Weimar Republic Research Articles

The Red Vienna Sourcebook by Rob McFarland Georg Spitaler Ingo Zechner

Reviews 184 activities enact the postmodern reality that ‘our representations, disjoined from things in the world, are not stabilized by any theory of how we make them’. The Kakanian elite organizes its representations ‘not with regard to an outer reality [...], but only with fidelity toward what it takes to be its own constructs’ (p. 85). Viewed from a socio-critical perspective, however, these ‘constructs’ are linked to the ‘patterned, prefabricated forms of identity’ (p. 98) that a decadent Kakania seeks to impose on the individual, and which are rejected by Musil’s protagonist Ulrich. Despite his discussion of the Musilian trope of imaginative Möglichkeitssinn versus rigid Wirklichkeitssinn, the main polarity identified by Mehigan in book 1 of MoE opposes the uniquely individual to the general — an opposition in which ‘singularity’ is valorized and ‘science’, with its quest for rules and regularities, inevitably acquires a negative weighting. (Mehigan buttresses his claim for the supreme importance of ‘the premise of singularity’ in Musil’s thought with a detailed reading of the remarkable short piece ‘Das Fliegenpapier’ [The Flypaper], in which the ‘pseudo-scientific gaze of the observer’ yields to ‘a certain humanism’ in the depiction of the death-throes of an individual fly (pp. 96–97).) Thus is the ground laid for the siblings’ escape in book 2 from society’s rules and conventions into the unrestrained Nietzschean individualism and radically subjective ethics of ‘der andere Zustand’. In his conclusion, however, Mehigan rows back from this extreme position and invokes the need for some kind of coming together on ‘an even playing field’ of normative commitments on the one hand and our ‘desire for singularity’ on the other, in the creation of a ‘proper ethics’ (p. 157) for a post-religious age — a task for which, he suggests, imaginative literature offers the ideal arena. Graham Bartram Lancaster The Red Vienna Sourcebook. Ed. by Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler and Ingo Zechner. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2020. xxx + 773 pp. £95/$120 (hbk), ISBN 9781571133557; £30/$49.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781640140677. The Red Vienna Sourcebook is the English-language version of Das Rote Wien: Schlüsseltexte der zweiten Wiener Moderne, published by De Gruyter in Berlin, also in 2020. Both are the work of the International Research Network BTWH (Berkeley / Tübingen / Vienna / Harvard). Given that The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (ed. by Anton Kaes et al.) appeared in 1994, a comparable resource for Austrian studies has long been a desideratum. As the trio of editors outline in their introduction, ‘Red Vienna’ was a unique phenomenon. That the Social Democratic Workers’ Party took democratic control of Vienna Municipal Council in May 1919 and retained it until the brief civil war of 1934 allowed a remarkably extensive programme of reforms, encompassing almost every aspect of social and cultural life, to be not only planned but also put into practice, creating an enduring legacy. Action was extensively accompanied by words, as supporters variously theorized, advocated and celebrated policies, while sceptics and opponents criticized or even vilified Reviews 185 them. Consequently, the Sourcebook has no shortage of contemporary published material on which to draw and has turned up much that is eye-catching and will be unfamiliar, even to specialists. The avowed objective of the Sourcebook is to produce not a narrative history of Red Vienna, but ‘a carefully curated series of texts, each analyzed and introduced in their own right and in their relation to other texts’ (p. 9). It is arranged in thirty-six chapters, each comprising between six and eleven (usually excerpted) texts while at the same time being grouped into a dozen larger ‘Parts’. Conceived as presenting different discursive fields, the chapters are the primary units of the Sourcebook and they, rather than the ‘Parts’, have named editors who provide a short introduction and suggestions for further reading (in both English and German). Each text also has a prefatory paragraph. The result is a book that, despite its encyclopaedic girth, is easy to navigate and has a clear overall structure. It opens, unsurprisingly, with ‘Foundations’, ‘Philosophies’, ‘Identities’ and ‘New Values’, before moving on to the different spheres in which ideas were realized: health and welfare, education, housing, sport and leisure, culture and media...

