Suchergebnisse

A review essay on books by: Michael Sturmer, Die Grenzen der Macht. Begegnungen der Deutschen mit der Geschichte([The Boundaries of Power. German Encounters with History] Berlin: Siedler, 1992); Gregor Schollgen, Die Macht in der Mitte Europas. Stationen deutscher Aussenpolitik von Friedrich dem Grossen bis zur Gegenwart ([The Power in Central Europe. The Stations of International Politics from Frederick the Great to the Present] Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992); & Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Grossmachtstellung und Weltpolitik, 1870-1914 ([Position as a Great Power and World Politics, 1870-1914] Frankfurt: Ullstein [see listings in IRPS No. 87]). Sturmer begins by linking national identity & history, arguing that those who determine what should be remembered, develop concepts, & interpret the past will control the future. He explores the Federal Republic of Germany's historical evolution since the seventeenth century, focusing on foreign relations & integrating internal & external developments. Schollgen presents his perception of two central problems of German foreign policy, ie, Central Europe's need to obtain external security, & Germany's need for an equal position. Mommsen includes little on domestic politics, but presents an account of who was primarily responsible for WWI. C. Whitcraft

To deal with the development of Cold War history means to summarize a part of international debates. Nevertheless, the (West) German approach originally had much to do with Allied responsibility of the German question, meaning partition in two states and the possibilities of re-unification. This meant that Cold War history in most cases placed the German question in the centre of research. Only since the 1970s a broader approach not only to European and transatlantic aspects emerged, but also to the inclusion of a world wide view. This was accompanied by the reception and advancement of international methodological debates. Adapted from the source document.

The German and Russian nations share a long relationship. They fought the largest part of the world's largest ever war. Resonances of that conflict and the Cold War that followed it still permeate their contemporary relationship. Under very different political systems, however, "history" is interpreted and responded to very differently. Concern for status and image, as well as geostrategic factors, motivate Russian officialdom's disputing of the "post-Cold War order." Germany is viewed as the pivotal state and nation in Europe. Russia seeks to influence Germany's civil society and political elite in the attempt to obtain favourable policy outcomes. Sympathy for the Russian position within Germany is outweighed by disquiet regarding Russian foreign policy adventurism and its authoritarian regime more generally.

Among the classical authors of sociology, Émile Durkheim passed away the first on 15 November 1917. His conception of the war as well as his ideas of a possible way out of it, therefore, are far from the horizon of experience that characterized the last year of the conflict. His major war writing is a critical analysis of the intellectual sources of German militarism: L'Allemagne au-dessus de tout. Karsenti focuses on Durkheim's examination of the "Über-Ideology", which moulded German nationalism since unification in 1871, especially in the work of Heinrich von Treitschke. Durkheim's book is a censorship of the enemy's warfare. Yet, what is interesting to discover, according to Karsenti, is the particular perspective of Durkheim's investigation. The writing is a critique of all tendencies to reduce international politics to an "Über". Accordingly, for Durkheim, there is a possible way out of the war, yet it has to be read between the lines of his distinction between a "good and a bad tradition" of the moral sciences in Germany.