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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]

This study offers a transnational history of the Holocaust based on a study of a well-known Berlin Jewish family, the Veit Simons. The authors use this tangled family history as a point of departure for a transnational history of the Holocaust. In particular, they show how to read the links connecting the protagonists to the wider world as a means of writing transnational history. Their history also shows the interconnectedness of perpetrators and victims. Moreover, they demonstrate the importance of the category of class for our understanding of the experience of Holocaust history. While the Veit Simons could hold off some of the persecution, eventually the Holocaust brought them to the ground, resulting in a story of illness, death and loss. Finally, the authors read the story from a feminist angle, offering an examination of the interplay of gender, class and persecution, examining how gender played out in coping while losing one’s former class. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anticipating the end of the Second World War, the Dutch government in exile classed all civilians with German nationality as enemy citizens. Tens of thousands of German nationals who resided and worked in the Kingdom of the Netherlands were stripped of their assets, regardless of political allegiance or place of residence, and without any Dutch compensation. Some were arrested, imprisoned and expelled; others left of their own accord. Many appealed against their status as enemy citizens, in the hope of clearing their names and regaining their property. This article discusses the categorization and classification of German nationals as enemies of the state, and examines how politics of citizenship and nationality triggered policies of exclusion, but also informed policies of inclusion. Whilst German nationality determined a civilian's enmity, a seemingly homogeneous Dutch national identity constituted the criteria for so-called 'de-enemization' (ontvijanding). German nationals were judged on their wartime and post-war behaviour, and had to prove that they behaved like 'good Dutch citizens'. In addition, ethnicity, class and gender were used as parameters to judge civilians classed as German nationals. As the case studies in this article illustrate, thousands of civilians categorized by the Dutch government as German citizens were unjustly affected by the status of their (former) German citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the absence of extensive national archives in Germany comparable to London or Paris. Records of Heiliges Romisches Reich as part of the state archives in Vienna; Archives of the Deutscher Bund and of 1848/9 in Frankfurt; West German archives in Koblenz; Local or municipal archives as not belonging to state archives; Importance in social and economic history.

From the beginning of the 1950s, milking machines increasingly replaced former agricultural workers in West German stables who now preferred better-paid jobs in the industrial sector. The investment necessary for the milking machines led to new ideas about economic thinking and production-optimization, which changed the interplay among human, animal and technology. Within less than two decades, cattle farming in the Federal Republic of Germany changed from an animal-lacking, devastated economic branch of manual labour to a mechanized profit-oriented industry, which produced more than was demanded. This essay challenges the prevailing historical interpretation in which the industrialization of farming has been described as one of the last stages of capitalism's penetration of society. Central aspects of capitalism remained unfulfilled: there was neither a free market nor individual autonomy of entrepreneurs, and wage labour literally vanished within the barns. A close-up view of the practices at the place of action reveals an arbitrary mixture of efficiency and care that made the industrialization of animal farming differ from the traditional narrative of capitalistic expansion. When animals are the resources to be utilized, capitalist economic activity reaches its limits at the point where the animals' vital processes begin to malfunction. By bringing together human-animal studies with economic history, this article offers new insights into the role of animals as living beings in history as well as into the expansion of capitalism in an economic sector that continued to operate according to its own rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers advice on the use of German archives. Passage of laws in 1987 regulating the use of archives; Laws of access to follow the thirty-year closure rule; Possibility of extension to sixty or eighty years for records subject to the secrecy of tax, social or medical information; Examination of records concerning private persons to be opened thirty years after the person's death.