Вальтер Беньямин и Эрих Кестнер. К истории двух моралистов

The article focuses on the life and work of two German intellectuals, the philosopher Walter Benjamin and the writer Erich Kästner, who played a prominent role in the cultural life of Berlin in the 1920s. The idea of a comparative analysis of these two figures was prompted by Kästner’s novel Fabian. The Story of a Moralist. This novel is of interest due to its high literary quality, on the one hand, and the authenticity of the representation of the Weimar Republic on the other, which allows us to consider Kästner’s book as a document of the era. According to German researchers, the main characters of the novel have real-life prototypes, namely the author himself and the famous philosopher Walter Benjamin. This idea is developed and reinforced in the article. Therefore, the article parallels draws parallels between biographical facts and plot devices while reconstructing the context of the novel’s creation and highlighting events that occurred after its appearance. Based on this analysis, we argue that the key characters represent two ways of ethical existence in a society where moral values are negated by cynical reason. Thus, involving Benjamin’s philosophical theories, as well as Kästner’s war diaries, we outline the background of the debate on moral priorities that takes place in the pages of the novel.

Polsko-niemiecki pakt o nieagresji z 1934 r. – geneza i przegląd postanowień

One of the effects of the end of the First World War (then known as the Great War), was a significant geopolitical transformation on the map of Europe. Many new states were established at that time. One of them was Poland (the Second Polish Republic). The territory of the newly created state included part of the lands previously belonging to Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. The conceding of Greater Poland and parts of Pomerania and Upper Silesia to the reborn Republic of Poland caused a deep conflict between Poland and Germany. One of the main goals of the Weimar Republic’s foreign policy was to regain the disputed territories. The interests of both countries were therefore at odds, and one of the manifestations of the poor relations was the Customs War. Following Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power, Marshal Józef Piłsudski proposed France a preventive war, in order to remove the dictator from power. This was a turning point that led to an improvement in mutual relations, resulting in the conclusion of a non-aggression pact. Contacts between the two countries revived, and Nazi propaganda ceased its attacks on Poland. The period of warming ended with the first territorial claims against the Republic of Poland, including the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Third Reich. Deterioration of diplomatic relations, combined with British-French military guarantees for Poland, led to the declaration of the Pact by Germany in April 1939. The aim of this article is to present the genesis and content of the Polish-German non-aggression pact and to analyze it from the legal point of view, as well as from the point of view of the intentions of the parties which accompanied its conclusion.

Die Stunde der Volksmission. Rechristianisierungsbestrebungen im deutschen Protestantismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit by Henning Bühmann

