Tag: Germany

Urban Update: Alexanderplatz Seen as a Site to Improve

In 1990s Germany, Alexanderplatz, a centuries-old public square and transportation hub in Berlin, was seen a site in need of updating. Plans to improve the space, which were a part of post-unification revitalization, are central to Gisa Weszkalnys’ Berlin, Alexanderplatz: Transforming Place in a Unified Germany, which was published as a paperback late last year. Following is an excerpt from the volume, which gives insight into the collaborative process of the planned update.

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In the early 1990s, Alexanderplatz was identified as a problem of urban design. A solution was to be found through an urban design competition, launched by the Senat’s Administration for Urban Development (SenStadt) in 1993. The winning design was to provide the basis for future constructions in the square. Following the competition, the Berlin Senat proceeded to establish a public-private partnership and to sign so-called urban development contracts with prospective investors.

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Blackface in Berlin Play: Racism or Tradition?

In January 2012, a white man was cast for the part of an African American man in “I’m Not Rappaport” for the German adaptation of the U.S. play. The plan to use blackface makeup—common in American theater up until the Civil Rights movement—to change the man’s appearance stirred controversy, and was called out as racist. Co-editor of Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250-1914, Martin Klimke addresses the sensitive subject of race in Germany in light of this event.

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Germany’s place in the Black Atlantic might have been peripheral in a geographical sense. Intellectually and discursively, however, it played an often underestimated but significant role in the formation of modern social, racial, and national identities.

 

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The Rise and Fall of Völkerpsychologie

Before there was cultural psychology, there was Völkerpsychologie. This social science was used as a way of looking at cultures and trying to make sense of them—an attempt often seen as stereotyping. But, in The Mind of the Nation: Völkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851-1955, to be released this month, author Egbert Klautke gives the often-overlooked social science due credit. He shares his thoughts about the volume and this particular form of psychology below.

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Berghahn Books: How would you define “Folk Psychology” and what drew you to the study of it?

 

Egbert Klautke: “Folk Psychology” is an awkward translation of the German term Völkerpsychologie. Originally, it referred to attempts to study the psychological make-up of nations, and as such is a forerunner of today’s social psychology. However, in today’s common understanding, Völkerpsychologie equals national prejudice: it is seen as a pseudo-science not worth considering seriously. Continue reading “The Rise and Fall of Völkerpsychologie” →

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.

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In their own words: The broader context of Small Town and Village in Bavaria

Note: Berghahn recently published Peter H. Merkl’s Small Town and Village in Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life, a study of that region’s modernization efforts in the 1970s and 1980s that led to a considerable reduction in the autonomy of its small communities. Here the author discusses how the decline of iconic village life (and the broader implications) motivated his study:

Immense changes have occurred in German agriculture and in the economic and social life of very small towns, which I explore in my work Small Town and Village in Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life. In many ways, these changes mirror transformations occurring in small towns across the industrialized world. While many people in today’s urbanized society actually come from small town backgrounds or grew up in the countryside and feel nostalgia for the closeness of small communities or for a family farming way of life, these settings have nearly vanished in the last 100 years or so. Where once a majority of the German population were farmers, only a tiny percentage remain so today and most of them are part-time farmers. The majority of really small places have lost their taverns and other local businesses while both schoolchildren and adults commute daily to distant, larger towns.

While the populations of small places decline, the charms of their old historical structures endure, highlighted in art and literature. When we travel through very old towns we are struck by the medieval walls, gates and turrets, and ancient churches that manifest the venerable age of communities that have witnessed centuries of political and social change. Tourists have discovered such places all over Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany where such well-known medieval towns as Rothenburg on the Tauber River or the small villages along the Romantic Road in Bavaria still enchant the visitor.

My book not only focuses on the long-term changes in German agriculture and in fifteen old Franconian mini-towns but also examines the effects of an ambitious modernization project by the Bavarian state that sought to deprive all communities under a certain size of their autonomy and to force them into “administrative unions” with other small places. It was a process not unfamiliar in the U.S. and many European countries, though usually in a more voluntary form, but resulting in far fewer, modernized local units in either case.

The tension between the preservation of these small communities amid the slow dynamics of social change on the one hand and the massive state intervention to modernize Bavarian local government at the periphery on the other is what drew me to this project. It seemed preposterous to force groups of medieval, independent small towns to merge for the sake of modernization. Through my research, which included several mail surveys of mayors, interviews with state and local officials, and statistical materials, I have created a fuller picture of these micro-towns and placed them within the larger hierarchy of German and European levels of government, providing a clearer context for the changes in these localities.

Peter H. Merkl is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has published extensively on comparative and German government and politics, in particular the origin of the West German Republic and German unification.