have enhanced our perspective. This time, we offer a translation into Spanish of Georg Simmel’s essay “Tendencies in German life and thought since 1870” . The original version in German is lost and currently the only available version is the English one for which Professor W. D. Briggs of the Western Reserve University of Ohio was in charge. That essay was published in 1902 in The international monthly. A magazine of contemporary thought, where Georg Simmel was a member of the advisory board for the sociology section. We consider this an invaluable piece in which Simmel sets forth his analytical acuity and his characteristic relationism when dealing with the diverse forms in which German life in the early 20th century was manifested and when presenting his particular reading of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In addition, a variety of issues which occupied him throughout his intellectual path such as the philosophy of culture, the feminine culture, religion, and historical materialism among others are present. We also expect this text to be useful in order to complement and relate ideas from other similar essays by Simmel already translated into Spanish. To end, we would like to thank Emeritus Professor Otthein Rammstedt, editor of the Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe, for allowing us to publish this translation. Einer Mosquera (Editor), University of Antioquia (Colombia) Coeditor of Digithum

“Mountain of Destiny”: Nanga Parbat and Its Path into the German Imagination by Harold Höbusch

Reviewed by: “Mountain of Destiny”: Nanga Parbat and Its Path into the German Imagination by Harold Höbusch Samuel J. Kessler Harold Höbusch, “Mountain of Destiny”: Nanga Parbat and Its Path into the German Imagination. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester: Camden House, 2016. 282 pp. Harold Höbusch’s “Mountain of Destiny”: Nanga Parbat and Its Path into the German Imagination is three books in one: a history of the German exploration of the Himalayan mountain known as Nanga Parbat; an analysis of the relationship between the ethos of mountaineering and the ideology of National Socialism; and a critical discussion about why mountains became such a common referent in German popular culture in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Though the title suggests the book’s common thread will be Nanga Parbat, in fact Höbusch has given us something far more wide-ranging. “Mountain of Destiny” is a deeply sourced account of the co-development of mountaineering culture and Germany’s modern self-identity, hinged around the rhetoric and trauma of National Socialism. Höbusch opens by laying out a theory of the interrelation of mountains and cultural identity, tracing how the ethos and ideology of mountaineering was increasingly depicted and valorized in German popular culture between the 1920s and 1950s. “The various representations of these [Himalayan] expeditions to the German public in print, film, and audio—[are] in my opinion the crucial segments of Nanga Parbat’s path into the German imagination,” he writes (13). This widespread use of mountaineering as a means of depicting communal values he calls, somewhat awkwardly, “the cultural phenomenon Nanga Parbat.” This theoretical lens (“the cultural phenomenon Nanga Parbat”) overshadows, however, Höbusch’s most incisive and compelling findings. It is not that Nanga Parbat the mountain plays such a role in German cultural [End Page 173] identity. Instead, it is the spirit of expedition, of brotherhood on the icy slope, and of attaining a prize (reaching the summit)—these qualities permeate German mass culture. Höbusch, it often seems, is writing two equally compelling though at some level quite different books. Either this is a history of Nanga Parbat (the ninth-highest mountain in the world) and the German men who climbed it, or it is a study of mountaineering as a social and ideological phenomenon, an analysis of the way that climbing as an ethos became a cipher for German angst, self-glorification, and moral education before, during, and after National Socialism. It is the latter book, buried inside the former, that has the most consequence for historians of twentieth-century Germany. For reasons not entirely clear, Höbusch avoids placing “Mountain of Destiny” into conversation with others works that discuss the cultural preludes and propagandist exploits of National Socialism. Yet some of the most fascinating and disturbing moments in “Mountain of Destiny” describe the way mountaineers and their texts were easily (and often happily) appropriated by the Nazi state. Analyzing the language of mountaineers from the 1920s Höbusch repeatedly points to the aspects of the sport that allowed its cooptation by the Nazis: the idea of the mountain as spiritual alternative to modernity; the valorization of struggle as the central character of the endeavor; and the description of the forging of non-egocentric bonds in the midst of extraordinary circumstances in order to achieve success. “Mountain of Destiny” is an excellent account of how NS ideology infiltrated (or perhaps merely accentuated) one more aspect of prewar German life. Höbusch describes how willingly German climbers were to adapt their seemingly apolitical culture to fit Nazi ideology. Why, then, does Höbusch not situate the book as part of the history of National Socialism? The answer lies, perhaps, with Höbusch’s other, primary research area: the history of sports. By describing this book as a history of sports and its effect on national popular culture—rather than on the way political ideology coopted or manipulated the language of mountaineering—Höbusch allows himself the space to give a richer, fuller account of mid-twentieth-century German mountaineering and the men who defined it. It also allows him to show that, though the tenets of...