Reviewed by: Die Stunde der Volksmission. Rechristianisierungsbestrebungen im deutschen Protestantismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit by Henning Bühmann Robert Kolb Die Stunde der Volksmission. Rechristianisierungsbestrebungen im deutschen Protestantismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit. By Henning Bühmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020. 527 pp. In the period of German industrialization, 1860–1900, thousands of German farm boys and girls chose to find a future in the mines, factories, and industrialists’ homes of the Ruhr valley, Silesia, or Saxony rather than follow siblings to Australia or the Americas. Despite the efforts of a few, especially those involved in the “Inner Mission” movement initiated in the 1840s by Johann Hin-rich Wichern, the church largely failed to meet their needs and provide support and welcome amid the profound changes this new laboring class experienced in a new environment. Social Democrats and Marxist ideologues provided substitute community and ideals. By the 1910s some church leaders, ever more discouraged by the number of those renouncing church membership, resolved to dedicate special resources to reclaiming lapsed members and active opponents among the Marxists and general “free-thinkers,” heirs of the Enlightenment. Būhmann’s exhaustive research into the records of the “Volk mission” (“mission to the German nation”) movement goes into great detail assessing the several groups in which it found institutional form and their message of a gospel centered on Christ’s atoning death and resurrection. Along with this central message, the movement was caught up—from its initiation in 1916 through its dissipation and dissolution—in the ecclesiastical tensions and battles of the Third Reich and its precursors. The preachers of Volk mission tended to one degree or another to combine their biblical proclamation with elements of nationalistic and finally even National Socialist ideology. From the several calls issued in 1916 for organized action to reclaim those fallen away from active practice of the faith, whether in the church or exited, and the subsequent founding of several groups to supervise the mission to the German Volk, to its end in 1945, representatives of the movement were unable to imagine a German church that did not strive to reverse the nation’s defeat and disadvantage. Their fears of the moral excesses of the Weimar period added to their longing for the old days of imperial rule and [End Page 468] a Constantinian-privileged ecclesiastical establishment. Some tried hard to address the working class that the mission wished to bring back to the church. But they failed to formulate answers to the challenge issued to one preacher by a worker: “on your desk in your quiet study lie your Bible and all your books that strengthen your faith, and then you stand Sunday in the pulpit and speak only to people who breath the same air. But go in the morning to my factory. You are an honest man. Come to us in the factory, and I guarantee you, in one year you will join the [Social Democratic] party, in two years you will renounce membership in the church, and in three years you will be an atheist” (122). This volume’s fruitful examination of the movement cannot be briefly encapsulated as well as it deserves. Bühmann carefully traces the organization of the “Central Committee for Inner Mission” that formally directed much of the actual work of the Volksmission. He also presents the thinking of its leaders. They included Gerhard Hilbert, who issued a strong appeal for such a mission in 1916, and Gerhard Fellkrüg, whose Handbook of the Volksmission appeared in 1919. Bühmann assesses the roles these two played along with other prominent figures. Among these was Heinrich Rendtorff, bishop of Mecklenburg after serving as a domestic missionary and as professor of practical theology at the University of Kiel. Rendtorff illustrates how some of those whose concern for a nationalistic restoration of German pride and might led them first to sympathy with the rising National Socialist movement later moved into the Confessing Church and its critique of the government’s attempts to manipulate the faith and micro-manage the church. Bühmann analyzes the work of missionaries, sifting through reports and reactions as they conducted one or two week-long visits to parishes across...

West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands by Astrid Eckert

Reviewed by: West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands by Astrid Eckert Kristin Poling West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands. Astrid Eckert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+422, black & white illustrations, endnotes. $105.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-1906-9005-2. $29.95, paperback, ISBN 978-1-1975-8231-2. In her book on West Germany's eastern borderlands, Astrid Eckert recounts the story of a tourist visiting the border in 1964, who, on being shown where East Germany lay across the Elbe River, cried out, "Why, there is no Iron Curtain!" (95). For this tourist, and not her alone, the global significance and powerful iconography of the Iron Curtain had shaped her expectations and obscured the reality of the border. The German-German border's very prominence as a Cold War frontier made it harder to see. From behind that powerful metaphor, Eckert seeks to restore the 1,400-kilometer border to visibility with all its complexity and materiality, its regional specificity, and its natural environments. Her project, drawing on extensive research in diverse archival and print sources, is to write the history of West Germany's borderlands as a place that provided homes for both people and nonhuman natures, existed before 1949, and continued to exist after 1990. The results are richly rewarding, as a study of the Federal Republic, a contribution to border studies, and an example of an integrated approach to environmental history that incorporates culture, politics, and economics. Unlike other landmark studies focused on the materiality and local experience of the German-German boundary, such as Daphne Berdahl's Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland (1999) and Edith Sheffer's Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain (2011), Eckert does not zoom in on a single exemplary place to illuminate the dynamics of the border. Instead, she takes as her subject the entirety of the 40-kilometer-wide strip defined as the "zonal borderlands" and eligible for federal borderland aid. Through her six thematic chapters, Eckert shows that while proximity to the German Democratic Republic gave the West German zonal borderlands a unified identity, the border remained a heterogeneous landscape. It included open land and rural areas, but also major cities from Lübeck to Hof. The strip intersected with the Harz Mountains, the Drömling wetlands, the Bavarian forest, and several major rivers, including the Elbe and the Werra. Through borderland [End Page 88] aid (chapter 2), border tourism (chapter 3), environmental diplomacy (chapter 4), landscape and wildlife management (chapter 5), and the controversy over a planned-but-never-built nuclear waste disposal center at Görleben in the northeastern corner of Lower Saxony (chapter 6), West German policies and attitudes set apart the borderlands as an exceptional zone, reflecting attitudes toward division and toward the German Democratic Republic. Eckert also shows, however, the ways in which Cold War politics and culture butted up against the materiality of the region's landscapes and features. The Iron Curtain comes and goes, both shaping and shaped by the environments it traversed. Throughout the book, Eckert attends to how the exceptional conditions of division were grounded in prewar circumstances. In one memorable example, she recounts how the language, planning expertise, and visual iconography used to describe the German-German boundary in the 1950s referenced the loss of territory after World War I. Gruesome metaphors of mutilation on the "bleeding border" resurfaced, and spatial planners like Gerhard Isenberg studied the economics of the newly drawn borders of 1919 in an attempt to better understand the borders of 1949. Justifications for borderland aid even directly referenced the precedent of Osthilfe, the aid provided by the Weimar government to bankrupt Junkers in East Prussia—a reference perhaps all the more telling for its inaptness, since the earlier relief program had aimed to shore up large agricultural estates and had ended in scandal (56–57). The value of Eckert's long-term view is especially evident in the chapters dealing with environmental issues. While inter-German environmental diplomacy made environmental concerns more visible and salient for...

