Suchergebnisse

Virtually every account of European history after the fall of the Roman Empire identifies 'Europe' with Christian civilisation, echoing, consciously or otherwise, the universalist claims of the Byzantine emperors, the popes and the western Roman emperors. Yet it is also the case that Islam possessed a European presence from the eighth century onwards, first of all in Spain and the Mediterranean islands, and later, from the mid-fourteenth century, in the Balkans, where the Turks were able rapidly to establish an empire which directly threatened Hungary and Austria. The lands ruled by Islam on the European land mass have tended to be treated by historians as European only in geographical identity, but in human terms part of a victorious and alien 'oriental' civilisation, of which they were provincial dependencies, and from which medieval Spanish Christians or modern Greeks and Slavs had to liberate themselves. Yet this view is fallacious for several reasons. In the first place, there is a valid question about our use of the term 'civilisation', which Fred Halliday has expressed as follows:'Civilisations' are like nations, traditions, communities – terms that claim a reality and authority which is itself open to question, and appeal to a tradition that turns out, on closer inspection, to be a contemporary creation.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. The antifascist committees; 2. Conflict communities of the western Erzgebirge; 3. Into the abyss; 4. Taking power in Niemandsland; 5. Surviving in Niemandsland; 6. The politics of antifascist rule; 7. Antifascists and the wider population; 8. The politics of Soviet occupation; 9. Lessons of Niemandsland

Germany remains a leader in Europe, as demonstrated by its influential role in the on-going policy challenges in response to the post 2008 financial and economic crises. Rarely does the composition of a national government matter as much as Germany's did following the 2009 Bundestag election. This volume, which brings together established and up-and coming academics from both sides of the Atlantic, delves into the dynamics and consequences surrounding this fateful election: How successful was Chancellor Angela Merkel's leadership of the Grand Coalition and what does her new partnership with the Free Democrats auger? In the face economic crisis, why did German voters empower a center-right market-liberal coalition? Why did the SPD, one of the oldest and most distinguished parties in the world self-destruct and what are the chances that it will recover? The chapters go beyond the contemporary situation and provide deeper analyses of the long-term decline of the catchall parties, structural changes in the party system, electoral behavior, the evolution of perceptions of gender in campaigns, and the use of new social media in German politics

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Charts and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations and Key Foreign Terms Used in the Text -- Introduction -- 1 The Auswärtiges Amt of the German Reich, 1871-1945 -- 2 The Foreign Affairs Question in Occupied Germany, 1945-49 -- 3 The Return of the German Diplomats -- 4 Foreign Policy without a Foreign Office, 1949-51 -- 5 The Foreign Office's "Childhood Illnesses," 1949-55 -- 6 Personnel Policy, 1949-55 -- 7 The Leadership Structure in the Auswärtiges Amt, 1951-55 -- 8 The Career Diplomats and Adenauer's Foreign Policy -- Conclusion -- Appendix: The Auswärtiges Amt, 1951-June 1955 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Along with the fundamental transformation of Europe marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989 posed other challenges for West German policymakers, including the Tiananmen Square massacre; the Libyan chemical warfare facility in Rabta; the notorious German-Chilean colony in Chile; the Salman Rushdie case; the dispute over short-range nuclear missiles; the KSZE trial; and the steps toward the EU and currency union

Diephouse reviews Solidarity in Europe: The History of an Idea by Steinar Stjerno.

This historiographical review discusses recent literature on cities in modern Central Europe – mainly on Berlin and Vienna – which reflects the great variety of approaches to urban history and underlines the importance of urban history for the study of modernity. The history of urbanisation was a central event in the history of modernity. Especially in the Central European capitals of Berlin and Vienna, where modernisation and urban growth started later and then advanced quicker than in West European cities, all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural modernity and its consequences can be observed in detail.