There is a persisting prejudice concerning women who are engaged in pol'al activities, & that is that they are no longer feminine & that they neglect their families. A brief inquiry showed this view to be in error. Of the 47 F members of the Bundestag interviewed in 1955, 31 were married or widowed & they had a total of 72 children, including adopted children. Also it became apparent that while there are proportionally fewer women representing the Christian Democrats than the Socialist Party, the Christian Democratic deputies had a larger number of children. Tr from IPSA J. A. Broussard.
The majority of students of politics admit that, for pol'al sci to become a sci in reality, it must divorce itself from value judgments. The 3 Sch'ls of thought which uphold such a viewpoint are: (1) the historicism of Max Weber, which, however, ignores the fact that he was a historian rather than a student of politics, & that value judgments are not a problem for historians, (2) logical positivism & analytical philosophy & (3) the tendency of students of politics to erroneously envy the exact sci's. In fact, this detachment with regard to value judgments indicates that the pol'al sci'st is 'neutral' so far as the situations which he analyzes are concerned. This neutralism leads to an apparently conservative & passive attitude on the part of the pol'al sci'st & tends to encourage subversive & nihilistic elements. The more we try to be liberal with regard to values, the more we open the way to 'historical fatalism.' In the long run, 'objectivity' will ruin the foundations of our civilization, & other values will be introduced. We must therefore be careful not to overestimate 'factualism.' Tr. by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.
Various hyp' have been advanced with the view toward analyzing contemporary history with the 19th cent considered the military age & the 20th as one where the pol'al aspect is primary. The military age had its beginnings in the formation of the nation-states of Europe, built upon an army & military service. It gave the army its philosopher (Clausewitz) & reached its peak in the war of 1914-1918. The unification of Italy & of Germany was the height of nationalism. German militarism found its explanation & justification in the importance attributed in the 19th cent to an army which accomplished something a parliament had been incapable of achieving By the end of the 19th cent, the army constitued an end in itself. WWI was the peak of militarism. In divorcing itself from the war, the Oct Revolution inaugurated the pol'al age. The notion of a balance of power is no longer possible. The pol'al age is one in which a view is developing which transcends the pol'al views of individual interests; its duty is to crush Communism to serve the interests of world wide human society. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.
An effective cultural policy must be based on sociol. Until now the culture of Western Europe has had as its basis the division of society into classes. The modern world has brought about a need for a much wider diffusion of culture insofar as modern society no longer is based on individualism. It is with this in mind that the academic plan of the Federal German Republic was developed with the collaboration of sociol'ts. However, the application of the plan cannot be assured unless the sociol'ts decide how the various levels of society will react. Certain ancient notions of the culture, which are regarded as being inviolable, can threaten to destroy any eventual reform. Later, the problem of the respective place of the various sci's can be resolved by sociol'al analysis. Finally, sociol, because of its quality of being a crossroads of the sci's, can lead to a solution of many of the problems of modern society, esp those dealing with the nature of culture. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.
The internat situation of the Church is in itself already a problem since by definition, the Church is in but not of this world. Nevertheless the Holy See exercises a diplomatic activity which is well worth analyzing. The Church, encompassing 17% of the world's pop, has its center of gravity in the West, & primarily in Western Europe, now that the Cath countries of Eastern Europe are under Communist domination. As long as the West appeared to possess superior power & culture, the ties between the Church & Europe helped to facilitate propagation of the faith undertaken by missionaries in non-European countries. The decline of Europe has not had any serious consequences for a church determined to be universal & which has developed a native clergy. On the international level, the Church has an eminent role to fulfill, insofar as human problems are dealt with concerning the ethical relationship of the individual to society. The 'brotherhood' preached by Rome is prior to `coexistence'. The Vatican distinguishes 3 possible forms of coexistence: in fear, in error, & in truth; the latter alone is desirable. But the Church, even in accepting coexistence, cannot be neutral. In sum, the diplomatic influence of the Holy See is becoming more & more widespread, not only with regard to relations between states, but particularly & essentially in dealing with human problems. (Translated by Z. Dana from IPSA).