Introduction: What Can Be Queer and What Can Queer Be?

This heterogeneous issue of InterAlia works hard to stretch the meaning of queer in unexpected ways. While it includes the Spanish translations of seminal queer studies essays by Lee Edelman and David M. Halperin, it also contemplates the queerness of the figure of the smoker, the music made by an egg slicer, the adult who refuses to renounce childhood, the talking pine tree that spins a melodramatic tale of the Weimar Republic, and the Montana-born writer who learned her immigrant husband’s language – Ukrainian – well enough to be recognized as a poet in Ukraine, then came out as a lesbian, and went on to publish the first American bestseller about gay men. This issue of InterAlia also worries about the condition and prospects of queer studies in various places, and about the commodification of queer identities as a consequence of feeding preferred gender pronouns and other personal data into the global information economy. Finally, this issue probes the perennial question of the apparent absence of a ground for community among self-identified queers, who have nothing in common but their singular desire. What, ask the contributors to this issue, can queer be/be queer politically, philosophically, aesthetically?

Niemcy wobec Polski i Rosji w 1920 roku

The article deals with the problem of German political culture after the revolution of 1918 and the German foreign policy with regard to Poland and the bolshevik Russia in 1920. It is to be pointed out that during first years of the Weimar Republic ist political scene was very much desintegrated. The German political culture at that time was being torn apart by the lack of “inner legitimisation” of the new republic. A “new Kulturkampf ” was the mark of these years. Not with standing this fact, main political forces in Germany were unified in their anti-Polish stance. In this regard they considered the bolshevik Russia as an useful ally against “Polish imperialism”.Although Berlin officially remained neutral during the Polish – Bolshevik war of 1920, the German diplomacy and high military circles were in favor of combing back to the pre-war (i.e. before 1918) German – Russian border.

The German Right, 1918–1930: Political Parties, Organized Interests, and Patriotic Associations in the Struggle against Weimar Democracy

The German Right, 1918–1930: Political Parties, Organized Interests, and Patriotic Associations in the Struggle against Weimar Democracy

Antifascism in the Neighborhood: Daily Life, Political Culture, and Gender Politics in the German Communist Antifascist Movement, 1930–1933

Abstract This article examines grassroots communist antifascist politics in Germany during the final years of the Weimar Republic. In contrast to most studies on Weimar’s street politics, which focus on political violence, this research demonstrates that daily life, political culture, and gender relations shaped the communist antifascist movement in working-class neighborhoods. It argues that daily conflict with distinct political overtones or undertones increased steadily in the early 1930s. As a result, quarrels between neighbors were often colored with political narratives, and sometimes ordinary disputes escalated into political conflict and even violence. Political culture inflamed the tensions, particularly when Nazis and communists littered proletarian boroughs with their symbols. Women were often at the center of the conflict. Many joined the frontlines of communist antifascist struggle, where they faced widespread discrimination from male comrades who, flaunting a militant hypermasculinity, insisted that women belonged only in the rearguard.

