Suchergebnisse

August 28, 1893: Two French tourists travelling on an English yacht in the harbour at Kiel, Germany are subjected to intensive police scrutiny and then arrested on suspicion of espionage. After a detailed investigation that involves General Staff military intelligence as well as the German embassy in Paris, the two apparent tourists Raoul Dubois and Jean Maurice Daguet turn out to be the French naval officers Robert Degouy and Jacques Marie Joseph Delguey-Malavas. Both had been active as spies in Germany earlier on, and this time were under orders from the French admiralty to investigate and sketch plans of the Dutch and German fortifications along the North Sea and Baltic coasts. In view of the strained political situation between the French Republic and the German Reich, the German chancellor Von Caprivi and Kaiser Wilhelm II were kept constantly informed of the progress of the legal investigation into the case. In December 1893, on the basis of the new German anti-espionage law of July 3, 1893, the two French naval officers were sentenced by the Leipzig imperial court to six and fours years' imprisonment respectively. On July 1, 1894, however, the murder of French president Sadi Carnot prompted Kaiser Wilhelm II to grant the two officers sudden amnesty. Generous as it was, this gesture improved Franco-German relations only briefly. Feeling cheated, the French secret service wanted revenge, and a few months later it tried to compromise the German military attaché in France, an act which eventually developed into the famous Dreyfus case.

What made the author Joachim Ringelnatz go to sea? The man who invented the famous sailor
Kuttel Daddeldu was not »shanghaied« into it, like many another cabin boy of his generation,
i.e. lured on board a ship under false pretences by unscrupulous recruiters. Ringelnatz, who was
born in 1883, shared a dream with many other boys his age: the dream of freedom and travel to
faraway places. At the age of eleven he played with tin marines, collected souvenirs that his
uncle - a captain who sailed the seven seas - used to send him, and devoured novels about overseas countries. Against the wishes of his family, Ringelnatz became a sailor. As a cabin boy on the ELLI, a barque of Oldersum, he sailed to Central America. Life on board was adventurous,
tough, but above all humiliating, and he soon abandoned the idea. The diary account of this voyage, however, was one of his first literary publications. He survived World War I as the commander of a minesweeper in the estuary of the Elbe. Having become famous on european cabaret stages dressed in a sailor costume during the Roaring Twenties, he confessed, not without a hint of coquettishness: "I'm not your honest old sailor," but unmistakable traces of tar and salt water run through his work, whether prose, poetry, drama or painting. It was as a sailor that Joachim Ringelnatz wrote and performed his way into German cultural history. This contribution traces the maritime aspects of the life and work of this "seagoing Saxon," and discusses the references to seafaring, the navy and the sailor's life in the context of the epoch between the German Reich and the decline of the Weimar Republic.

Der erstmals 1942 und 1944 in stark erweiterter Form erschienene "Behemoth" Franz Leopold Neumanns bildete einen Höhepunkt der NS-Interpretation exilierter deutscher Wissenschaftler. Neumann, Jahrgang 1900, hatte in Frankfurt am Main bei Hugo Sinzheimer studiert, war 1928 nach Berlin gekommen, hatte dort eine Anwaltspraxis eröffnet und an der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik gelehrt. Er stand dem linken Flügel der SPD nahe, war ein unnachgiebiger Kritiker des Nationalsozialismus und wurde gleich nach dem 30. Januar 1933 verhaftet. Wenige Wochen später gelang ihm die Flucht nach Großbritannien, wo er an der London School of Economics ein (Zweit-)Studium der Politischen Wissenschaften aufnahm. 1936 übersiedelte Neumann in die USA und trat in Max Horkheimers Institute of Social Research ein, das nach New York verlegte Frankfurter Institut für Sozialforschung.

Rezension zu: Kosmala, Beate; Ludewig-Kedmi, Revital: Verbotene Hilfe. Deutsche Retterinnen und Retter während des Holocaust. Buch und CD-ROM, Verlag Pestalozzianum an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Zürich und Auer Verlag, Donauwörth 2003

Dahrendorfs "Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland" ist in besonderer Weise von den Umständen der noch jungen Bundesrepublik geprägt; das Werk gehört "heute selber zur Frühgeschichte dieses Staates und seiner Gesellschaft". Der Soziologe Dahrendorf (geb. 1929) hatte eine Zeitdiagnose in nationalpädagogischer Absicht und mit sozialliberalem Impetus verfasst - "politischer Traktat, Einführungsvorlesung und Theorie der Demokratie" in einem. Seine Untersuchung war "ein Plädoyer für das Prinzip der liberalen Demokratie" (S. 27). In der Trias von historischer Erklärung, soziologischer Analyse und engagierter politischer Theorie bleibt "Gesellschaft und Demokratie" bis heute eine Ausnahme und kann wirkungsgeschichtlich kaum überschätzt werden.

