Urban Order and Urban Other: Anti-Waldensian Inquisition in Augsburg, 1393
This article analyses the new meaning persecutions of heretics acquired in later medieval towns during the 1390s, as German free and imperial cities struggled for a greater political autonomy. During the last decade of the fourteenth century, Waldensian heretical communities throughout the German lands became targeted in a chain of inquisitions; a number of these trials took place in South German cities. The context, course and outcome of the anti-Waldensian inquisition in Augsburg (1393), examined here as a case-study, represents the changing perception of heretical communities during the 1390s. Throughout the decade, urban anti-heretical trials emphasized the inherently violent and anti-social nature of the religiously deviant; heretics were habitually portrayed not only as bad Christians, but also as bad citizens. This understanding of heresy and heretics contrasted sharply with the growing city-centric self-consciousness among the urban elites, which stressed crucial connections between the political and religious aspects of urban life. The inquisition, catalyzed by the arrival of an itinerant inquisitor, became a focal point for the contest of political authorities between the participants. As a result, Augsburg’s Waldensian community was instrumentalized in the contest between the internal (secular) and the external (ecclesiastical) authorities over the right to persecute religious heterodoxy, and ultimately over the definition of an urban other.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/34/1/1?rss=1
The Volksgemeinschaft and the Problems of Permeability: The Persistence of Traditional Attitudes in Württemberg Villages
Some historians are intent on implicating all Germans in the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust. This has come to be seen within a new definition of what the Volksgemeinschaft was. The Volksgemeinschaft has long been the subject of scholarly debate. More recently, Michael Wildt has argued that antisemitism was what bound members of the Volk together in a racist community. His impressive evidence does not, however, sustain his argument that all members of the Volk were ‘self-empowered’ by their participation or complicity in antisemitic violence. Evidence from rural Württemberg contradicts his assertions to this effect and presents a more variegated picture of the potentialities for antisemitic violence in smaller communities. The absence of Jews from the overwhelming majority of small communities in Württemberg in the 1930s, and the absence or ineffectiveness of Nazi organizations in these same communities, mean that the two critical conditions for antisemitic violence were missing from most of Württemberg’s rural communes. It is possible that the same may be said for rural communities in some other parts of Germany, including southern Bavaria. Sweeping assertions about antisemitic violence characterizing and shaping society in smaller communities are therefore unhelpful. Extrapolation to nationwide dimensions from a number of well-researched local cases does not provide evidence for Wildt’s all-encompassing argument.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/34/1/49?rss=1
The Impact of Hollywood Film Imports in East Germany and the Cultural Surrender of the GDR Film Control in the 1970s and 1980s
When the first and only Film Week of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was held in New York City in 1975, East Germany saw it as another major success on the road to normalization and international recognition. However, trouble was already brewing under the surface of the GDR film sector, and this was indicative of larger political and cultural trends. Western film imports were becoming ever more important to the yearly cinema programme in the GDR, especially in order to attract the predominantly young film audiences. As the 1970s progressed and East Germany’s economic situation worsened, Western film imports, and especially Hollywood blockbuster movies, became increasingly indispensable to the economic survival of the GDR film sector as a whole. By the early 1980s, the SED officials in charge of cultural affairs and movie selection eventually lost control over GDR film policy. Because of complex and multiplying cultural, political and economic pressures, ideological priorities were relegated to the back seat while economic profit and the financial survival of the East German film sector took centre stage. By the mid to late 1980s, the West and East German film markets, and their lists of top-rated films, increasingly converged as the two countries were dominated by an international and US-dominated film culture. In little more than ten years, East Germany was forced to surrender control of this vital cultural sector and core building block of its socialist identity, and this not only substantially weakened its cultural autonomy but also endangered its political stability and survival.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/34/1/70?rss=1
From Unfit Imperialists to Fellow Civilizers: German Colonial Officials as Imperial Experts in the League of Nations, 1919-1933
At the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was publicly excluded from the European ‘civilizing mission’. The victorious Allies stripped Germany of its overseas empire. The German colonies were awarded to other imperial powers as mandates under the League of Nations. This action was justified by citing colonial atrocities, such as the German campaign against the Herero, which were used to label Germans as ‘exceptionally cruel colonial masters’ and ‘unfit imperialists’. Yet, during the tenure of the League’s mandate system, several former German colonial officials rose to prominence in the League of Nations as ‘imperial experts’. The involvement of German colonial officials in League agencies and events suggests that, although no longer part of an imperial power and officially ostracized from the ‘work of civilization’, Germans remained adaptive contributors to international discourses on empire. In order to determine how individual Germans and lobbying interests were able to make use of the spirit of internationalism to minimize their association with ‘unfit imperialists’ and re-establish themselves as ‘fellow civilizers’, this paper focuses on the interwar careers and interactions of two colonial officials: Dr Ludwig Kastl and Dr Julius Ruppel—former bureaucrats who had served in the African colonies, each of whom became German members on the PMC.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/34/1/21?rss=1
Why does Music Matter?
This essay reviews recent works on the cultural history of music. Arguing that there are not one but several discrete interdisciplinary interfaces at which such work is undertaken, it explores work that analyses musical culture as a site at which ideological politics cohere; studies that examine the place of music in social and cultural practices that served to mark and cross different kinds of space; and work that explores how musical life either articulates the presence of, or serves to constitute, different kinds of community. It emphasises that while the disciplinary dynamics of musicology are such that a greater interest in the contexts of emergence, production and consumption of music is reasonable, historians approach the same problem space from the opposite direction and still need to engage more with problems centred on the musical material than they usually do.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/34/1/113?rss=1