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This paper seeks to investigate the role played by memory in the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen, BdV) professed attempts to enter into dialogue with Polish society. It also seeks to assess why on occasion mutual recrimination continues to tarnish the wider framework of German-Polish relations and explain the reasons for this phenomenon. The initial focus lies with explaining the continued importance of key, often disputed, elements of the historical encounter between Germans and Poles. To complement this analysis, the latter part of the article considers whether the BdV and its associated organizations have contributed to the wider process of German-Polish reconciliation, or whether the activities of the BdV act as a brake upon full resolution. The paper argues that although in recent years the BdV has attempted to make a positive contribution to German-Polish relations, its chances for success are constrained by its inability to move away from positions that are themselves the product of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set of notarial documents from colonial New Spain (Mexico) offers a view of the long-distance Jesuit missionary network as anchored in a dense local network of intimate relationships. Following the arrest of members of the Society of Jesus in 1767 at the Colegio Espíritu Santo in Puebla de los Ángeles, a scribe is tasked with noting Jesuit belongings. He records unique objects held in safekeeping for local people in Puebla. Using the lens of a theopolitical anthropology, we see how the idea of a God-present in the Eucharist is central not only to the way that the Spanish Crown was prevented from taking the silver items from the chapel, but also to how these sacramental logics account for the accrual of disparate items in each Jesuit's room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History has largely ignored Anglo-Jewish history in the years between the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and their readmittance in 1656 by Cromwell. This article revisits that period and disputes the misconception that the Period of Expulsion left England without any Jews for nearly 400 years. Although the small Jewish population ebbed and flowed with the rising and waning tides of English anti-Jewish hostilities, it nevertheless persevered. This article highlights some of the more well-known and thus well-documented of these Jews, the majority of whom were Crypto-Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Republic of Germany—both before and after 1989—has been influenced deeply by collective memories of the Nazi period and the Holocaust, a seemingly "unmasterable past." In a first phase after unification, memory trends, which had their origin in the mid 1980s, continued, but a second period, beginning around the 1999 move of the capital back to Berlin, however, witnessed the erosion of this older trend and the delayed rise of new memory dynamics. Substantively, there have been three vectors of memory concerning Nazi crimes, German suffering, and the period of division, especially regarding the German Democratic Republic. In this article, I outline the major collective memory dynamics and debates, first from a qualitative and then from a more quantitative perspective where I analyze the holdings of the German National Library. I conclude that an intense period of memory work characterized the postunification years, but the peak of concern was reached several years ago and the German future will be much less beholden to the past. Given inevitable normalizing trends and the unintended consequences of the hegemony of Holocaust memory, Germany's difficult historical legacy increasingly appears to be disappearing or even mastered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes contrasting notions of Heimat and Fremde, as explored cinematographically by three contemporary German filmmakers. The spatial aspect of Heimat, traditionally connected to a particular region or even neighborhood denotes the sense of belonging, whereas the temporal aspect—often associated with childhood and youth—carries the sense of longing. In the second half of the twentieth century, the concept has shifted to include identity, reflection and self-reflection, the loss of Heimat, and even multiple Heimaten. The article argues further that the notions of Heimat and Fremde are not mutually exclusive, but interdependent. Peter Lilienthal's film Ein Fremder concludes that in parts of German society the binary opposites of Heimat and Fremde are still intact. On the other hand, Peter Patzak in Adeus und Goodbye shows how Heimat and Fremde are mutually dependent and include a search for identity and individuality. In Michael Gutmann's travelogue-documentary, Familienreise, the protagonists experience aspects of Fremde and Heimatlosigkeit without ever finding Heimat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]