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The paper addresses the impact of the Rhine Crisis of 1840 on Italian countries and explains the role they played in the European State System when the Continent seemed to be on the eve of a general war. As the paper attempts to prove, the crisis seriously alarmed the ruling classes as well as the general public and revealed the internal problems of the Italian countries as well as their deep distrust towards the egotistic and self-serving policies of the Great Powers. The paper therefore introduces the history of Italy during late 1840 within the wider context of European diplomatic history and serves as a probe into the history of the European State System during the Pre-March period in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the ruin in the context of three emblematic modern German sites, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, the Frauenkirche in Dresden and the Reichstag, also in Berlin. Different sites, the author shows, format and present the relationship between past and present in different ways. The paper develops its argument using the views of German philosopher Günther Anders (Hannah Arendt's first husband), and extracts from his diaries and travels in Germany after the Second World War. Anders' views on the ruin are contrasted with those of Georg Simmel and others. The author considers the relationship between, on the one hand, the idea of the picturesque and, on the other, the ruin as a memorial to violent conflict and injustice, in which different modalities of memory can play their part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the issue of collaboration was presented and dealt with in Soviet, Western and post-Soviet Russian and Belarusian writings. Furthermore the paper discusses the national, socioeconomic and political preconditions of collaboration with the German occupation forces in Belarus. The author highlights the relationship of collaboration with the prewar Soviet policies and analyses the politics of Belarusian nationalists and independentist émigrés from 1917 to 1941. The Nazi recruitment of Belarusian exiles of different military, political and intelligence organisations and the funding of Belarusian pro-German oriented right-wing organisations are described. The reactions of the Belarusian civilian population and its attitudes vis-à-vis the German occupation authorities and Soviet partisans at the initial stage of the war are then discussed. The paper underlines the complexity of motives and the variety of forms of collaboration. The collaboration movement in Belarus was far from homogeneous: some people supported the Germans on the basis of their political principles, nationalistic ideas and state-building aspirations; some collaborated because they rejected Soviet economic and cultural polices, while the majority just wanted to survive the war and improve their postwar chances. Particular attention is devoted to the nature and peculiarities of Nazi polices in the occupied territory of Belarus. The harsh measures introduced by Germans (requisitions by the troops, forced labour program, collective reprisals and the genocide of Belarusian Jewry etc.) jeopardised the positive or neutral attitude of the local population toward the Germans, aroused hostility and became one of the main factors that caused the change in attitude. Finally, the paper analyses the transition from collaboration to resistance in late 1943-1944 on the basis of several considerations: the change in the course of the war, the influence of propaganda, and an emerging understanding that the Soviets would emerge victorious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with political as well as economic collaboration. It conceptualises collaboration as a form of cooperation with the occupying power that is - at least to a certain extent - voluntary and goes beyond the search for a pure modus vivendi. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, it presents a synopsis of the framework and central political aspects of collaboration in France. In doing so, it points out the classic distinction between state collaboration and collaborationism, stressing, however, that this distinction is not clear-cut. Both state collaboration and collaborationism interacted with and influenced each other, as is shown by the armed collaboration. Second, the paper problematises one particular dimension of collaboration, which the historiography has rather neglected even though it was the most prevalent and crucial of factors for the occupying power: economic collaboration and especially business collaboration. Focusing on the example of the construction industry, it maps out different patterns of behaviour of companies within the framework of the German policy of economic exploitation and Vichy's economic state collaboration. Even though proper 'economic collaborationism' was as rare as proper resistance, the great majority of enterprises accommodated themselves to the new circumstances. This accommodation could, however, take very different forms. Choices were based on multiple, partially overlapping, partially contradictory logics, and both collaboration and resistance proved to be multidimensional phenomena. It is argued that collaboration is and remains a fruitful concept for the study of occupations, including economic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of the concept of Europe as a source of meaning and object of contested discursive battles during the fundamental transition towards modernity of the Sattelzeit (1750–1850) can hardly be overstated. The Weimar Classics (Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland) made important contributions both to Enlightenment debates about Europe before the French Revolution and to the discursive battles about the continent taking place in the aftermath of the French Revolution in a context of heightened epistemic uncertainty and ideological confrontation. The paper aims to investigate Goethe's representation of Europe as an almost millenarian civilisation endangered at the end of the eighteenth century by a double process of economic and political modernisation. Particular attention is paid to how Goethe rooted his perception of Europe as a civilisation in geographic and climatic assumptions and how he compared the continent to other civilisational entities such as America, China, India or Persia. Finally, the political implications Goethe derived from his perception of Europe as an ailing civilisation shall be contrasted with democratic, romantic and conservative discourses about the continent in the aftermath of the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the thesis that popular music in early twentieth-century Germany was Americanised by shifting the focus from the meaning and reception of music to the way it was produced and disseminated by professionals, from music publishers and composers to bandleaders and critics. Firstly, it stresses a key difference in the way the music business was modernised on both sides of the Atlantic around 1900. While in the US the sheet-music trade became ‘Taylorised’, the music business in Germany, as elsewhere in Continental Europe, was transformed into a rights industry. Secondly, the paper highlights the prominence of Austrian music producers and their repertoire in Germany and suggests that, at least in a business sense, popular music in Germany was Austrianised rather than Americanised. Thirdly, it proposes that ‘Jazz’ after the First World War was hardly a straightforward import of American culture, but a site where incumbents and newcomers to the music profession struggled for position. