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Strange New Worlds
(2022)
The Indo-Pacific is fast becoming the main arena for great power competition. After explaining the regional power hierarchy, the paper describes how the EU defines like-mindedness as an explicit partnership category in the Indo-Pacific and which of the countries qualify. Finally, the paper also examines the structural problems the EU faces when projecting power into a faraway region such as this one. The paper argues that for China’s rise to remain peaceful and in the absence of fully regional security arrangements, other Asian actors are increasingly looking for new regional structures that combine elements of cooperation, competition and containment vis-à-vis China - including a more pronounced EU role in the region.
While academic mobility has generally been positioned in the literature as a ready, at-will movement of people and ideas, this chapter demonstrates how the conditions of mobility and immobility “all at once” impact knowledge production and exchange. By offering a more nuanced window into the experiences of scholars in exile, this chapter challenges dominant discourses of academic mobility and draws on lessons learned from within liminal spaces of knowledge production to elicit more response within higher education communities. Context-rich examples reveal the interpersonal tensions and cultural shifts—including gender, ethnic and race-based stereotypes and discrimination—that affect intellectual outputs, further problematizing the conceptualization of knowledge production in human capital terms. Lessons gleaned from Scholars at Risk (SAR) and related programmes suggest support structures that amplify scholars’ agency; more broadly, higher education should consider ways of adapting to its diverse knowledge producers, rather than supporting the acclimation to its current environment.
Speaking the Unspeakable
(2019)
This article discusses the filmic representation of the infamous Wannsee Conference, when fifteen senior German officials met at a villa on the shore of a Berlin lake to discuss and co-ordinate the
implementation of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question. The understanding reached during the course of the ninety-minute meeting cleared the way for the Europe-wide killing of six million Jews. The article sets out to answer the principal challenge facing
anyone attempting to recreate the Wannsee Conference on film: what was the atmosphere of this conference and the attitude of the participants? Moreover, it discusses various ethical aspects related to the portrayal of evil, not in actions but in words, using the medium of film. In doing so, it focuses on the BBC/HBO television film Conspiracy (2001), directed by Frank Pierson, probing its historical accuracy and discussing its artistic credibility.
A prelude to total war?
(2018)
The conflict between Italy and Ethiopia in 1935–36 has been framed as a prelude to the Second World War and as a watershed towards ‘Total War’. One perspective has so far been neglected: the assessments of foreign military observers. This article examines American, British, German, and Austrian views on the operations and thereby also analyses the mindset of European officers at the time. The core argument emerging from these reports is that the war was perceived as a rather ‘normal’ colonial conflict. Neither the use of gas, nor the employment of aircraft against civilians was seen as a taboo or created significant outrage among the military observers. Instead, they lauded the Italians’ steady logistical efforts and employment of artillery and airpower to overcome nature and the enemy’s resistance.
The article is a review of Patrick Gray's latest monograph: Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic: Selfhood, Stoicism and Civil War. Gray analyzes Shakespare's and his characters' representation of the 'self' in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, with Coriolanus used for comparative purposes. The book induced a lively discussion of its content in academic community.
The involvement of the two German states in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War
(2020)
This master thesis will analyze the background of the involvement of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War. In both Korean states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as well as the Republic of Korea (ROK), the so-called humanitarian aid that was provided to them in the form of medical and economic assistance to help surmount the hardship of the postwar period is remembered with great appreciation to this day. However, critical views on the German engagement in Korea are still relatively hard to find. In this paper, two exemplary cases will be studied: the GDR’s city reconstruction project in the North Korean cities of Hamheung and Heungnam and the FRG’s medical assistance to the ROK by means of the West German Red Cross Hospital in Busan. By looking at primary sources like governmental documents, this thesis will examine the geopolitical conditions and particular national interests that stood behind the German development and humanitarian aid for the Korean states at that time, thus shedding light on the political goals the two German states pursued, and the benefit they expected to derive from their engagement in Korea. Sources consulted include primary archival materials, secondary sources like monographs, journal articles, contemporary newspaper articles, and interviews with contemporary witnesses.
Despite its fame, the Winged Victory of Samothrace keeps on fascinating not only every visitor of the Louvre museum, but also the eye of the connoisseur. Despite its recent restoration in 2014, some of its mysteries might indeed never be solved, like the identity of its sculptor. But this fascination also comes from the statue itself, its majestic aesthetics and lack of head, in a similar fashion perhaps to the loss of the Venus of Milo’s arms. Since her discovery more than 150 years ago by Charles Champoiseau, she’s been on the throne at the top of the Daru stairs at the Louvre Museum. This hellenistic masterpiece, that Champoiseau called a ”mousseline de marbre”, became a must see in the Paris museum, together with the Mona Lisa and its other chefs d’oeuvre. But this statue’s fate is not set in stone. Many modern artists, like Omar Hassan or Xu Zhen, have tried to make it their own and give it a new depth. Recently, Beyonce and Jay-Z also offered a new perspective by including this Louvre masterpiece, among others, in their political masterstroke, the video clip ”Apeshit”. This paper seeks to decode the meanings and symbolism of these new versions of the Nike.
