Bøger i Contemporary European History serien

Peace at All Costs reconsiders postwar Polish-German relations as an interdisciplinary case study of reconciliation and follows an influential network of non-state peace activists, major players in print and audiovisual media, as they attempted to establish dialogue in the 1950s and 1960s.

Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium - border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period.

"As one of the leading historians of the post-1956 generation and an internationally acclaimed scholar for the past five decades, Konrad H. Jarausch's autobiography presents a sustained academic reflection on the post-war German effort to cope with the guilt of the Holocaust amongst a generation of historians too young to have been perpetrators. Ranging from his war-time childhood in a chaotic country, to Americanization as a foreign student, and concluding with his mentorship of PhDs as a respected international scholar, he weaves together a self-critical historiography of a twentieth-century Germany that was wrestling with the responsibility for war and genocide. This self-reflexive work explores a wide range of topics including the development of German historiography and methodological debates, the interdisciplinary teaching efforts in German studies, and the development of scholarly organizations and institutions"--

For a long time agriculture and rural life were dismissed by many contemporaries as irrelevant or old-fashioned. Contrasted with cities as centers of intellectual debate and political decision-making, the countryside seemed to be becoming increasingly irrelevant. Today, politicians in many European countries are starting to understand that the neglect of the countryside has created grave problems. Similarly, historians are remembering that European history in the twentieth century was strongly influenced by problems connected to the production of food, access to natural resources, land rights, and the political representation and activism of rural populations. Hence, the handbook offers an overview of historical knowledge on a variety of topics related to the land. It does so through a distinctly activity-centric and genuinely European perspective. Rather than comparing different national approaches to living with the land, the different chapters focus on particular activities - from measuring to settling the land, from producing and selling food to improving agronomic knowledge, from organizing rural life to challenging political structures in the countryside. Furthermore, the handbook overcomes the traditional division between East and West, North and South, by embracing a transregional approach that allows readers to gain an understanding of similarities and differences across national and ideological borders in twentieth-century Europe.

Based on extensive research in Brandt's personal archives, additional studies in international archives, and interviews with contemporary witnesses, this book traces Brandt's nearly lifelong efforts towards the full reintegration of a united Germany into the community of European countries.

The neighboring boroughs of Friedrichschain and Kreuzberg shared a history and identity until their fortunes diverged dramatically following the construction of the Berlin Wall, which placed them within opposing political systems. This revealing account of the two towns during and after the Cold War...

After Germany's reunification in 1989-90, the country faced not only the history and consequences of the nation's division during the Cold War but also the continuing burdensome legacy of the Nazi past and the Holocaust. This book explains why concerns that the Nazi past would be marginalized by the more recent Communist past proved to be misplaced. It examines the delicate East-West dynamics and the notion that the West sought to impose "e;victor's justice"e; (or history) on the East. More specifically, it examines, for the first time, the history and significance of two parliamentary commissions of inquiry created in the 1990s to investigate the divided past after 1945 and its effects on the reunified country. Not unlike "e;truth commissions"e; elsewhere, these inquiries provided an important forum for renegotiating contemporary Germany's relationship with multiple German pasts, including the Nazi period and the Holocaust. The ensuing debates and disagreements over the recent past, examined by the author, open up a window into the wider development of German memory, identity, and politics after the end of the Cold War.

This groundbreaking study looks at the tension between realism and idealism in Swedish diplomacy during the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and 1975 Helsinki Accords.

It is hard to imagine nowadays that, for many years, France and Germany considered each other as "e;arch enemies."e; And yet, for well over a century, these two countries waged verbal and ultimately violent wars against each other. This study explores a particularly virulent phase during which each of these two nations projected certain assumptions about national character onto the other - distorted images, motivated by antipathy, fear, and envy, which contributed to the growing hostility between the two countries in the years before the First World War. Most remarkably, as the author discovered, the qualities each country ascribed to its chief adversary appeared to be exaggerated or negative versions of precisely those qualities that it perceived to be lacking or inadequate in itself. Moreover, banishing undesirable traits and projecting them onto another people was also an essential step in the consolidation of national identity. As such, it established a pattern that has become all too familiar to students of nationalism and xenophobia in recent decades. This study shows that antagonism between states is not a fact of nature but socially constructed.

By looking at state-sponsored memory projects, such as memorials, commemorations, and historical museums, this book reveals that the East German communist regime obsessively monitored and attempted to control public representations of the past to legitimize its rule. It demonstrates that the regime's approach to memory politics was not stagnant, but rather evolved over time to meet different demands and potential threats to its legitimacy. Ultimately the party found it increasingly difficult to control the public portrayal of the past, and some dissidents were able to turn the party's memory politics against the state to challenge its claims of moral authority.