The author, who travelled in southern Arabia during the winter 1958/59 together with Prof. H. v. Wissmann and Colonel D. van der Meulen, attempts in this contribution to demonstrate the changes in population and economic geography which have occured in Hadramaut during recent decades. Ḥaḍramaut as now understood forms the major part of the British Eastern Aden Protectorate. It consists of three physical regions: 1. The coastal area, occupied by sand and pebble deserts, the Harra surfaces of recent volcanic origin and a marginal mountain chain of pronounced relief. 2. The Djöl, a raised platform consisting mainly of early Tertiary limestone which in the west, opposite the highland of Yemen, commences with a clear scarp and submerges northwards under the sands of the Ruh' al-Khälï. 3. According to physical character the wadies which are incised in the Djöl and which collect in the Wädï Ḥaḍramaut, a vale of 2—4 Km width running in a west-easterly direction, must be taken as a physical region in its own right. The potentialities for farming in the Hadramaut are very limited; they only exist in the oases of the coastal region and in the wadies whereas most of the Djöl merely serves as a passage for the Bedouins. Thus Ḥaḍramaut, even under optimum conditions, has only been able to feed about a quarter of its inhabitants with home produced foodstuffs. These unfavourable natural conditions early forced the Hadärim to emigration. Initially it was to nearby areas on the Red Sea coast and in Eastern Africa where South Arabic settlement colonies existed as early as the time of the birth of Christ. From the beginning of the last Century onwards, however, South-East Asia, in particular Singapore, Java and Sumatra, became the most favoured destinations for migration. As a result before World War II the number of Arabs from Ḥaḍramaut in the Dutch East Indies had reached about 90,000. Since the emigrants always aimed to return eventually to their homeland after years of absence, the dose links with Indonesia have found a clear reflection in Ḥaḍramaut itself. It is apparent in the architecture of the urban settlements, in eating habits and also anthropologically in considerable Malayan traces amongst many families of the economically most successful upper classes. These contacts with the outside world, however, weakened the authority of the religious leaders, the "Seyyids", descendants of Mohammed, who by means of successful business in foreign countries had themselves amassed the greatest wealth. They were neither any longer able to mediate in the numerous feuds which the vendetta made flare up again and again, nor to stem the continuing loosening of the tribal structure and to put an end to the internal disunion of the country which nearly amounted to a latent state of war. Only the truce of 1937, achieved with British help, brought an end to these troubles and provided the possibility of undertaking various development schemes, e. g. the improvement of communications. The most important consequence was the opening of the access to the Wädï Ḥaḍramaut which the conservative and strongly anti-foreign Population had prevented so far. A period of drought during World War II, which reached catastrophic proportions, and a recession of emigration, which because of the changed political Situation could no longer be resumed on the former scale even after the war, have eventually forced Hadramaut to take all measures to use the indigenous possibilities to a greater degree and increase agricultural production. Irrigation, both by utilisation of the episodic floods (seyls) and permanent irrigation by means of wells, has especially been developed. Many newly built dams utilise the floods; the success achieved by this means in Ḥaḍramaut itself is only modest whereas, in Abyan, about 50 Km to the east of Aden it was possible to develop seyl irrigation on a large scale resulting in considerable progress. By means of compact installations for distribution of the water and an extensive network of irrigation ducts which are safeguarded against "seyl erosion" it was possible to expand the cultivated area, especially for cotton growing, to 18,000 ha and to provide the basis of existence for 5,000 farm units. In the case of the development of irrigation from wells it was less the construction of new installations but the introduction of technological improvements for lifting the ground water, viz. the installation of diesel pumps into the existing well shafts. At the end of 1958 about 1,000 wells, approximately half the total of the Wädi Ḥaḍramaut, were used that way. As a consequence the oasis economy of the Wädi Ḥaḍramaut experiences not only an increase of its area but also a shift towards cultivation of crops with higher yields in which process wheat comes to dominate agricultural production to a higher degree than hitherto. High production costs are, however, a handicap to the development of agriculture. They are a consequence of the still inadequate communications and the unhealthy social conditions of the agricultural population; these arise from the share cropping and tenant farm Systems of the Middle East and further from the contempt in which agricultural work is held by large sections of the population.
