Bøger af James Pinnock

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject History Europe - Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 72.0%, Durham University, language: English, abstract: According to Jonathan Petropoulos, Arno Breker was arguably the artist most admired by the Nazi leaders and most celebrated by the Nazi regime. As such, Arno Breker does not represent a simple cog in the National Socialist cultural machine, but rather occupies a position of almost unrivalled prominence and esteem in the cultural history of the Third Reich. Importantly, within recent academic analysis of art and culture under the National Socialist regime, there has been an ostensible recognition among historians and art historians alike that our manner of approaching figures such as Breker must be altered significantly. Culture, and especially art occupied a position of unique significance in Nazi Germany, and the cultural policies of National Socialism worked to aestheticize politics and ideology. Indeed, Taylor and van der Will argue that under Adolf Hitler, Fascism came to represent a form of government which depended on such aestheticized politics, whereby the cultural programme was transmogrified into the ¿aesthetics of political symbolism¿. It is within this vital framework of understanding that one must approach the multifarious motives for Arno Breker¿s acquiescence with the Nazi regime after 1936-7. Although Breker possessed a truly impressive artistic pedigree prior to his ascent to fame in Nazi Germany, he did choose to continue his career, arguably in a different artistic style and approach, under the Nazis. It is in this decision that historians claim can be found Arno Breker¿s ultimate undoing as an artist. The palpable changes evident in the sculptor¿s artistic style raise the issue, as elucidated by Alan E. Steinweis, of the distinction between artists¿ ¿passive compliance¿ and ¿active collaboration¿ with the regime¿s cultural policies. However, the case of Arno Breker raises problems beyond Steinweis¿ significant, but simultaneously constricted, scope of approach. The very motivations for his collaboration are overshadowed by the politically-dictated culture of which he became an indispensable part. One must question to what extent Arno Breker was transformed under National Socialism from a sculptor and an ¿artist¿ into a purely political artist functioning to propagandize the ideological tenets of the Nazi regime.

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject History Europe - Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 78.0%, Durham University, language: English, abstract: Did the antisemitic policy of the National Socialist regime succeed because it was anchored in deeply rooted anti-Jewish sentiments which permeated all classes of the German population? This rather simple question posed by David Bankier, one among many historians of the Third Reich who have been unable to satisfactorily resolve this issue, raises a whole host of complexities which come to dominate any examination of the impact of antisemitic propaganda upon the German population. Have historians, such as Yehuda Bauer, been too willing to assert that Nazi propaganda targeted and subsequently radicalized a pre-existing bedrock of latent antisemitism among the German people? Such assertions would seem to substantiate Frank Bajohr¿s suggestion that antisemitic propaganda functioned within the framework of National Socialist rule as a ¿dictatorship of bottom-up consent¿, a Zustimmungsdiktatur which was firmly rooted in the German population¿s growing responsiveness to the leadership of the Third Reich. However, the validity of Bajohr¿s claim is somewhat undermined by contemporary evidence of the German population¿s reactions to antisemitic measures, particularly in SD reports, which frequently reflect Jeffrey Herf¿s argument of ¿a radical Nazi minority operating in a society with a less radical but broad antisemitic consensus, a consensus broad enough to render people indifferent [...]¿. Such indifference must be viewed in terms of a situation whereby the collective concerns, and collective opinion, of the German population were suitably divorced from the abstracted and de-historicized idea of ¿the Jew¿ propagandized by the Nazi leadership throughout the war to render the German population desensitized to the plight of the Jews.

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Theology - Historic Theology, Ecclesiastical History, grade: 76.0%, Durham University, language: English, abstract: A critical starting point for any historical scrutiny of the medieval church must begin with Colin Morris, whose foundational work argues that the years 1050 to 1250 witnessed ¿the supreme age of papal monarchy¿. Morris stands within a long historiographical tradition of medievalists who have argued for this prevailing perspective of the church in the medieval epoch as defined by its primacy, universality and supremacy over an ostensibly lay society. Underpinning this conception of the church is the novel and extensive reform movement that began during the pontificate of Gregory VII (1073-85), which articulated and firmly established the concept of a ¿hierarchical church¿. This notion of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, elucidated by both contemporary writers and modern historians, arguably dominates our perspective of the medieval religious landscape, and part of the historian¿s task is therefore to reach a judgement as to what we understand by the ecclesia and societas in this period. Arguably, our period is characterised by a divergence between ecclesiastical rhetoric and popular culture, most evident in the historical tradition which attributes to our period the birth of popular heresy in various forms. The rise of heresy, and the ¿choice¿ inherent in its initial and continuing prevalence within medieval society, stands in clear contradistinction to the concepts of ecclesiastical hierarchy and papal authority advocated by the medieval church. Indeed, whilst historians have recognised, and in many cases extolled, the conceptual legacy bequeathed by the Gregorian reform movement upon the ascendant medieval church, they have arguably overlooked, most pertinently in the case of heresy, the realities of ¿the universal episcopacy claimed by the pope¿.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject History Europe - Other Countries - Middle Ages, Early Modern Age, grade: 74.0%, Durham University, language: English, abstract: Propagated in his papal bull of April 1213, the "Vineam domini sabaoth", is Pope Innocent III's essential conception of, and approach to, his duty as Supreme Pontiff: "Among all the good things which our heart can desire, there are two in this world which we value above all: that is to promote the recovery of the Holy Land and the reform of the universal church".This bull, summoning the ecclesiastical leaders of Western Christendom to the Fourth Lateran Council, provides an essential background to our examination of "crusade" during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III. It reflects the crucial foundation by which Innocent directed his efforts, and the efforts of his curia, in the years 1198-1216, whereby crusade and crusading achieved a primacy in the formulation of papal policy (unrivalled up this point in the history of the crusading movement), a primacy which was challenged only, but importantly not surpassed, by "the reform of the universal church".