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the role played by the encounter of history and personal memories in the difficult process of coming to terms with the Stasi in present-day eastern Germany. While historians have made substantial progress over the last two decades in accounting for the wide range of ways in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is remembered by East Germans, the memorials and museums of the reunified Germany remain unable to integrate memories of dictatorial oppression and happiness in everyday life. Sites commemorating state repression are thus often assumed to lack impact on former GDR citizens whose memories differ from official versions of history. These assumptions are tested for the Bautzen Memorial, formerly known as the ‘celebrities’ prison' of the East German Ministry of State Security. Focusing on the differing receptions of GDR memorial sites, this article draws on interviews with two former political prisoners and with visitors to the Memorial who grew up in socialist East Germany. It argues that the open approach of the Memorial, which leaves visitors to draw their own conclusions from the exhibition, allows different stakeholders to find ways of personal engagement with the past at the site despite the disparities with their own memories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the tensions which arose when Schulpforta, Germany's leading humanistic boarding school, was forcibly turned into a Nazi elite school (a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt,or Napola). The time-honoured traditions of Christianity and enlightened humanism previously cultivated at the erstwhile Landesschule zur Pforta (alma mater of Fichte, Ranke and Nietzsche) were swiftly subordinated to the demands of National Socialist ideology. Schulpforta, a former monastic foundation, was radically dechristianised, and the school's Classical curriculum soon served only to emphasise those aspects of Greco-Roman Antiquity which could ‘help the Third Reich achieve its destiny’, portraying the Greeks and Romans as proto-National Socialists, pure Aryan ancestors of the modern German race. The Napola curriculum focused on sport and pre-military training over academic excellence, and contemporary documentary evidence, memoirs and newly obtained eyewitness testimony all suggest that the Napola administration wished to assimilate Pforta with any other Napola. This idea is borne out by comparing the case of Napola Ilfeld, a former Klosterschule(monastery school) with a similar history. By the mid-1940s, Ilfeld had lost almost all connection with its humanistic past. Ultimately, we can see the erosion and Nazification of these schools' Christian and humanistic traditions as exemplifying in microcosm tendencies which were prevalent throughout the Third Reich. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Weimar Germany's economic plight has oftentimes been blamed on reparations in simplistic fashion. Alternative interpretations ignored reparations entirely, instead emphasizing gold standard constraints or wage increases in excess of productivity growth. This paper argues for a strong but subtle link between Germany's slump and these policies. Based on sovereign debt theory, it provides an incentive-based interpretation of the transfer problem, the compensation of reparations by counteracting capital inflows. I argue that the German transfer problem resulted from transfer protection under the Dawes Plan, which gave commercial credits seniority over reparations. This gave Germany a strategic incentive to drive out reparations through foreign borrowing. The Young Plan of 1929 implied a reversal of this seniority scheme, causing a sudden stop in the balance of payments that lasted to the late 1930s. The Young Plan could only have worked in the absence of an international recession; attempts to salvage it in 1931 were necessarily futile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many inhabitants of the Habsburg Empire, the Revolution of 1848 represented a common formative experience, signifying their entrance into the public sphere, their initial participation in politics and civil society. While some revolutionaries were executed or given amnesty, many sought refuge in Zurich, London, Constantinople, and especially Paris. This paper examines this international (and largely 'cosmopolitan') network of 1848ers in exile, focusing in particular on Simon Deutsch (1822-77), a young Austrian Jew who became a radical journalist in Vienna during the Revolution, as well as an ardent proponent of the 'Greater German Solution' [Grossdeutsche Losung], before fleeing the firing squads at the end of 1848. During his thirty years in exile (Zurich, London, Paris, Constantinople, Madrid), this curious figure became involved in the Paris Commune, the International Workingmen's Association, and even helped found the New Ottomans (during his prolonged sojourn in Paris). His contacts with fellow 1848s from the Habsburg Empire and from other European countries (e.g. Karl Marx, Moses Hess) helped inform the perennial tension between liberal nationalism and international socialism that characterised Deutsch's life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the end of the Second World War, American companies with a highly efficient industrial management system prepared the way for globalisation. To understand how 'global players' evolved, this paper investigates the influence of US companies on the internationalisation of German firms between 1945 and the early 1970s and the consequences on German corporate management and competitive strategies. To withstand the so-called 'American challenge', to recapture those markets which had been lost during the war and to enter new geographic markets, German companies resorted to new management strategies. In this context, the adoption of American know-how led to a process of catching up, which finally contributed to globalised corporate growth in German companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay gives an overview on the notion 'Southeastern Europe' as the underlying space concept for political projects in interwar Germany as well as for the German historiography on this area since 1918. More extensively covered are the first steps of institutionalised research on Southeastern Europe in the early 1930s, pointing out the tension between a Germano-centric vision of Southeastern Europe as German 'Kulturboden' or as part of an informal economic Empire and a region in its own right. Second, the paper discusses a controversy between Maria Todorova and Holm Sundhaussen on the process of space construction itself and on how to define best the Balkans resp. Southeastern Europe. The author argues for further on using concepts of historical meso-regions (Geschichtsregionen) such as Southeastern Europe, at the same time being aware of their constructive nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on materials in Polish archives and unpublished papers in the Hoover Institution, this article examines the question of Polish war-time collaboration with the Nazis by focusing on the actions of Władysław Studnicki and Leon Kozłowski, prominent members of the Polish pre-war political elite. These two biographies highlight the nature of contacts between Polish conservatives and German authorities. Studnicki's story demonstrates the futility of collaborationist initiatives in Poland due to Nazi indifference. Insinuations of collaboration against Kozłowski, a member of the pre-war government, reflected the tension between pro- and anti- Sanacja politicians. In the end, the actions of these two men demonstrate that in the absence of a 'Quisling' regime in Poland there was a sliding scale between 'collaboration' and 'co-operation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]