Henrik (Hendrik, Henrich) Steffens, Naturwissenschaftler, Philosoph, Verfasser politischer Schriften und umfangreicher Novellen, wurde 1773 in Stavanger geboren. Seine Mutter war Dänin, sein Vater Deutscher. Steffens lehrte an den Universitäten Kiel, Kopenhagen, Halle, Breslau und Berlin, war mehrmals Rektor und gehörte zu den Universitätsreformern um Wilhelm von Humboldt. Schelling, Tieck und Schleiermacher waren die bekanntesten unter seinen vielen Freunden. Die rund 3000 Seiten umfassende Autobiographie, die Steffens in seinen letzten Lebensjahren schrieb, ist eine wichtige, auch heute noch lesenswerte, wenn auch hier und da durch großen zeitlichen Abstand zwischen Ereignis und Niederschrift etwas getrübte Quelle für die Zeit zwischen Französischer Revolution und 1840. Steffens starb 1845 in Berlin. Eine der Gedenkreden hielt Schelling. Thema der vorliegenden, 1961 abgeschlossenen Dissertation ist Steffens als Diagnostiker seiner Zeit - Zeit verstanden als Epoche - und seiner unmittelbaren Gegenwart. Für ihn bedeutete dies, ausgehend von der Vorstellung, Geschichte sei ein in seinen Grundzügen festliegender, sich kontinuierlich offenbarender Prozess, den gegenwärtigen Stand und die Richtung dieses Prozesses sowie die Charakteristika des jeweils Erreichten zu bestimmen. Für Steffens war die Geschichte Deutschlands im Mittelalter und der Neuzeit vor allem durch drei große Gegensätze bestimmt: durch die kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Ost und West, durch das Ringen von Kaiser und Papst um die Vorherrschaft und durch die Feindschaft von Deutschen und Franzosen, die weit mehr sei als nur die gegenseitige Abneigung zweier Völker, nämlich Konfrontation zweier grundverschiedener, unvereinbarer Geisteshaltungen - eine Konfrontation, die auch mit den militärischen Siegen über Frankreich keineswegs ausgestanden war. Im Zentrum der Dissertation steht das erste große zeitdiagnostische Werk Steffens': "Die gegenwärtige Zeit und wie sie geworden, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Deutschland". Es erschien 1817. Der Zeitpunkt war günstig: Für wenige Jahre nach dem Wiener Kongress war der Griff der Zensoren gelockert, konnten auch Gedanken und Thesen publiziert werden, die nicht mit der Meinung der Herrschenden übereinstimmten. Bei den "Caricaturen des Heiligsten", die 1819 und 1821 in zwei Bänden erschienen, hatten sich die Voraussetzungen für eine derartige Publikation schon wieder geändert: die Karlsbader Beschlüsse griffen. Aber auch die politischen Ansichten des Autors waren nicht mehr die gleichen. Um 1815 war Steffens fest überzeugt, mit dem Sieg in den Befreiungskriegen habe ein neues Zeitalter begonnen. Deutschland sei "wiedergeboren" worden und gebe nun Anlass zu den schönsten Hoffnungen. Nach dem vorangegangenen geistigen Aufbruch - für Steffens vor allem repräsentiert durch die Romantik und die Schellingsche Naturphilosophie - stehe nun auch auf politischem Gebiet ein epochaler Einschnitt unmittelbar bevor. Nach 1817 begann er, Diagnose und Prognose in Frage zu stellen. Er zweifelte zunehmend daran, dass wirklich eine neue Epoche begonnen habe für das politische Deutschland und sah in der Gegenwart mehr und mehr nur ein Vorspiel zu einer bedeutenden, sich aber erst ankündigenden Zukunft. Und 1822, in seiner "Anthropologie", sprach Steffens überhaupt nicht mehr von einer politischen Wende. Hier äußerte er nur noch vage Hoffnungen auf eine bedeutende Zukunft in den Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften wie auf religiösem Gebiet. Parallel zu dieser Erosion der Gewissheiten, Überzeugungen und Hoffnungen in wenigen Jahren vollzog sich bei Steffens ein Wandel von überwiegend liberalen zu konservativen Ansichten. Am deutlichsten wird dies beim Vergleich der Spielräume, die er für individuelles Handeln sieht. 1817 noch gesteht er dem Einzelnen durchaus Möglichkeiten zu, innerhalb gewisser Grenzen und unter bestimmten Bedingungen Richtung und Tempo der geschichtlichen Entwicklung zu beeinflussen. Von 1819 an aber dominieren Prädetermination und Eigengesetzlichkeit der Zeit so sehr, dass individuelles Handeln kaum noch Chancen hat, auf den Lauf der Dinge einzuwirken. Auch an anderen Stellen sind erhebliche Akzentverschiebungen zu beobachten: Nicht mehr die Freiheit als Wert an sich ist anzustreben, sondern ein ausbalanciertes Verhältnis, ja die "Identität" von Freiheit und Notwendigkeit, und die Forderung nach allgemeiner Gleichheit ist ersetzt durch das Plädoyer für eine "organische" Gliederung des Volkes, in der die Einzelnen je nach ihren Gaben und den ihnen gestellten Aufgaben ihren Platz einzunehmen