“Sorgenkind des Lebens”: cuidado, interioridad y embriaguez en La montaña mágica. Una interpretación blochiana

El presente artículo analiza las nociones de cuidado (Sorge), interioridad (Innerlichkeit) y embriaguez (Rausch) en La montaña mágica (1924), de Thomas Mann. El estudio se plantea a partir de las interpretaciones literarias y filosóficas de Ernst Bloch sobre la República de Weimar y se propone mostrar las transformaciones e implicancias ideológicas de estos conceptos en la novela.

El desarrollo histórico del principio de lealtad federal en el derecho alemán

El «padre» del principio de la lealtad federal - Rudolf SMEND - ha pasado a la historia por su aportación en la obra «Derecho Constitucional no escrito en el Estado Federal Monárquico.» Por primera vez en la historia del constitucionalismo alemán y en contra de la doctrina constitucionalista del Imperio de 1871, presentó y analizó el principio lealtad federal de forma jurídica y sistemática dotándolo de fuerza normativa. Aunque originariamente fue desarrollado para el contexto de una monarquía constitucional, lo fue adaptando a las diferentes épocas y formas de Estado. Por ello, desde el punto de vista histórico los enfoques bajo la Constitución del Imperio Alemán de 1871 y Constitución Republicana de Weimar de 1919 son de suma importancia. Muestra de ello es que el Tribunal Constitucional Federal Alemán en sus más tempranos pronunciamientos sobre la lealtad federal (ej.: STCF 1, 299; 12, 205) hace explícita referencia a la obra de SMEND. En concreto, son sentencias sobre el principio fundadas en las «profundas raíces dogmáticas e históricas» del ordenamiento alemán. Por ello, todavía hoy las posturas doctrinales sobre el principio del Bundestreue en las fases iniciales de formación del Estado alemán son de decisiva importancia. En el caso español los trabajos sobre el desarrollo histórico de este principio destacan por su ausencia. Carencia que dificulta entender su significado y alcance. Ha sido precisamente el objetivo de este trabajo el llenar este vacío.

Private law rights as democratic participation: Kelsen on private law and (economic) democracy

In the first edition of his famous treatise Reine Rechtslehre, Einleitung in die Rechtswissenschaftliche Problematik (translated as Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory), Hans Kelsen makes the claim that the existing liberal, property rights-based private law of his era is a ‘democratic form of law’ and that private law rights are ‘political in the same sense as those rights that are usually characterized as political rights.’ In this article, I aim to explain how Kelsen developed his theory of private law and private rights within the theoretical and methodological framework of the ‘Pure Theory of Law’ and its philosophical underpinnings of relativism and ‘value neutrality,’ culminating in the connection between private law and democracy. I wish to highlight, in particular, the still often underappreciated fact that the Pure Theory saw itself as a critical project, aimed at exposing and exorcizing ‘ideology.’ To Kelsen’s contemporary audiences, drawing a connection between ‘capitalist’ private law and democracy must have appeared particularly counter-intuitive against the backdrop of one of the most important – if now almost forgotten – political debates of the Weimar era, the debate on ‘economic democracy’ (‘Wirtschaftsdemokratie’). It was a powerful trope in the inter-war period that the capitalist economy and its institutional safeguards – private, labour, commercial, and corporate law – were ‘undemocratic.’ I submit that Kelsen’s statement – flipping the contemporaneous revisionist-socialist rhetoric on its head – may be better understood in the larger context of the precarity of democracy in the Weimar period and especially in the context of a theoretical and political challenge that contrasted the existing ‘bourgeois’ parliamentary democracy with a ‘true,’ ‘social’ democracy that would realize conditions of social and economic justice. By connecting ‘capitalistic’ law with ‘democracy’ and ‘socialistic’ law with ‘autocracy,’ Kelsen once more underscores that democracy, properly understood as a formal principle, is irreducible to substantive justice.