The region of Alsace, located between the hereditary enemies of France and Germany, served as a trophy of war four times between 1870-1945. With each shift, French and German officials sought to win the allegiance of the local populace. In response to these pressures, Alsatians invoked regionalism-articulated as a political language, a cultural vision, and a community of identity-not only to define and defend their own interests against the nationalist claims of France and Germany, but also to push for social change, defend religious rights, and promote the status of the region within the larger national community. Alsatian regionalism however, was neither unitary nor unifying, as Alsatians themselves were divided politically, socially, and culturally. The author shows that the Janus-faced character of Alsatian regionalism points to the ambiguous role of regional identity in both fostering and inhibiting loyalty to the nation. Finally, the author uses the case of Alsace to explore the traditional designations of French civic nationalism versus German ethnic nationalism and argues for the strong similarities between the two countries' conceptions of nationhood.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s West German foreign policy underwent substantial transformations: from bilateral to multilateral, from reactive to proactive. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was an ideal setting for this evolution, enabling the Federal Republic to take the lead early on in Western preparations for the conference and to play a decisive role in the actual East-West negotiations leading to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Based on extensive original research of recently released documents, spanning more than fifteen archives in eight countries, this study is a substantial contribution to scholarly discussions on the history of dtente, the CSCE and West German foreign policy. The author stresses the importance of looking beyond the bipolarity of the Cold War decades and emphasizes the interconnectedness of European integration and European dtente. He highlights the need to place the genesis of the CSCE conference in its historical context rather than looking at it through the prism of the events of 1989, and shows that the bilateral and multilateral elements (Ostpolitik and the CSCE) were parallel rather than successive phenomena, parts of the same complex process and in constant interaction with each other.

Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformation processes that have taken place in a given nation, identifying structural similarities and assessing outcomes compared to one another as well as the rest of Europe.

This volume offers the first extensive analysis of entreaties from persecuted Jews in the Nazi era, demonstrating their largely unappreciated value as a historical source and as an attempt to reclaim agency in increasingly desperate political circumstances.

This volume brings together case studies exploring how modern inhabitants "remember" instances of ethnic cleansing, and how they understand the heritage of groups that vanished in their wake.

This volume explores the history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 onward, showing how conceptions of "otherness" developed while memories of Nazism were still fresh, and identifying the continuities and transformations they have exhibited up until today.

In many ways what is identified today as "cultural globalization" in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat ("do-it-yourself" underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War...

The hostilities in Europe from 1936 to 1945 have exerted enormous influence over the cultural life of Europe. Bringing together over twenty leading scholars across disciplines, this interdisciplinary volume investigates the intertwining dynamics of Europeans' individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped cultural forms.

In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. This volume offers a reflection on memory in an Eastern European historical context, one that can be measured against and applied to historical experience in other parts of Europe.

Exploring the visions of the end of the Cold War that have been put forth since its inception until its actual ending, this volume brings to the fore the reflections, programmes, and strategies that were intended to call into question the bipolar system and replace it with alternative approaches or concepts.

This innovative volume brings together internationally known experts from the fields of comparative education, history, and the social and political sciences, and makes a significant contribution to the new interdisciplinary field of comparative study.

An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand why the grand design of a United Europe - with a common foreign policy and market yet enough diversity to allow for cultural and social differences - was overwhelmingly turned down by its citizens.

Despite the growing interest in general European history, the European dimension is surprisingly absent from the writing of contemporary history. In most countries, the historiography on the 20th century continues to be dominated by national perspectives.

Modern military history, inspired by social and cultural historical approaches, increasingly puts the national histories of the Second World War to the test. New questions and methods are focusing on aspects of war and violence that have long been neglected. What shaped people's experiences and memories? What differences and what similarities exist

Modern military history, inspired by social and cultural historical approaches, increasingly puts the national histories of the Second World War to the test. New questions and methods are focusing on aspects of war and violence that have long been neglected. What shaped people's experiences and memories?

An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand why the grand design of a United Europe-with a common foreign policy and market yet enough diversity to allow for cultural and social differences-was overwhelmingly turned down by its citizens.

German attitudes toward migrants have been profoundly shaped by the legacies of the Second World War. This volume explores the history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 onward.

Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformation processes that have taken place in a given nation, identifying structural similarities and assessing outcomes compared to one another as well as the rest of Europe.