This article examines the relationship between soldiers’ contemporaneous accounts of the First World War and writers’ later representations of combatants’ experiences in novels and other types of ‘war literature’. It argues that post-war literary depictions of such experiences closely resembled soldiers’ own testimony, serving to disseminate and legitimize combatants’ earlier, private revelations of the horrific reality of modern warfare. At the time and afterwards, these accounts of the fighting co-existed with patriotic and heroic descriptions of the war. Here, I investigate the transnational transfer and reception of literary works. Through a comparison of literary treatments of the conflict in Britain and Germany, the article highlights the significance of the outcome of the First World War for its longer-term cultural legacy. The war was described in similar terms in both countries, but criticism of the war effort proved much more divisive in Germany than in the United Kingdom, affecting the ways in which military conflict was remembered and understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centralises a unique collection of ego documents created under Communism in which Polish former child forced labourers articulate their war experiences. A comparative analysis of them with recent testimonies reveals that these ego documents offer a more nuanced depiction of Germans and display richer information on the specific working conditions and daily routine for children than the contemporary ones. A comparative reading of the archival testimonies with their published equivalents shows how the streamlining of a publicly acceptable version of the past under Communism went both ways, that is, at times foregrounding the propaganda content of autobiographical wordings, but also at other moments downplaying this element. The collection increases our understanding of child forced labour experiences during the Second World War, specifically the ways in which children perceived that experience, and offers insights into the negotiated appropriation of Communist ideology at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a comparative study of crusade portrayals in French and German history textbooks published between 1871 and 1914. The crusades had been events that had moved practically all of Europe in the Middle Ages. In the course of the nineteenth century the crusades once more became a matter of scientific, cultural and therefore public interest. Crusade narratives portrayed these events as the climax and the heroic period of the Middle Ages and thus offered highly varied patterns of interpretation. Although in this nationalist age France and Germany consigned themselves to national history and thus the glorification of one's own nation, this article will not only analyse the national and sub-national (denominational, Laicist …) images conveyed via thisEuropeanevent. It will also ask if and how the tension between nationalism and concepts of Europe were made subject of discussion in this historical ‘European event’. Therefore, it focuses on school textbooks as a source that, during the period in question, was responsible for a significant portion of national mythology and cultural memory as conveyed by media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay explores the process of 're-civilising' the Germans after the barbaric crimes of the Nazi dictatorship. After exploring the linguistic resonances of the concept of 'civility', it takes a closer look at the exemplary processes of cultural demilitarisation, recovery of politeness, and sensitisation for human rights. The article concludes with some recommendations for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to establish the extent to which the history of music can offer new perspectives on the modern period. We need a change of perspective, moving away from the aesthetic debates on music to an investigation of actual experiences and practices of participants. Audience behaviour provides a link between musical production and society. In order to make opera houses and concert halls visible as social spheres, this article draws on examples from the musical life of Berlin and London in the 1800s. Music should no longer be regarded as a peripheral phenomenon, but instead as a potential historical question. The analysis of musical performances prompts at least one: music matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that early modern Calvinism in particular can lay claim to a transnational space in history. It focuses on how a Calvinist transnational network came into existence during the second half of the sixteenth century. It points to the role of repeated persecution, exodus and emigration in shaping both Calvinist theology and culture. Without this transnational experience of repeated emigration and persecution the international solidarity of Calvinists across Europe would not have existed by the early seventeenth century and the pan-European relief work for suffering co-religionists in Germany during the Thirty Years' War would not have been possible. Taking its departure in the exodus of a number of prominent merchant families from Lucca in Italy in the 1560s it follows their history for the next couple of generations, showing first their Huguenot affiliation during their stay in France and their experience of the Wars of Religion. It then follows them via Frankfurt and Nuremberg to Antwerp and Stade in Northern Germany until they finally settled in Amsterdam and London. In this process it emphasises how they intermarried with other Calvinist emigrant families from Flanders (with whom they formed trading companies) and it highlights their active roles within the refugee Calvinist churches which sprang up in the cities where they resided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Memory' is often confused and mistaken for myth; this is in turn connected with the widespread use of mistaking collective mythology and common myth for the idea of a 'collective memory'. This essay discusses memory and history terminology in the context of the generic concept 'classical tradition'. The case study explored here - the nineteenth-century Walhalla 'temple' near Regensburg in Southern Germany - is an attempt to discuss the classical tradition, focusing on archaeology and architecture rather than philology), within the parameters of the memory and history debate in contemporary historiography. The essay aims to develop the position of the iconic and symbolic importance of antiquity and the classical tradition in the memory and history debate as well as in historical writing. The concluding remarks emphasise the necessity of historicising tradition and its genealogies, conceptualised here as a tradition of legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Olympic Games are a major media event that draws attention all over the world. This tremendous media coverage gives the host country in particular the opportunity to introduce itself to a global audience and at the same time to transport a national identity as well as a political statement. This article shows, by analysing the architecture of the Olympic Games in Rome (1960) and Munich (1972), how a political statement can be transported by sports facilities. This kind of view assumes an understanding of politics, which not only includes political action in general. Item cultural events can be used as an object of investigation for analysing a political self-conception. In this way the article points out the function of sports facilities besides the capacity as a place for competition. The 'new political history', which develops in combination with the 'cultural history', argues that symbolism is a mode of communication that gives access to the sociopolitics of the past. The article elaborates the different factors which impact on the meaning of a symbol and points out the different opportunities for interpretation. According to Umberto Eco, the article understands the stadium as a sign that is turned, primarily