The B'nai B'rith Encounters Nazi Germany, 1933

The B'nai B'rith Encounters Nazi Germany, 1933 Robert Rockaway (bio) Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Germany on January 30, 1933, when President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor of the Reich. He now had the opportunity to implement his racial ideology and worldview regarding Jews. At that time, Germany's Jewish population numbered 525,000 out of a general population of 67 million. After the March 5 Reichstag elections, the new government removed the constraints on violence against Jews, and assaults on Jewish businesses and vicious beatings of Jews by Nazi thugs became commonplace. On March 20, the German government established the first concentration camp, Dachau, near Munich. On April 1, the government launched an official boycott of Jewish doctors, lawyers, and merchants. Because of international outrage, Hitler limited the boycott to one day. On April 7, Hitler approved decrees banning Jews and other non-Aryans from the practice of law and from jobs in the civil service, and forced Jewish government employees to retire. On April 11, the government issued a decree defining a non-Aryan as a person "who is descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish parents or grandparents. This holds true even if one parent or grandparent is of non-Aryan descent. This premise especially obtains if one parent or grandparent was of Jewish faith." On May 10, Jewish and other books deemed of "un-German spirit," were burned in public bonfires in Berlin and university towns. The books included works by Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Heinrich Heine, Emile Zola, H.G. Wells, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, and others. In September, Jews were banned from the fields of journalism, art, literature, music, broadcasting, and theater.1 [End Page 245] Germany's Jews reacted to these events with alarm and disbelief. The elite among them experienced an especially deep dismay. They assumed that their economic and social position and contributions to German life and culture would shield them from danger. It did not. Most members of the B'nai B'rith lodges came from this class. As such, they faced an additional threat: the Nazi press reported that the government placed "the B'nai B'rith and similar lodges and associations with foreign ties" under special political observation because "these organizations are subsidized by foreign capital, spent in the effort to spread pacifism among the German people whose martial spirit they may weaken with their brotherhood-of-man ideas."2 The Nazis viewed the B'nai B'rith and its members as subversives and part of world Jewry's conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race and rule the world. Thus they focused on destroying them. Its main office in Berlin was often searched, and in smaller cities the Gestapo placed officers of the B'nai B'rith under constant surveillance. Heinrich Himmler justified the terror measures undertaken by the Nazis against them as serving the struggle against "the subversive activities of purely Jewish Lodges and organizations." In 1933, his primary target was the B'nai B'rith.3 In July 1933, an incident occurred in Nuremberg, Germany that illustrated the kind of "special" treatment B'nai B'rith members could expect. Alfred Cohen, president of the International Order of B'nai B'rith, learned of this occurrence through a letter sent to him by Walter Freudenthal, a physician and B'nai B'rith member living in New Rochelle, New York. Freudenthal's letter included a report given to him by a German B'nai B'rith member who just arrived in the United States. Freudenthal vouches that the newcomer "is absolutely trustworthy." The details in the report shocked and deeply distressed Cohen. You have heard no doubt about the 20th of July, 1933 affair in Nürnberg where the Nazis arrested the 300 most prominent Jews of the congregation. [End Page 246] The excuse for the arrest of these Jews has been that they are members of the B'nai B'rith lodge. The treatment which has been accorded to these men is so horrible that I hate to repeat all details. Sixty, seventy, and eighty year old men; Doctors, lawyers, and businessmen have been forced to kneel down for an hour and bite...

Interest Rate Risk of Life Insurers: Evidence from Accounting Data

Life insurers are exposed to interest rate risk, and their liability side is typically more sensitive to interest rate changes than their asset side. This paper develops an accounting-based measure of interest rate sensitivity. My approach uses the coexistence of historical cost and market value accounting, which permits the observation of valuations for different discount rates. Using microdata, I show that German life insurers have a significant exposure to interest rate risk. However, there is a wide dispersion across the sector. I find that insurers' size, growth and solvency are negatively correlated with interest rate risk. The heterogeneity suggests that insurers would behave differently during times of stress, which has important implications for understanding the macroprudential risks to which the sector is exposed.

Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger's Drawings from the Collection of Ricky Jay (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8 January–11 April 2016). Exhibition publication RickyJay, Matthias Buchinger: ‘The Greatest German Living’. Los Angeles: Siglio, 2016. 160pp, colour illustrations, $39.95, ISBN 978‐1‐938221‐12‐5.

Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger's Drawings from the Collection of Ricky Jay (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8 January–11 April 2016). Exhibition publication RickyJay, Matthias Buchinger: ‘The Greatest German Living’. Los Angeles: Siglio, 2016. 160pp, colour illustrations, $39.95, ISBN 978‐1‐938221‐12‐5.

Local and Terminal Volatility of Equity in a Hybrid Model with Hull White Interest Rates

We consider a hybrid model for stocks and interest rates as it is proposed by GDV (Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft) to assign market consistent values to the technical provisions of german life insurance companies. In this model, stock prices are modeled with a Black Scholes model with time-varying parameters, and interest rates are modeled with a Hull White short rate model.We find that local and terminal volatility of equity differ in this model and that the terminal volatility of equity is considerable higher than the local volatility. This raises the question, which of both volatilities is the right reference to calibrate the model. We argue that calibration should be done with respect to local volatility rather than terminal volatility, at least for the application we have in mind.

