Housemaids, Renegades and Race Experts: The Nazi Re-Germanization Procedure for Polish Domestic Servant Girls

This article examines the everyday construction of racial and ethnic identities during the wartime Third Reich by focusing on a special programme designed to ‘re-Germanize’ Polish girls whom the Nazis sent to work for German families as domestic servants. It interrogates the various cultural attitudes and gender stereotypes that went into the larger project of defining Germanness as well as the ways in which interactions between state functionaries and ordinary civilians influenced this enterprise. Although the existing historiography tends to disregard the impact of popular opinion on Nazi social engineering initiatives, the experiences of these ‘racially valuable’ girls indicate that the formation of an exclusivist ‘ethnic community’ (Volksgemeinschaft) depended on the direct participation of civilians, German and non-German alike. By examining the implementation of this strange programme, the article demonstrates that local and individual processes of identity formation and community-building played a crucial role in shaping the parameters of National Socialist population policy.

Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/2/214?rss=1

Arsenale judischen Wissens: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der ‚Encyclopaedia Judaica‘

Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/2/312?rss=1

Rural Autonomy and Popular Politics in Imperial Villages

Late medieval sources record over a hundred imperial villages without a territorial overlord. Apart from representation in the diet, their constitutional status resembled that of imperial free cities. Only a handful survived the early modern pressures of state formation and territorialisation. This essay examines the political culture and external relations of five rural communities which retained immediate ties to the emperor until the end of the Ancien Régime. Gochsheim and Sennfeld near Schweinfurt, Sulzbach and Soden near Frankfurt am Main and Gersau in present-day Switzerland exercised self-government with minimal external interference. Political regimes were relatively inclusive and integration attempts by neighbouring powers—often their official ‘protectors’—met with sturdy resistance. Communal statutes and chronicles, visual representation and copious litigation reveal strong attachment to the Empire, even at Gersau, where direct contacts ceased in the fifteenth century. Occasionally fierce inner tensions were balanced by the villagers’ pride in their collective freedom. Key imperial characteristics such as representative institutions, the authority of custom and jurisdictional means of conflict resolution scaled right down to the smallest units. More generally, the often overlooked case of imperial villages highlights early modern alternatives to centralization, the multilateral negotiation of local autonomy and the resilience of rural republicanism in the Holy Roman Empire.

Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/2/194?rss=1

‚Grossreinemachen im Osten‘: Feindbilder in deutschen Feldpostbriefen im Zweiten Weltkrieg

Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/2/329?rss=1

Response to Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself

Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015, pages 228-231
10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029823
Joshua L. Rosenbloom

Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029823?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R

On reading Fear Itself

Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015, pages 232-236
10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029824
Ira Katznelson

Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029824?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R

The role of Southern political power in Ira Katznelson’s Fear Itself: what can we learn from additional sources?

Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015, pages 213-220
10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029821
Price Fishback

Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029821?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R

The New Deal and the origins of someone else’s time

Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015, pages 221-227
10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029822
Jefferson Cowie

Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029822?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R

Race, region, and the new deal: reflections on Ira Katznelson’s Fear Itself

Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015, pages 206-212
10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029820
Gavin Wright

Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029820?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R

Fear itself: the new deal and the origins of our time

Volume 56, Issue 2, May 2015, pages 205-205
10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029819
Craig Phelan

Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1029819?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R