A quote from Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk, 1996) may seem unusual for a Classicist. Nevertheless, this famous sentence summarises the contents of this special issue of thersites perfectly. As specialists in classical reception frequently witness, there is a sort of déjà-vu effect when it comes to the presence of Antiquity within popular culture. In 2019, to try to better understand the phenomenon, Antiquipop invited researchers to take an interest in the construction and semantic path of these “masterpieces” in contemporary popular culture, with a particular focus on the 21st century.
Empire of destruction
(2021)
Nazi Germany killed approximately thirteen million civilians and other noncombatants in deliberate policies of mass murder, overwhelmingly during the war years. Almost half the victims were Jewish, systematically destroyed in the Holocaust, the core of the Nazis? pan-European racial purification program.00Alex Kay argues that the genocide of European Jewry can also be examined in the wider context of Nazi mass killing. For the first time, Kay considers Europe?s Jews alongside all other major victim groups: captive Red Army soldiers, the Soviet urban population, unarmed civilian victims of preventive terror and reprisals, the mentally and physically disabled, the European Roma, and the Polish intelligentsia. He shows how each of these groups was regarded by the Nazi regime as a potential threat to Germany?s ability to successfully wage a war for hegemony in Europe. This groundbreaking work combines the full quantitative scale of the killings with the individual horror.
Rebuilding an Austrian Army
(2019)
After the Second World War, a new Austrian Army (the Bundesheer) was formed to guarantee the country’s armed neutrality. But the period between 1938 and 1945 remained a point of contention. While some Austrian officers had been sidelined, the majority had served in the Wehrmacht and thus shared experiences and soldierly values. As Cold War realities necessitated a professional experienced army, a group around Erwin Fussenegger (1908–1986) dominated the new Bundesheer and contemplations about reforming the military culture and value system were postponed; while at the same time, the Bundesheer managed to prevent becoming a mere continuation of the Wehrmacht.
Paths Are Made by Walking
(2021)
Introduction
(2021)
This edited volume examines entanglements and disentanglements between Africa and East Germany during and after the Cold War from a global history perspective. Extending the view beyond political elites, it asks for the negotiated and plural character of socialism in these encounters and sheds light on migration, media, development, and solidarity through personal and institutional agency. With its distinctive focus on moorings and unmoorings, the volume shows how the encounters, albeit often brief, significantly influenced both African and East German histories.
Catholicism
(2019)
Stuck in the past?
(2019)
After the Civil War the Spanish army functioned as a guardian of domestic order, but suffered from antiquated material and little financial means. These factors have been described as fundamental reasons for the army’s low potential wartime capability. This article draws on British and German sources to demonstrate how Spanish military culture prevented an augmented effectiveness and organisational change. Claiming that the army merely lacked funding and modern equipment, falls considerably short in grasping the complexities of military effectiveness and organisational cultures, and might prove fatal for current attempts to develop foreign armed forces in conflict or post-conflict zones.
In her writings on ancient myth, the British author Natalie Haynes moves women to the centre of attention. Her two latest books, A Thousand Ships and Pandora’s Jar – a fiction novel and a non-fiction one – approach this topic from two different perspectives. This interview takes stock of Haynes’ motives and methodology as well as of the challenges she faces in the process of writing.
Interview with Alana Jelinek
(2021)
Alana Jelinek is an art historian and artist — “an artist making art, and also writing about art”, in her words — , a former European Research Council artist in residence at the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and currently teaching in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. Her art has revolved mostly around the issues of post- and neocolonialism and their connections with neoliberalism — a more implicit topic in her works from the 1990s on the “tourist gaze” developed into an interest in museums, collecting and ethnography throughout the past two decades. In this interview, she talks to thersites about the role of classical heritage and ancient art in her own work.
This article focuses on the feminist reception of Zenobia of Palmyra in Great Britain during the long nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. A special focus lies on her reception by the British suffragettes who belonged to the Women’s Social and Political Union. Even though Zenobia’s story did not end happily, the warrior queen’s example served to inspire these early feminists. Several products of historical culture – such as books, pieces of art, newspaper articles and theatre plays – provide insight into the reception of her as an historical figure, which is dominated by the image of a strong and courageous woman. The article will shed light on how exactly Zenobia’s example was instrumentalised throughout the first feminist movement in Britain.