haben. ; Henrik (Hendrik, Henrich) Steffens, natural scientist, philosopher, author of political writings and short novels, was born in 1773 at Stavanger, Norway. His mother was Danish, his father German. Steffens lectured at the Universities of Kiel, Copenhagen, Halle, Breslau and Berlin. He was a rector several times and joined the circle of university reformers headed by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Schelling, Tieck and Schleiermacher are the best known among his many friends. His extensive 3000- page autobiography written near the end of his life is an important testimony of the time between the French Revolution and 1840 and is still worthwhile reading, despite some errors caused by time intervals between the events and writings on them. Steffens died 1845 in Berlin. One of the commemorative adresses was held by Schelling. The topic of this dissertation, which was completed in 1961, is Steffens as a diagnostician of his time - time understood as an epoch and its immediate presence. He was led by the idea that history was a process whose main structures are predetermined and continuously reveal themselves. For him the diagnosis of time therefore meant to discover the current stage of the historical process and the direction of its movement as well as the characteristics of what was already achieved. Steffens was convinced that Germany's past in medieval and modern times was primarily dominated by three fundamental contradictions: by the wars between East and West, by the struggle for hegemony between the Emperor and Pope, and by the antagonism between the Germans and French. According to Steffens, the latter was much more than a mutual antipathy between two peoples. In his view it was the confrontation between two fundamentally incompatible mentalities - a confrontation, which by no means was obsolete after the victories against France. The dissertation mainly focuses on the first work by Steffens dealing with the diagnosis of time: "Die gegenwärtige Zeit und wie sie geworden, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Deutschland" (The present time and how it emerged, with particular regard to Germany). The book was published at a favorable time in 1817. For a short time after the Congress of Vienna the power of censorship was reduced and it was possible to publish thoughts and ideas, which were not congruent with the opinions of the rulers. In 1819 and 1821, when the two volumes of the "Caricaturen des Heiligsten" (Caricaturies of the Holiest) were published, the condotions for such a publication had once again changed. The Resolutions of Carlsbad were taking effect, but the polotical views of the author had changed, too. Around 1815 Steffens was deeply convinced that a new epoch had begun with the victories in the Wars of Liberation (Befreiungskriege). He believed that Germany was "born again" and that there were strong reasons for hope. Steffens expected a fundamental political shift in Germany to soon follow the spiritual awakening, which in his view was represented first of all by the (German) Romanticism and Schelling's philosophy of nature. After 1817 Steffens began to question the diagnosis and prognosis. He increasingly doubted whether a new epoch for political Germany had really begun and he increasingly recognized the present only as a prelude to a significant future, which had yet to come. In 1822, Steffens did not even mention a political shift in his "Anthropology". In that publication he only expressed vague hopes of an important future in natural sciences and arts as well as in religion. Corresponding with the erosion of certainties, convictions and hopes, Steffens' views changed from primarily liberal to conservative in just a few years. This is most evident when comparing the scopes for individual action which he identified. In 1817 he granted individuals the possibility to influence the direction and speed of historical developments within certain limits and under certain circumstances. After 1819 however, predetermination and the entelechy of time became dominant to such an extent that individual action has almost no chance anymore to affect thecourse of events. Sigificant shifts in focus can be observed in other places as well: freedom as a value in itself is no longer strived for, rather a balance or, more precisely, the "identity" of freedom and necessity. And the demand for the universal equality of men is replaced by the plea for an "organic" structure of the people, in which individuals must assume their roles corresponding to their abilities and the tasks given to them by the authorities.