Experiência ficcionalizada em Das Leben Geht Weiter, de Hans Keilson

Durante o período entre guerras na Alemanha, conhecido como República de Weimar, prevaleceu enquanto tendência literária a Nova Objetividade, que preconizava uma escrita objetiva, documental e engajada em contribuir para a politização do público leitor. Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar o primeiro romance publicado por Hans Keilson, Das Leben Geht Weiter (1933), e apontar de que maneiras a obra, confessamente inspirada em experiências pessoais do autor, insere-se e destaca-se no escopo da Nova Objetividade. Procuramos investigar no texto do romance a representação da sociedade alemã na mencionada época, que se faz, sobretudo, através da perspectiva subjetiva do protagonista Albrecht Seldersen.

German Liberalism and the Origins of Presidential Government in the Weimar Republic

AbstractMost historians associate Germany’s transition in 1930 to government by presidential emergency decrees based on Article 48 of the Weimar constitution with authoritarian conservatism, and th...

Normative Konfliktlagen: Eheschließungen mit AusländerInnen in Deutschland als administrative und interkulturelle Herausforderung (ca. 1900–1930)

Abstract The article deals with the role of the registry office and registrars in the legal implementation of binational or intercultural marriages in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, from the turn of the 20th century until the 1930s. As the article shows, these marriage applications posed a manifold challenge for the actors involved; on the one hand, in dealing with “strangeness” and, on the other, in the administrative-bureaucratic synchronization of legal and social norms. Above all, the question of gender relations, demographic fears, and eurocentrist as well as racist ideas were ultimately decisive for the perception and handling of such couple constellations and had a massive influence on the scope of action for both the fiancées and the registrars.

역사 속 민주시민 교육의 성과와 한계 - 독일 바이마르공화국 사례를 중심으로

일사에서 바이마르 공화국은 1차 대전의 패전의 결과로 수립되어 독일인들에게 환영받 지 못한 국가체제라는 부정적 이미지와, 최초로 의회민주정 체제로 수립되어 일반 독일인 의 참정권과 노동자 사회복지 정책을 추진하는 등의 성과를 거두었다는 긍정적 이미지가 혼용되어 있다. 이런 바이마르 공화국 시기는 민주시민화 문제가 갖고 있는 근대성의 위기 가 표출된 시기라고도 볼 수 있다. 따라서 이 시기를 민주시민 교육과 연관지어 살펴보았 다. 바이마르 공화국은 독일 역사에서 정당 정치를 통해 최초로 민주시민 교육을 실시하였 고, 서구 민주주의가 전개되는 과정 속에서 바이마르 체제의 성립과 붕괴는 오늘날 현대 사 회의 민주시민 교육에 시사점이 크다고 할 수 있다. 바이마르 공화국의 민주 시민화는 지속적인 혼란과 긴장 상태가 이어졌는데, 그 배경으 로는 국제정치적 난국이 처음 출범한 독일 민주 공화국의 정치 안정과 경제 회복에 장애물 이 되었기 때문이다. 바이마르 공화국 말기로 갈수록 민족주의적인 경향이 강하게 표출되 었다. 그것은 베르사유체제와 지속적인 사회. 경제의 위기 속에, 독일 바이마르 공화국 민 주주의 체제에 대한 반발과 책임전가가 이루어진 데 그 원인이 있다. 바이마르 공화국은 14년 동안 무려 16차례나 내각이 바뀌었다. 이는 바이마르 공화국 체 제가 출발에서부터 입헌 군주제적 그늘 아래 취약한 기반 위에 있었다는 사실, 그리고 연속 되는 불운한 상황 전개의 압박에 효과적으로 대응할 안정적인 기반이 존재하지 않았다는 사실을 여실히 보여준다. 1920~1926년 정부에 안정적인 기반을 제공할 수 있는 대연정을 모색하는 노력들은 대부분 실패로 끝났다. 실패한 이 사례들은 근본적으로 혁명을 통해 급 진적으로 수립된 바이마르 의회주의의 태생적인 구조적 위기와 연결된다는 평가를 받는다.

