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In his play Duell an der Havel (1954), the German playwright Fritz von Unruh took the liberty to imagine a fictional encounter between historic figures like Frederick the Great of Prussia and President George Washington. In his play, Unruh attempts a difficult mediation between opposing models of Enlightenment governance and the opposition of freedom and duty. Although historic events in Unruh’s play are completely invented and staged, the author argues that the play holds up as a way of thinking about the complex history of the transatlantic relationship between Germany and the United States, from Washington and Fredrick the Great to Trump and Merkel. (DIPF/Orig.)

Historical images originally meant for one national audience can nevertheless influence audiences worldwide. In this contribution, the transatlantic transfer of historical images at the microlevel is analyzed. The author explores how John Ford’s depiction of the American West profoundly influenced Austrian writer Peter Handke, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature. Handke’s work is full of direct and indirect references to John Ford’s life and work. Ford was a pioneer of the Western genre and greatly contributed to cementing the West as the American epic myth. Handke’s ideas about America and the West, as well as many aspects of his artistic life, can be directly traced to the cinema of John Ford, which is characterized by everyday people, the epic landscapes of Monument Valley, and the bonds that hold communities together. For Handke, John Ford served as his teacher; watching Ford’s films was an educational experience about both American history and life itself. Ford’s depictions of the American West imbued Handke with a “prosthetic memory” of the American West without having experienced it firsthand. By examining John Ford’s reception at the microlevel, the author illustrates the power historical images can have over diverse audiences. (DIPF/Orig.)

The author shows how Feuchtwanger’s attitude towards educational aspirations changed through his experience with the rise of fascism in Germany. Feuchtwanger’s play Waffen für Amerika (1946), which he wrote after he fled from Nazi Germany to the USA, deals with the Franco-American military alliance of 1778 against the British in the War of Independence. At the same time, he implies certain parallels to current events. For Feuchtwanger, the forging of a military alliance of Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany was a callback to this earlier European-American cooperation in transatlantic history. The lesson Feuchtwanger wants his audience to learn from this history is to find confidence in the human progress achieved through the European-American alliance and that despite all chauvinistic abuses, both sides of the Atlantic will in the end prevail. (DIPF/Orig.)

Beiträge zur Lehrerbildung 31 (2013) 1, S. 100-106, Kinder beschäftigen sich mit vergangenen Ereignissen und Personen, lange bevor sie in der Schule mit historischen Inhalten konfrontiert werden. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden am Beispiel des Mittelalters das Ausmass sowie die Qualität des historischen Wissens von Kindern auf Kindergarten- sowie der 2. und 4. Klasse der Primarschulstufe mithilfe von Begriffsnetzen, die durch qualitative Inhaltsanalyse herausgearbeitet worden sind, vorgestellt. Es handelt sich hierbei um ausgewählte Ergebnisse des Nationalfondsprojekts «Historisches Denken von 4- bis 10-jährigen Kindern in der deutsch-, italienisch und romanischsprachigen Schweiz». Die in diesem Beitrag präsentierten Erkenntnisse bieten Anknüpfungspunkte für die Unterrichtsplanung, insbesondere wenn Lernen im Sinne der Conceptual-Change-Theorie als Erweitern, Differenzieren und Verändern vorhandener Vorstellungen verstanden wird., Children deal with past events and figures long before they come into contact with historical topics at school. Taking the Middle Ages as an example, we examine extent and quality of the historical knowledge of pre-school children as well as 2nd and 4th graders of primary school by means of conceptual networks worked out using qualitative content analysis. The data presented are a selection from the project «Historical Thinking of Children Age 4 to 10 in the German-, Italian-, and Romansh-speaking Parts of Switzerland» which is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Our findings provide a basis for lesson planning, in particular if learning is understood as broadening, differentiating, and modifying existing concepts in the sense of conceptual change theories.