IMPERIAL GERMANY REVISITED

Continuing Debates and New Perspectives

The German Empire, its structure, its dynamic development between 1871 and 1918, and its legacy, hav e been the focus of lively international debate that is showing signs of further intensification as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Based on recent work and scholarly arguments about continuities and discontinuities in modern German history from Bismarck to Hitler, well-known experts broadly explore four themes: the positioning of the Bismarckian Empire in the course of German history; the relationships between society, politics and culture in a period of momentous transformations; the escalation of military violence in Germany's colonies before 1914 and later in two world wars; and finally the situation of Germany within the international system as a major political and economic player. The perspectives presented in this volume have already stimulated further argument and will be of interest to anyone looking for orientation in this field of research.

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THE MASCULINE WOMAN IN WEIMAR GERMANY

“The author makes an important contribution to the scholarship in that she has worked through the printed material systematically to give an authoritative account of a female sub-culture under the republic. As far as I am aware, she is the first to do so in the English language. The book therefore fills an important gap in Weimar cultural/gender studies.”  •  Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick

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HITLER’S VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT AND THE DYNAMICS OF RACIAL EXCLUSION

Violence against Jews in Provincial Germany, 1919–1939

"Translated from the German by Bernard Heise
Based on a close reading of newly discovered, disturbing archival sources, Michael Wildt, one of the most prolific historians of the Third Reich, shows that anti-Jewish violence was already omnipresent in Nazi Germany before 1939. Hitler’s Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion demonstrates that the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft was not just a product of Goebbels' propaganda machinery but brutal reality - a national community based on daily terror. Wildt's book is a must-read for every historian of twentieth-century Germany and the Holocaust."  •  Thomas Kühne, author of Belonging and Genocide: Hitler's Community, 1918-1945

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STATE AND MINORITIES IN COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY

Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, “guest” workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads)and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the post-totalitarian East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.

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THE RETURN OF JAZZ

Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change

“…an eminently readable and thoughtful inquiry into the life and works of a man whose career in many ways parallels not just the West German jazz scene, but West German culture as a whole between 1950 and 1980. His work is thus both a valuable introduction to Berendt’s thought as well as an important intervention into current scholarship about the role of global and American culture in the development and contestation of West German identity.”  •  German Politics & Society

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GERMANS NO MORE

Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933-1938

Translated from the German by Alan Nothnagle

“A welcome complement to historians' accounts of Jewish reactions to Nazi persecution before 1939. It richly maps the spatial, emotional and psychological effects of social abandonment, propaganda and the atomization of everyday life that made many Jews come to feel what National Socialist policy had always intended--that they were Germans no more."  •  H-German

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BETWEEN MASS DEATH AND INDIVIDUAL LOSS

The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D. C.

“Taken together, this volume is a welcome departure from the usual literature on memory and trauma which ignores what came before the war and treats what happened after only in relation to the Holocaust. This excellent volume enables us to look at the history of death as a whole beyond the break of 1945 and to see influences and continuities throughout the last century. The volume delivers on the promise of the introduction to open up new avenues for research and raise new questions and should be a welcome addition to the library of every scholar of modern Germany.”  •  German Politics & Society

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'VIENNA IS DIFFERENT'

Jewish Writers in Austria from the fin de siècle to the Present

“An impressive account of the origins and development of what is now a tradition of Jewish writers in Vienna. The author does a very good job of presenting the very large subject she has taken on and of putting the turn-of-the-century writers within a chronological context that brings out how a ‘tradition’ of Jewish writers in Vienna has developed over the last century…This is an impressive contribution, with a welcome approach.”  •  Steven Beller, Washington D.C.

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MAX LIEBERMANN AND INTERNATIONAL MODERNISM

An Artist's Career from Empire to Third Reich

Although Max Liebermann (1847–1935) began his career as a realist painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis’ persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.

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THE DEVIL'S CAPTAIN

Ernst Jünger in Nazi Paris, 1941-1944

Author of Nazi Paris, a Choice Academic Book of the Year, Allan Mitchell has researched a companion volume concerning the acclaimed and controversial German author Ernst Jünger who, if not the greatest German writer of the twentieth century, certainly was the most controversial. His service as a military officer during the occupation of Paris, where his principal duty was to mingle with French intellectuals such as Jean Cocteau and with visiting German celebrities like Martin Heidegger, was at the center of disputes concerning his career. Spending more than three years in the French capital, he regularly recorded in a journal revealing impressions of Parisian life and also managed to establish various meaningful social contacts, with the intriguing Sophie Ravoux for one. By focusing on this episode, the most important of Jünger’s adult life, the author brings to bear a wide reading of journals and correspondence to reveal Jünger’s professional and personal experience in wartime and thereafter. This new perspective on the war years adds significantly to our understanding of France's darkest hour.