"Ein wahres Bücherfest wartet auf das Publikum, auf die Rezensenten aber ein hartes Stück Arbeit - und mancher von ihnen reist in diesem Sommer mit schweren Fahnen im Gepäck", schrieb Volker Ullrich in einer Vorschau auf die Verlagsprogramme für den Herbst 2003 (DIE ZEIT, 24.7.2003). Dabei verwies er unter anderem auf Band 4 von Hans-Ulrich Wehlers "Deutscher Gesellschaftsgeschichte". Auf dieses Buch durfte man in der Tat gespannt sein, und so hat die Redaktion der "Zeithistorischen Forschungen" gleich mehreren Rezensenten schweres Gepäck aufgebürdet. Richard J. Evans hat Wehlers Gesamtprojekt der "Deutschen Gesellschaftsgeschichte" mit "einem majestätischen Ozeanriesen" verglichen (Frankfurter Rundschau, 8.10.2003).

Es war eine reizvolle Aufgabe, die Jürgen Habermas (im Zusammenspiel mit Günther Busch und Siegfried Unseld vom Suhrkamp-Verlag) Mitte 1978 Freunden und Kollegen stellte: Wolle man nicht, fragte er an, das bevorstehende Erscheinen des 1000. Bandes der edition suhrkamp (es) zum Anlass nehmen und eine Zeitdiagnose aus linksintellektueller Sicht wagen? 32 Autoren - Wissenschaftler, Publizisten, Schriftsteller - folgten seinem Aufruf und sandten ihre Beiträge ein, so dass aus der 'es 1000' sogar zwei Bände mit insgesamt 861 Seiten wurden. Das Projekt war ambitioniert, obgleich Habermas um einen moderaten Grundton bemüht war. Als Vorbild fungierte der 1000. Band der Sammlung Göschen, "Die geistige Situation der Zeit" von Karl Jaspers, 1931 erschienen. Jaspers' Schrift war ganz dem kulturkritischen Duktus seiner Zeit verhaftet gewesen, hatte er doch die fortschreitende Rationalisierung und Technisierung der Welt als Ursachen einer allgemeinen menschlichen Sinnkrise gedeutet, die nicht mehr innerweltlich zu lösen sei, sondern nur durch den Sprung des Einzelnen in die Transzendenz.

Rezensionen zu: 1) Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W.: Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente. Amserdam : Querido 1947. 2) Schmid Noerr, Gunzelin: Horkheimer, Max. Gesammelte Schriften. Teil: Bd. 5.: Dialektik der Aufklärung und Schriften 1940 - 1950. Frankfurt am Main : Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag 1987

The undertaking that took place during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 is the only one of its kind in the history of maritime warfare. After Japan started the war, the Russian squadron in Port Arthur was to be reinforced by additional naval forces from the Baltic Sea. For the supply of these forces with coal, the Russian government turned to the Hamburg-America Line (Hapag). On the basis of contracts concluded on June 8 and 21, 1904, Hapag assumed the role of general contractor in charge of supplying coal to the vessels on the two routes to Eastern Asia: the Mediterranean/ Red Sea route and the one rounding Africa. As many as eighty steamers were in operation at a time, vessels either belonging to or chartered by Hapag. The main body of the Russian reinforcement squadron rounded Western and Southern Africa and reached Madagascar in December 1904. Up to this point its provision with coal had been carried out according to plan. At the beginning of January 1905, Port Arthur fell into the hands of the Japanese, and the Russian naval forces stationed there (the Ist Pacific Squadron) were eliminated, a turn of events that had far-reaching consequences for the Hapag undertaking. Coal steamers operating eastward of Madagascar were now in greater danger of being attacked by the Japanese, and Albert Ballin, the general director of Hapag, stopped the coal provision project. He insisted that Russia buy the steamers required for this task. He was supported in his point of view by the German Reich government and Emperor William II. The Russian Czar Nicholas II maintained that the Hapag was required to fulfil the contractual obligations it had agreed to, as the continuation of the Russian naval operation would otherwise be impossible. In view of the fact that German- Russian relations were likely to deteriorate if he refused, William II relented. He advised the Russian monarch that the provision of the Russian fleet with coal was a private undertaking of the Hapag and that he could do nothing more than inform Ballin that he was free to act as he saw fit in view of the risks involved. On February 21, 1905, a new contract was concluded according to which eleven steamers were to be purchased from Hapag by the Russians to continue the coal provision undertaking. These ships, which were at anchor in Hamburg, nevertheless ultimately did not supply either the IInd or - presumably - the IIIrd Pacific Squadron. Other Hapag ships were used, being escorted by Russian war vessels to the Indochinese coast. The destruction of the Russian forces by the Japanese fleet in the naval battle of Tsushima of May 27-28, 1905 put an end to the need for coal.

Even today, shipwrecks are common occurrences in shipping. They often turn up only in statistics, while in some cases they serve as the basis for stories about the destinies of crews and ships. Nevertheless, eyewitness reports of the ship disasters of earlier centuries are rare. This source edition is one such eyewitness reports, written in the ship's journal of the brig "Jomfrue Giertrud" of the Danish Royal Greenland Trade Company. Damaged by the ice, the "Jomfrue Giertrud" sank off the west coast of Greenland in February 1799. The ship's journal provides insight into various occurrences on board during the passage to the Danish-Greenland Colonies, and during the winter stay at Julianehåb. Captain Boy Lorentz Petersen gives a gripping account of the state of being "beset", i.e. closed in by the ice, and the loss of the ship. The source transcription, appearing here with a German translation, is supplemented by comments, historical and linguistic background material and information on the captain, the ship and the ice off the west coast of Greenland.