Dis-embalming Max Weber

Of Walls and Fences: Brexit and the History of Cross-Border Migration

Champions of Brexit have employed a large arsenal of arguments to boost their case for a Britain better off on its own, freed from its current European entanglements. All kinds of supposed ills have been linked to the country’s EU membership in British public debates over the years, ranging from petty bureaucratic absurdities, such as directives regarding crooked bananas, to heavy-handed rulings on higher matters of domestic and foreign policy. Lamentations about continental meddling have been accompanied by grand, nostalgic visions of an unfettered future Great Britain, ready to return to its proper, independent role on the global stage once it manages to cast off the shackles imposed by B…

The Dynamics of Expellee Integration in Post-1945 Europe

Jeffrey Herf. Undeclared Wars with Israel : East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989.

H-Diplo Roundable XXII-10 on Harrison. After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present

[Book review] Berliner Luftmenschen: Osteuropäisch-jüdische Migranten in der Weimarer Republik, by Anne-Christin Sass; Verfolgt von Land zu Land: Jüdische Flüchtlinge in Westeuropa 1938–1944, by Insa Meinen and Ahlrich Meyer

Europe and refugees : 1938 and 2015-16

Ahonen attempts to provide some historical contextualization for the refugee crisis that has dominated much of European public and political debate since 2015. He draws comparisons between the crisis-ridden present and the decade of the previous century that was particularly laden with anticipation of disaster and doom: the 1930s. More specifically, his article explores parallels in public discussions of refugees by European political leaders and media commentators in 1938, on the one hand, and 2015–16, on the other. The coverage of 1938 focuses on the Evian Conference, organized to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, while the analysis of 2015–16 concerns the period f…

Different Germans, Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives

Kirja-arvostelu teoksesta Different Germans, Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives . Edited by Konrad H. Jarausch, Harald Wenzel and Karin Goihl. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017. Xii + 328 pp. £92.00 (hardback).

Berliner Luftmenschen: OsteuropÄisch-jÜdische Migranten in der Weimarer Republik, by Anne-Christin SassVerfolgt von Land zu Land: JÜdische FlÜchtlinge in Westeuropa 1938–1944, by Insa Meinen and Ahlrich Meyer

Hitler's Berlin: Abused City. By Thomas Friedrich. Translated by Stewart Spencer. Yale University Press. 2012. xiii + 482pp. £29.99.

States of Division: Border and Boundary Formation in Cold War Rural Germany, by Sagi Schaefer

Politiikkaa on luettava luovuuden kielellä. Ilkka Heiskanen in memoriam

Tässä numerossa Politiikka haluaa erityisesti muistaa professori Ilkka Heiskasta  (1935–2019). Kunniotamme muistoa neljän kollegan yhteisellä muistikirjoituksella. 

Rezension : Katharina Aubele: Vertriebene Frauen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Germany and the Aftermath of the Second World War

Durch den eisernen Vorhang: Die Ära Brandt und das Ende des Kalten Kriegs, by Gottfried Niedhart

On Forced Migrations: Transnational Realities and National Narratives in Post-1945 (West) Germany

This article examines tensions between the transnational realities of the extensive forced migrations that accompanied the end of the Second World War in Europe and the nationally focused public portrayals of those forced migrations that have prevailed in individual European countries since the war. The article does so through a case study of West Germany, which became home to some eight million forced migrants defined as ethnic Germans. It argues that a nationally oriented, highly selective public narrative of the forced migrations soon emerged in the Federal Republic, a narrative that stressed German suffering, relativized German crimes, and, crucially, elided differences among the forced…

The German Expellee Organizations: Unity, Division, and Function

In the early twenty-first century, the German expellee organizations (Vertriebenenverbände) are typically portrayed as a united entity, at least in the wider public realm. The dominance of the umbrella group Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) tends to foster the perception that the German expellee lobby is a homogeneous and cohesive bloc, focused on promoting shared political goals. This has been evident, for instance, in the media coverage of the prolonged controversy about the proposed establishment of a Center Against Expulsions in Berlin, in which the BdV’s statements have generally been taken to represent the expellee movement as a whole.1 But how correct is that interpretation, particularly …

Book Reviews : Different Germans, Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives

Kirja-arvostelu teoksesta Different Germans, Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives . Edited by Konrad H. Jarausch, Harald Wenzel and Karin Goihl. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017. Xii + 328 pp. £92.00 (hardback). nonPeerReviewed