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SCREENING THE EAST

Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

“…contains useful and nuanced readings of the best-known films dealing with themes related to unification, as well as highlighting some equally interesting lesser-known works, in order to provide a rounded picture of German cinema’s engagement with these issues in the past 17 years. I am not aware of any other publication that covers such a range of material and this in itself makes the book a valuable contribution to the field.”  •  David Clarke, University of Bath

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GERMAN LITERATURE IN A NEW CENTURY

Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations

Edited by Katharina Gerstenberger and Patricia Herminghouse

“This outstanding collection of insightful and thought-provoking articles marks a significant advancement of scholarship on contemporary literature. While contributions (remarkable for their consistently high quality) are valuable on their, all benefit from being read in conjunction with the others.”  •  German Studies Review

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ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN MODERN GERMANY

Hardy Survivors in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

“This narrative of the rise and repeated adaptation of the German environmental movement to a variety of social and political contexts is a fascinating one…Ultimately, Markham's sociological analysis of German nature protection organizations proves readable and engaging. He makes significant efforts to write a broadly accessible work. Discussions of sociological theory are limited to a methodological chapter and part of the conclusion; otherwise, his prose is clear and highly organized. This book therefore would make an excellent introduction to the history of German environmentalism.”  •  H-German

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AFTER THE EVENT

The Transmission of Grievous Loss in Germany, China and Taiwan

"This is a remarkably creative work of scholarship. The stories told in it are at once personal and analytical, local and transnational, empirical and imaginative; the horizon of comparison these stories cover is both unusual and original. The result is a creative combination of intimate historical knowledge and comparative historical narratives, acute observations of historical forces and moving accounts of victims of historical injustice – there is simply nothing like this in the existing literature."  •  Heonik Kwon, London School of Economics

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NEW AUSTRIAN FILM

“New Austrian Film introduces a generation of Austrian and Austrian-trained Central European filmmakers to world cinema scholars and cinephiles, opening a vista on a resolutely political and multicultural cinema ... This volume is well-balanced and conceived to provide historical, theoretical, and aesthetic frameworks that will draw both the professional and the enthusiast into a contemporary cinema too long overlooked as a distinctive voice on the international stage.”  • Katherine Arens, University of Texas at Austin

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German Politics and Society

Volume 29, Number 2, special issue on “The Berlin Wall After Fifty Years”

German Politics and Society is a peer-reviewed journal published and distributed by Berghahn Journals. It is the only American publication that explores issues in modern Germany from the combined perspectives of the social sciences, history, and cultural studies. The journal provides a forum for critical analysis and debate about politics, history, film, literature, visual arts, and popular culture in contemporary Germany. Every issue includes contributions by renowned scholars commenting on recent books about Germany.

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Aspasia

The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History

Volume 5

Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook dedicated to publishing the best new scholarship in women’s and gender history of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE). It aims to transform European women’s and gender history by expanding comparative research on women and gender to all parts of Europe, creating a European history of women and gender that encompasses more than the traditional Western European perspective. Aspasia particularly emphasizes research that examines the ways in which gender intersects with other categories of social organization and advances work that explores transnational aspects of women’s and gender histories within, to, and from CESEE. The journal also provides an important outlet for the publication of articles by scholars working in CESEE itself. Accordingly, contributions cover a rich variety of topics and historical eras, as well as a wide range of methodologies and approaches to the history of women and gender.

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Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society

Volume 3, Number 1, special issue on “Teaching about Islam and the Muslim World: Textbooks and Real Curriculum”

JEMMS explores perceptions of society as constituted and conveyed in processes of learning and educational media. The focus is on various types of texts (such as textbooks, museums, memorials, films) and their institutional, political, social, economic, and cultural contexts. The construction of collective memory and conceptions of space, the production of meaning, image formation, forms of representation, and perceptions of the "self" and the "other", as well as processes of identity construction (ethnic, national, regional, religious, institutional, gender) are of particular interest. Special importance is given to the significance of educational media for social cohesion and conflict. The journal is international and interdisciplinary and welcomes empirically-based contributions from the humanities and the social sciences as well as theoretical and methodological studies.

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