Spring Issue
(2021)
During the phases of mobile warfare, the ethnically and religiously very heterogeneous population in the border regions of the multi-ethnic empires suffered in particular. Even if the real military situation in the course of the war hardly gave cause for concern, the image of disloyal ethnic and national minorities was widespread. This was particularly the case when ethnic groups lived on both sides of the border and social and political tensions had already established themselves along ethnic or religious lines of conflict before the war. Displacements, deportations and mass violence were the result. The genocide of the Armenian population is the most extreme example of this development. This anthology examines the border regions of the Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg empires during the First World War with regard to radical population policy and genocidal violence from a comparative perspective in order to draw a more precise picture of escalating and deescalating factors.
Forging an Italian hero?
(2019)
Over the last two decades, Amedeo Guillet (1909–2010) has been turned into a public and military hero. His exploits as a guerrilla leader in Italian East Africa in 1941 have been exaggerated to forge a narrative of an honourable resistance against overwhelming odds. Thereby, Guillet has been showcased as a romanticized colonial explorer who was an apolitical and timeless Italian officer. He has been compared to Lawrence of Arabia in order to raise his international visibility, while his genuine Italian brand is perpetuated domestically. By elevating him to an official role model, the Italian Army has gained a focal point for military heroism that was also acceptable in the public memory as the embodiment of a ‘glorious’ defeat narrative.
Crimes of the Wehrmacht
(2020)
Of the up to eighteen million men who served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, ten million were deployed at one time or another between 1941 and 1944 in the conflict against the Soviet Union, a theatre of widespread and sustained mass violence. In order to determine how extensive complicity in Nazi crimes was among the mass of the regular German soldiers, it is necessary first of all to define what constitutes a criminal undertaking. The sheer brutality of the German conduct of war and occupation in the Soviet Union has overshadowed many activities that would otherwise be rightly held up as criminal acts.
History without borders
(2020)
More than Walls
(2019)
If Germany and Europe turned their attention to Latin America, they could extend the transatlantic partnership by adding new partners and focussing on new issues without breaking ties with Washington. However, the countries of the region have differing views of Europe. Mexico is a special case in Latin America because of its close ties with the US, and the economic, political, and strategic interests that it shares with Europe. There is a need for Europe and the US to work together more closely in order to counterbalance China’s growing influence.
On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to fight the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Between August 1982 and February 1984, the US, France, Britain and Italy deployed a Multinational Force (MNF) to Beirut. Its task was to act as an interposition force to bolster the government and to bring peace to the people. The mission is often forgotten or merely remembered in context with the bombing of US Marines’ barracks. However, an analysis of the Italian contingent shows that the MNF was not doomed to fail and could accomplish its task when operational and diplomatic efforts were coordinated. The Italian commander in Beirut, General Franco Angioni, followed a successful approach that sustained neutrality, respectful behaviour and minimal force, which resulted in a qualified success of the Italian efforts.
Both Libanius in his Autobiography (ca. 374) and Theodoret in his biographical sketch of the monk Macedonius in his Religious History (ca. 444) draw their readers’ attention to the accusations of magic as an everyday event in Late Antiquity. Yet there are differences between the ways in which they present their theme. Some of these differences pertain to genre conventions of autobiography and Christian hagiographic writing, but these are further conditioned by the concrete expectations of the intended audience and the authors’ different religious beliefs. While both are primarily engaged in creating different types of role models, the charge of magic functions as a narrative moment that shapes the character of the relevant hero differentially.
The German Sonderweg thesis has been discarded in most research fields. Yet in regards to the military, things differ: all conflicts before the Second World War are interpreted as prelude to the war of extermination between 1939-1945. This article specifically looks at the Franco-Prussian War 1870-71 and German behaviour vis-a-vis regular combatants, civilians and irregular guerrilla fighters, the so-called francs-tireurs. The author argues that the counter-measures were not exceptional for nineteenth century warfare and also shows how selective reading of the existing secondary literature has distorted our view on the war.
The involvement of the two German states in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War
(2020)
This master thesis will analyze the background of the involvement of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War. In both Korean states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as well as the Republic of Korea (ROK), the so-called humanitarian aid that was provided to them in the form of medical and economic assistance to help surmount the hardship of the postwar period is remembered with great appreciation to this day. However, critical views on the German engagement in Korea are still relatively hard to find. In this paper, two exemplary cases will be studied: the GDR’s city reconstruction project in the North Korean cities of Hamheung and Heungnam and the FRG’s medical assistance to the ROK by means of the West German Red Cross Hospital in Busan. By looking at primary sources like governmental documents, this thesis will examine the geopolitical conditions and particular national interests that stood behind the German development and humanitarian aid for the Korean states at that time, thus shedding light on the political goals the two German states pursued, and the benefit they expected to derive from their engagement in Korea. Sources consulted include primary archival materials, secondary sources like monographs, journal articles, contemporary newspaper articles, and interviews with contemporary witnesses.