Tag: Germany

The Rowdy Boy & the Deviant Girl: Constructing Youth in Munich, 1942-1973

by Martin Kalb

Coming of AgeI did not anticipate that I would focus on images or constructs of youth in Munich. My research was originally tied to denazification in Nuremberg, later Bavaria more broadly. That interest took shape as I was working in the Stadtarchiv City Archive in Nuremberg for several months, and while I was helping organize a database tied to individuals with connections to National Socialism. I dug deeper, looked into the main study on denazification in Bavaria at the time, and wondered how Nuremberg might fit into all that. Later on, once I began my Ph.D. program in the United States, I continued to look into the scholarship, maybe with a fresh mind given a broader change in scenery. In this context I was reading through Die Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on microfilm in the library one evening. At the time, it was among the few daily newspapers I could access for Bavaria. One headline struck me: “Bavarian Problems: Youth-Food-Export.” I wondered, how could the state of the young be as important as economic recovery? What was the obsession tied to youth about?

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Karl Marx as a Young Journalist

By Rolf Hosfeld

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Excerpted by Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography by Rolf Hosfeld, Translated from the German by Bernard Heise

Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818. As a young man he was a journalist and an editor for Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal-socialist newspaper published in Germany. The paper was previously edited by Adolf Friedrich Rutenberg, who favored opinionated feuilletons, before Marx replaced him and gained recognition for his practical, evidence-based approach.

Moses Hess was the first communist Karl Marx personally encountered. Both were from the Rhineland, came from bourgeois families, and were under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx made an “impos­ing impression” on Hess upon their first acquaintance in Septem­ber 1841. After their initial encounter Hess had the sense of having met the “greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher now living,” one who would soon—Hess was referring here to the lecture halls of Bonn Univer­sity—“draw upon him the eyes of Germany.”
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The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was both the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany from 1961 to 1989 and the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War.

The Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night and for 28 years kept East Germans from fleeing to the West. The fall of the Berlin Wall happened nearly as suddenly as its rise. On the evening of November 9, 1989, an announcement made by East German government official Günter Schabowski stated, “Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany) or West Berlin.” Crowds of euphoric East Germans crossed and climbed on to the wall in celebration. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the war really over.”

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Browse Berghahn relevant titles:

 

THE PATH TO THE BERLIN WALL
Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany
Manfred Wilke
Translated from the German by Sophie Perl

“…constitutes a superlative model of combining biography with the study of nationalism. The latter constitutes the most novel contribution of this well-researched, straightforward historical depiction of Kohl’s ideology and its impact upon the continuing development of German national identity… Recommended” · Choice

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Berghahn Books at the GSA 2015 Conference!

We are delighted to inform you that we will be attending the annual German Studies Association conference in Washington D.C., on October 1-4, 2015. Please stop by our stand to browse our latest selection of books at discounted prices & pick up some free journal samples. If you are unable to attend, we would like to provide you with a special discount offer. For the next 30 days, receive a 25% discount on all German Studies titles found on our website. At checkout, simply enter the discount code GSA15.

We hope to see you in Washington D.C.!

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Here is a preview of some of our newest releases on display:

GERMANS AGAINST NAZISM
Nonconformity, Opposition and Resistance in the Third Reich: Essays in Honour of Peter Hoffmann
Edited by Francis R. Nicosia and Lawrence D. Stokes†
New and Revised Paperback Edition

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Final Sale in Berlin: What Happened to Berlin’s Jewish Businesses?

Final Sale in Berlin

 

The following is a guest blog post written by Christoph Kreutzmüller, author of Final Sale in Berlin: The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity, 1930-1945, which is newly published this year.

The following is a guest blog post written by Paolo Gaibazzi, Social Anthropologist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO). Gaibazzi is also the author of Bush Bound: Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa. Below, Gaibazzi discusses how ‘staying put’ may shed light on current West African migrations. – See more at: http://berghahnbooks.com/blog/bush-bound-gaibazzi#sthash.xtLXufKN.dpuf

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In History: 71st anniversary of D-Day

“You must prepare the invasion of Europe because we will never win this war unless we bring the war against Hitler on his own land” – Winston Churchill

June 6th will mark the 71st anniversary of The Normandy landings, the day when Western Allies landed in northern France, opening the long-awaited “Second Front” against Nazi Germany. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe, led to the restoration of the French Republic, and contributed to an Allied victory in the war.

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Of related interest, please take a look at some of Berghahn’s recent books on WWII:

 

TO THE BOMB AND BACK
Finnish War Children Tell Their World War II Stories
Edited by Sue Saffle
Foreword by Kai Rosnell Continue reading “In History: 71st anniversary of D-Day” →

Author of ‘Jesus Reclaimed’ Earns German Decoration

The President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Joachim Gauck, honoured Rabbi Walter Homolka with the Officers Cross of the Federal Merit Order.

 

On February 27, 2015, the Prime Minister of the State of Brandenburg, Dr. Dietmar Woidke, handed over the insignia in the state chancellery in Potsdam.

 

Woidke thanked Rabbi Homolka for the establishment of the Abraham Geiger  College in 1999 as the first rabbinical school in Continental Europe after the Holocaust.
Homolka’s initiative in 2013 also formed the School of Jewish Theology of the University of Potsdam, Germany’s Jewish Divinity School. Rabbi Homolka is a professor of Modern Jewish Thought there.

 

 

On the day of the honour Germany’s nationwide tabloid BILD voted Homolka “winner of the day.”

 

 

Rabbi Walter Homolka is author of Jewish Identity in Modern Times: Leo Baeck and German Protestantism (1995) and Jesus Reclaimed: Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene (2015), and co-editor, with Albert Friedlander, of The Gate to Perfection: The Idea of Peace in Jewish Thought (1994). He is the rector of the Abraham Geiger College, Germany’s first rabbinical seminary after the Holocaust, and a professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the School of Jewish Theology of the University of Potsdam in Germany.

 

25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

From 1961 to 1989, the city of Berlin was divided by the most visible sign of the Cold War: a wall more than 140km (87 miles) long. On 9 November 1989, East German authorities announced they would allow free access between east and west Berlin. Crowds of euphoric East Germans crossed and climbed on to the wall, leading to a reunited Germany.

 

Berlin is marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall by “rebuilding” it with glowing white balloons. Some 8,000 illuminated helium balloons will trace a 15km-long section of the wall, snaking around the city, for just one weekend (7 to 9 November). The installation will come to an end on the evening of 9 November, when volunteers will release the balloons and set them free, soaring into the night sky to the strains of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, played by the European Youth Orchestra. The balloons are made out of a biodegradable material so will not harm the environment. For a full story and more information on the event please visit ibtimes.co.uk

 

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Browse Berghahn relevant titles:

 

THE PATH TO THE BERLIN WALL
Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany
Manfred Wilke
Translated from the German by Sophie Perl

Continue reading “25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall” →