Suchergebnisse

After WWII, Germany found itself in physical ruin as well as in a moral shambles. The rebuilding process in West Germany included both economic reconstruction and moral reconstitution. In my paper I argue that these two processes were more closely related than generally believed. While economic instability, measured by unemployment rates, certainly has not caused a greater willingness to come to terms with the National Socialist past, such times seem to have coincided with some of the great historiographical controversies about that past, namely the Fischer controversy, the Historikerstreit, the Goldhagen affair, and the highly controversial, so-called Wehrmachtsausstellung. This paper proposes a model for the relationship and explores possible explanations.

This paper looks at the role of the 'historical crisis' in Jacob Burckhardt's theory of history. By examining how Burckhardt praised the 'crisis' for the ways in which it could accelerate historical processes, the paper challenges interpretations of his work that focus exclusively on its synchronic elements. It also examines the relationship of his theories of the crisis to his views on warfare and on how large-scale wars could serve to speed up historical development. Ultimately, this paper seeks to challenge the easy categorization of Burckhardt as either a conservative or a liberal thinker by suggesting that his work channelled the rhetoric of both his radical and his reactionary intellectual contemporaries.

Power-sharing government resumed in Northern Ireland on 8 May 2007 after a historic agreement was reached between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. Unionist Ian Paisley became First Minister and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), became Deputy First Minister. The Provisional Republican movement has signed up to the decommissioning of weapons and policing in Northern Ireland; and hard-line Unionism has signed up to power-sharing and cross-border bodies. For the vast majority in Northern Ireland the conflict is over after almost a century of political turmoil and more than a generation of violent conflict.It is fitting, therefore, to examine the 'war of ideas' in the revisionist controversy that dominated Irish historiography throughout the period of this conflict. The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of this controversy. The writing on the Easter Rising of 1916 serves to illuminate the discussion and will aid in answering the issue of what the revisionist controversy is all about.In this article revisionism is defined as a re-examination of the ideological roots of current orthodoxy in response to the contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland. The article looks at how a variety of historians have reacted to this violent crisis, and how they concluded that revisionism was necessary: that is, how the deconstruction and re-evaluation of ideology and a new interpretation of history are crucial in understanding such crises of violence (and perhaps thereby defusing the tension). The article examines the nature and extent of this revisionist intellectual response. It recognizes that even though intellectuals are influenced by political conflicts, they do not necessarily follow political agendas.