The Viennese Café and Fin-de-Siècle Culture was published in January 2013 by Berghahn Books. In the statement below, the editors explain the rationale for the collection.
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Month: May 2013
New Perspectives on World War II and Central Europe
Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War: Goals, Expectations, Practices is a collection of essays edited by Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff, and Dieter Langewiesche, and published by Berghahn Books in December 2012. In this blog post, the editors explain how the collection sheds new light on our understanding of Germany’s European allies during the Second World War.
Until now, research on the Second World War in Europe has focused on two main areas: on the one hand, the individual countries, and on the other, the two big “blocs”: the Allies and the Axis Powers. On the part of the Allies, historians made the point very early that states with different political systems and values managed to cooperate temporarily while still striving to achieve their respective goals. Awareness of this was heightened by the sudden shift from the partnerships in the Second World War, to the reality of the Cold War between previous allies the United States and the Soviet Union and the East/West division of the European continent by the Iron Curtain.
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Three Case Studies from the Award-Winning Nature of the Miracle Years
Nature of the Miracle Years: Conservation in West Germany, 1945-1975 by Sandra Chaney, appeared in paperback in August 2012. In the post below, the author discusses the three case studies that form the backbone of the book. Berghahn Books is proud to draw attention once more to Nature of the Miracle Years, which won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2009.
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A rewarding part of this project involved writing three cases studies which focus on preserving a scenic gorge, landscaping a canalized river, and restoring “wild” nature to a managed forest. Taken together, these stories capture important shifts in West German efforts to restore varying degrees of naturalness in their intensively used landscapes. Research took me to the Black Forest, the Mosel Valley, and the Bavarian Forest, and to the homes and offices of dedicated conservationists. Whether perusing Black Forest Society records in the basement of a retired forester or reviewing hundreds of postcards protesting the Mosel Canal in the Foreign Office archives, I was struck by the daunting challenge conservationists faced in promoting sustainable uses of nature when more powerful groups favored exploiting it and when legal and administrative support systems for conservation remained weak.
Continue reading “Three Case Studies from the Award-Winning Nature of the Miracle Years ”
Will “the real Vienna” please stand up?
Anne Marie Scholz’s From Fidelity to History: Film Adaptations as Cultural Events was published by Berghahn Books in April 2013. In what follows, Scholz discusses the experience of touring Vienna and seeing parts of the city made famous by The Third Man.
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The still on the cover of my book—from the 1949 British/U.S. co-production The Third Man–depicts the American Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten). He’s had a few too many drinks, and has just seen his old friend Harry Lime—a friend he believed dead— disappear somewhere on the square “Am Hof” in post-WWII Vienna. He is torn between doubts over his own sanity, unrequited love for Lime’s Czech girlfriend Anna, relief that his friend may still be alive, and near certainty that Harry is mixed up in a vicious black market racket. The darkness and mysterious aura of the Vienna square reinforces the haunted expression on Holly’s face. His predicament—that of an enterprising but unwelcome American pulp fiction writer stumbling through the labyrinth of postwar Europe–is inextricably linked with the city where he finds himself.
Hot Off the Presses – New Journal Releases for April/May
Historical Reflections
Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 2013
Featuring writing on the ideas of Claude Langlois, specifically his work concentrated on women, religion, and the French Revolution.
Transfers
Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2013
Special section on Media and Mobility, featuring articles on interactions between physical movement and communicational media.
Projections
Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2013
Focusing on the topic of violence in movies, a subject of continuing controversy and discussion, with articles on television and film.
Critical Survey
Volume 25, Number 1, Spring 2013
With articles dedicated to the life of Shakespeare, from a variety of angles ranging from biofiction to what we would recognize as more traditional biography.
Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 2013
Special issue on Postcolonial Memory Politics in Educational Media, with articles focusing primarily on Europe.