Suchergebnisse

Recent historical studies on the organizations of German expellees and their influence on West German political culture highlight the insincere attitude and deception by the whole West German political establishment toward the expellee politicians and activists and their cause. One study in this field is Matthias Stickler's important book "Ostdeutsch heißt Gesamtdeutsch," and a more recent one by Manfred Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen?, takes Stickler's thesis even further. It creates the impression that the expellee organizations, highly dependent on the government for financial and political support, had no option in this matter and were even helpless in that they had to accept the noncommittal rhetoric and the West German government's unwillingness to obligate West Germany for their cause. In this article, I probe this portrayal of the expellee politicians and activists as objects rather than subjects of German politics by inquiring into the political and public relations activities of the German Sudeten Council (Sudetendeutscher Rat) in the field of foreign policy during and around the tenure of Hans-Christoph Seebohm as the leader (Sprecher) of the German Sudeten Expellee Homeland Society (Landsmannschaft) (1959–1967). The Sudeten Council is a non-party association; one half of its members are elected by the federal assembly of the German Sudeten Landsmannschaft and the other half by the political parties of the Bundestag. As well as being a politician of the expellee organization, Hans-Christoph Seebohm pursued the longest political career in the German federal cabinet—seventeen years. He served as Minister of Transportation and Mail of the Federal Republic from 1949 to 1966 under Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard. To date, no monographic work has been written about Seebohm.

Unmittelbar nach 1945 standen sich in der sowohl in Ost- wie auch in Westdeutschland entstehenden Kultur des offiziellen Gedenkens und Betrauerns der gefallenen deutschen Soldaten des Zweiten Weltkriegs zunächst zwei miteinander rivalisierende Wahrnehmungs- und Erinnerungsweisen gegenüber, die im Zuge des Kalten Kriegs schließlich eine Art Kompromiss eingingen. Der vorliegende Essay zeigt, dass in beiden deutschen Staaten die offiziellen Gedenk- und Trauerkulturen durch eine Reihe ähnlicher Konzepte und Eigenarten gekennzeichnet waren. Als besonders auffällig und einzigartig im Vergleich zu den entsprechenden nichtdeutschen Kulturen des Trauerns und Gedenkens erweist sich hier die Anerkennung gefallener deutscher Soldaten als "Opfer des Kriegs und der Gewaltherrschaft" im Westen beziehungsweise als "Opfer des Faschismus und des Militarismus" im Osten. In den Gedenkkulturen der beiden deutschen Staaten bezeichnet der Begriff "Kriegsopfer" eine sehr heterogene Gruppe von Menschen, ermordete Juden wie deren Schlächter aus verschiedenen deutschen Militäreinheiten, die später im Einsatz fielen. (ICA2)

This article discusses a screenplay of the television thriller ArmerNanosh (Poor Nanosh), written in 19891 by the famous Germanauthor Martin Walser and Asta Scheib.2 The screenplay deals withthe relations between Germans and Germany's Sinti, or Gypsy, populationin the shadow of Auschwitz,3 a subject that has hardly beentouched upon by postwar German authors and dramatists.

Using the framework of genocide, this volume analyzes the patterns of persecution of the Roma in Nazi-dominated Europe. Detailed case studies of France, Austria, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, and Russia generate a critical mass of evidence that indicates criminal intent on the part of the Nazi regime to destroy the Roma as a distinct group. Other chapters examine the failure of the West German State to deliver justice, the Romani collective memory of the genocide, and the current political and historical debates. As this revealing volume shows, however inconsistent or geographically limited, over time, the mass murder acquired a systematic character and came to include ever larger segments of the Romani population regardless of the social status of individual members of the community

In contrast to most other countries, both Germany and Israel have descent-based concepts of nationhood and have granted members of their nation (ethnic Germans and Jews) who wish to immigrate automatic access to their respective citizenship privileges. Therefore these two countries lend themselves well to comparative analysis of the integration process of immigrant groups, who are formally part of the collective "self" but increasingly transformed into "others." The book examines the integration of these 'privileged' immigrants in relation to the experiences of other minority groups (e.g. labor migrants, Palestinians). This volume offers rich empirical and theoretical material involving historical developments, demographic changes, sociological problems, anthropological insights, and political implications. Focusing on the three dimensions of citizenship: sovereignty and control, the allocation of social and political rights, and questions of national self-understanding, the essays bring to light the elements that are distinctive for either society but also point to similarities that owe as much to nation-specific characteristics as to evolving patterns of global migration