Management of technological innovation: high tech R&D in the GDR

Fundamental changes in the management of technological innovation took place over the course of the 40-year history of the German Democratic Republic. This article analyzes management culture in electronics and microelectronics R&D, as well as at Carl Zeiss Jena. R&D directors of the 1950s and 1960s, whose careers started in the Weimar or Nazi era, had a professional ethos and managerial style not rooted in state socialism. This article analyzes their approaches to management according to criteria such as reliance on authority and hierarchy, promotion of communication, and importance attached to political conformity. Developments in R&D management at Carl Zeiss are traced up into the 1980s. The role of the Stasi (secret police) in high tech R&D is discussed.

Judenhass und Judenmission. Das Verhältnis der Hamburger Evangelisch-Lutherischen Landeskirche zum Judentum

Abstract How does a Lutheran church behave towards Jews when its tradition cultivates deep-seated hatred of Jews, but sees the theological task of missionizing them to Christianity? Using the example of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg, the essay tries to understand how the relationship with Judaism developed during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. In the Nazi era, the church welcomed racist anti-Semitism, but did not introduce the »Aryan paragraph« in the church. She partially and only secretly fulfilled her duty to protect baptized Jews and their descendants as church members. It was only in the 1950s that a changed attitude towards Judaism began and for the first time there started a dialogue.

The Last Dwelling before the Last: Siegfried Kracauer’s Critical Contribution to the Modernist Housing Debate in Weimar Germany

Abstract In early twentieth-century Germany a population explosion in its big cities created a housing crisis. A widespread and heavily medialized debate prompted a search for solutions and triggered a rhetoric of the last dwelling. From large communal estates to subsistence-level dwellings, a new type of housing was propagated in newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, films, guidebooks, and advertisements. Siegfried Kracauer, architect, journalist, and author, also became engaged in this debate, willfully reinterpreting New Objectivity’s aesthetics of things (Dingästhetik) both in architectural critiques for the Frankfurter Zeitung and in his novel Ginster. This article analyzes Kracauer’s critical contribution to the modernist housing debate in the Weimar Republic.

125 Years German Central Committee for the Fight against Tuberculosis (DZK)

The German Central Committee for the Fight against Tuberculosis (DZK) celebrates this year its 125th birthday. On this occasion, the DZK as one of the oldest TB organizations worldwide is looking back on the development during its history and records the results in a comprehensive book, summarized in this article. In the book, the various political changes with their impact on the DZK are mirrored, starting with the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the so-called "Third Reich", the two German states separated after the Second World War and the current FRG. Tuberculosis (TB) was the dominant widespread disease in the 19th century, today it is the leading infectious disease worldwide. As a consequence of migration, this affects also Germany. After meanwhile - in particular in 2015/16 - risen numbers of new cases (especially of those not born in Germany, which in 2019 accounted for 72 % of all cases), the impact of drug-resistant tuberculosis (in 2019, 11.4 % of all new cases had some resistance (384 cases), including 87 cases of MDR-TB, and of these 8 cases of XDR-TB and 27 cases of pre-XDR-TB), as well as the high proportion (81,5 %) - in 2019 - of open and thus very infectious pulmonary TB among new TB cases in Germany, impressively show that TB continues to be a health problem that should not be underestimated and that is increasingly concentrated in risk groups (socially disadvantaged persons, people from high-prevalence countries, homeless people, drug addicts, alcoholics, HIV-infected persons). The DZK therefore continues to play an important role in TB control as a link between the national and international organizations responsible for combating TB.