by media and social interpreting, into an architectural symbol. In a last step it takes this interpretation in a broader context to define a political statement of Italy and Germany at the respective time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article examines various types of civil collaboration in Odessa, the capital of a short-lived province of Transnistria, granted to the Kingdom of Romania in 1941 for its continuous support of Germany's war against the Soviet Union. The term 'collaboration' is used here to denote co-operation with the enemy against the interests of one's country, i.e. complicity with the occupying power in economic exploitation of the area, as well as participation in a puppet government and its pro-occupation propaganda efforts. Drawing on the existing academic research, as well as primary material unavailable to the general reader, this study reconstructs the war-time experience in Odessa and analyses the nature of collaboration, its extent and motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the history of Jewish partisans during the Second World War, with the general aim of encouraging further research into the subject. Despite the facts that partisan activity was a significant part of the war experience for Jews, and an important dimension of the conduct of the war against the Third Reich and its accomplices, the history of Jewish partisans occupies only a minute portion of Holocaust and World War II historiography. This article analyses the treatment of Jewish partisans from the perspective of the Nazi perpetrators, while also seeking to shed light on the evolving self-perceptions of the partisans themselves. The focus is the Nazi categorization of the Jewish partisans as ’criminals’, equating them with ‘bandits’ and ‘plunderers’. In large part, this accusation shaped Nazi actions and simultaneously played a critical role in the partisans' imagination of, and construction of their own identity as ‘Jewish fighters’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the rote of commodities in the construction of identities by examining the use of the bicycle in the Netherlands in comparison with and contrast to Germany. It argues that cyclists in Germany mid the Netherlands used the bicycle to construct and display a certain identity and to express certain views of themselves as well as of the society in which they lived. The popularity of the bicycle in Dutch society can thus be explained by its particular meaning in that society. The vehicle became an important object in Dutch national identification, whereas in Germany, despite its widespread use especially among the working class, the bicycle WHS viewed as outdated and inferior technology by the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the nineteenth century the German Turner movement used bodily exercise as a programme for national improvement. This was not only directed at the self-cultivation of the individual but was also considered a duty to the nation. Exercise thus incorporated and embodied national identity while enemies within and without demanded ever more exertion. Exercise was also considered the true test for national unity in the face of modern dangers such as immorality and materialism. Both goals were, however, under constant threat, since the ultimate vulnerability rested in the body itself and in the demand for its ultimate perfection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'Mitteleuropa' developed in Germany around 1800, albeit without its being deployed in a unitary way. The concept's articulation reveals a variety of patterns. First, a Mitteleuropa defined meridionally, which extended from the North Cape to Sicily; second, a Mitteleuropa given shape by lines of latitude reaching from the Atlantic to the Urals or at least the Black Sea; and finally, a Mitteleuropa located in the centre of the continent. The meridional and, above all, the last named, centre-periphery model were developed into major political platforms of German nationalism. Nature 'itself', geographers but also non-geographers argued, had predisposed the vast territory stretching from the Rhine to the mouth of the Danube and the Weichsel River, perhaps even as far away as to the swamps of Rokitno, to form a geopolitical unity under German hegemony. In point of fact, neither in the case of Mitteleuropa nor in any other similar ones does nature dictate a particular politics. The upshot of this essay therefore is: 'Spaces do not simply exist, spaces are produced!' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with various concepts of space-time constellations related to the countries around the Baltic Sea, in German and Finnish historiography known as 'Northeastern Europe'. Rooted in German national and historical thinking of the middle of the nineteenth century, the concept of 'Northeastern Europe' first emerged in the framework of German spatial perceptions of the southern borderlands of the Baltic Sea. This area was perceived as being dominated by the Germans in terms of culture, politics and economy. After the Second World War, such perceptions ceased to be politically correct and vanished from the agenda of policy makers and historical thinkers. In the 1970s, the German historian Klaus Zernack revitalised the subject, i.e. historical research on the Baltic Sea area, but not the earlier concept. In fact, the Baltic Sea area as a whole became a topic of historical thinking within the framework of Zernack's concept of the spatial divisions in the overall history of Eastern Europe. 'Northeastern Europe' now appeared as a synonym for the Baltic Sea area in general, including Russia and Poland as decisive historical factors. In the late 1980s, historical research on the Baltic Sea area became a topic of research also in Great Britain and the Nordic countries. Opening up politically after the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Baltic Sea area became a favourite object of research even in Poland and the Baltic states. Since then, whether there is something like 'Northeastern Europe' at all is a much debated question. But despite related concepts and notions the contents of 'Northeastern Europe' seem to become more and more congruent with the Baltic Sea area either as such or as a definite part of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Otto von Bismarck exercised great power as Chancellor of the German Empire, historians have overlooked the extent to which it was threatened during the 1880s by the imminent accession of Crown Prince Frederick William. The article focuses on the means by which Bismarck strove to maintain his power, and how many of his plans were thwarted by the crown prince. The heir to the throne had to also fend off his wife's campaign to enact radical liberal reforms during her husband's coming reign. The ability of the crown prince to resist the campaigns of both his wife and Bismarck shows that his influence was indeed considerable, and that estimates of Bismarck's power are in need of revision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the different images of national identity as reflected in German debates on art and culture before and during the World War I. Importance of visual arts in German culture and society; Interpretation of war in terms of German national culture and identity; Germans' lack of spiritual unity before the war; Revival of truly German qualities during the war.

Focuses on film censorship or the denazification of German historical films in post-World War II in West Germany. Importance of the films' denazification in re-educating the Germans; Evaluation of films produced during or shortly before the German Nazi government; Stages of the denazification process; Denazification guidelines.

Discusses the gender roles and problems of conformity for single women in early modern Germany. Cultural roles deemed appropriate for single women; Distinction of single women from girls, wives and widows; Value placed on virginity; Citing of two cases in Rothenburg court.