Liquidity and Interest Rate Risk of Life Insurers: Sources and Mitigation

U.S. and German life insurers offer similar products, except for different penalties to withdraw funds. We identify market value reductions (MVR), which are common in the U.S. and prevented by law in Germany, as a main instrument to manage liquidity risk in the industry. It turns out that German life insurers may ultimately be at risk of experiencing a policyholder run if interest rates hike strongly. Based on a unique set of regulatory panel data from 2005 to 2014, we show that this risk has increased over the course of the financial and sovereign debt crisis.

Gender inequalities in occupational prestige across the working life: An analysis of the careers of West Germans and Swedes born from the 1920s to the 1970s

Using retrospective occupational biography data from West Germany and Sweden we analyze gender inequalities in occupational careers in three birth cohorts (1920s to early 1940s, mid-1940s to early-1960s, and mid-1960s to late 1970s). We ask whether gender inequalities are generated at labour market entry, whether career progression and parenthood weaken or strengthen such gender inequalities, and how they differ across cohorts in the two countries. With data from the German Life History Study and the Swedish Level of Living Surveys, we used growth curve analysis to model career developments in occupational prestige. We find less change in occupational prestige across careers in Germany than in Sweden. In both countries a clear female disadvantage in occupational prestige in the oldest cohort has turned into a female advantage in the youngest cohort. This is only partially explained by changes in educational attainment levels. We also find a substantial motherhood penalty in careers in both countries, which has shifted to a fatherhood premium in Sweden over time.

Current Situation and Problems of German Life Security System for Job Seekers and the Working Poor

Current Situation and Problems of German Life Security System for Job Seekers and the Working Poor

Reclaimed Pasts: Intermarriage and Remembrances of National Socialist Racial Stigmatization by Jewish and non-Jewish Spouses and Mischling Children

One of the ways in which the National Socialist state sought to achieve its linked aims to consolidate German unity in preparation for war and to exclude Jews from every aspect of German life was by the reinterpretation of family histories using its taxonomy of difference. This effort is a less commonly recognized aspect of the Blood Protection Law and its subsequent clarifications; the orientation toward future marriage regulations required a revision of past marriages and what they meant. This article argues that post-war narratives from individuals whom the regime targeted because they were intermarried need to be read as reassertions of narrative authority that directly challenge the way National Socialism recast such families in German history. Specifically, the experiences were diverse and informed by memory as well as context. The article posits that the variability of memory is evident in the memoirs written by Heinz Freudenthal, who was Jewish and married to a non-Jewish woman; Brigitte Steiner, who was non-Jewish but married to a Jewish man; and Elsbeth von Ameln, who was the daughter of a man the state classified as Jewish and a non-Jewish woman.

Life Expectancy by Education, Income and Occupation in Germany: Estimations Using the Longitudinal Survival Method

Reliable estimates for differences in life expectancy (LE) by socio-economic position (SEP), that can be assessed in an international context and are comprehensive in terms of considering different SEP dimensions, are missing for the German population so far. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap by providing estimates for differences in LE by education, household income, work status and vocational class. The lack of national mortality data by SEP required an innovative methodological approach to estimate LE from survey data with a mortality follow-up. The main strengths of the method are the low demand on the data, its simple applicability and the estimation of a set of age-specific probabilities of dying. We employed the method to the German Life Expectancy Survey and estimated period life tables for 45 male and 32 female SEP subpopulations. The results show striking differences in LE across all analysed SEP indicators. Among men, LE at age 40 ranges by more than five years between the lowest and highest household income quartiles, more than six years between individuals with low and high education, around ten years across the work status groups, and almost 15 years across the vocational classes. The proportion of those who reach the classic pension age of 65 years also varies considerably, as does the remaining LE at this age. The corresponding differences among women are smaller, yet still notable. The results yield an interesting finding for the ongoing discussion about the various consequences of an increased pension age. Moreover, they provide policy-makers, doctors, researchers and public health workers with insights into Germany’s most disadvantaged SEP subpopulations and the potential extent of their disadvantages in terms of longevity and mortality.

A Miniature State: The Dollhouse City of Princess Augusta of Schwarzburg (1666–1751)

During the first half of the eighteenth century, Princess Augusta of Schwarzburg established a large collection of dollhouses which resembled the interior decoration and furniture of her palace in Thuringia. Several hundred dolls represented herself, members of her dynasty, courtiers and the people around her. Today, it gives us an almost encyclopaedic picture of life in a small German princely residence. This article describes how this world in miniature came into existence. It examines its various functions in respect to the political, confessional and socio-cultural background of Princess Augusta and her husband Count Anton Günther II of Schwarzburg. The Mon Plaisir collection sheds light on the self-conception by which smaller courts made use of a cultural tradition as a political instrument within the system of the Holy Roman Empire.