Hannes Siegrist

Dietmar Müller

Property is a complex phenomenon comprising cultural, social, and legal rules. During the twentieth century, property rights in land suffered massive interference in Central and Eastern Europe. The promise of universal and formally equal rights of land ownership, ensuring predictability of social processes and individual autonomy, was largely not fulfilled. The national appropriation of property in the interwar period and the communist era represent an onerous legacy for the postcommunist (re)construction of a liberal-individualist property regime. However, as the scholars in this collection show, after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe property is again a major factor in shaping individual identity and in providing the political order and culture with a foundational institution. This volume analyzes both historical and contemporary forms of land ownership in Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia in a multidisciplinary framework including economic history, legal and political studies, and social anthropology.

Notions, Institutions, and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century

Property in East Central Europe

Corinna R. Unger

Liesbeth van de Grift

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.

Rural and Agricultural Actors in Twentieth-Century Europe – A Handbook

Living with the Land

Stefan Troebst

This book centers on the Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, published in Washington in the early summer of 1914 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The volume was born from the conviction that the full assessment of the significance of the Carnegie Report—one of the first international non-governmental fact-finding missions with the intention to promote peace—requires a deeper exploration of the context of its birth. The authors examine how the countries involved in the wars handled the inquires of the Carnegie Commission and the role of the report in the remembrance of the wars in the respective states. Although the report considered both the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan nation-states insufficiently civilized to wage wars within the limits of the codes of conduct of international law, this orientalist conclusion can in part be explained by the liberal internationalist strategy of the Carnegie Endowment, and of the commission members’ professional, political, and ethnic background. Overshadowed by the outbreak of World War I, the Carnegie Report’s direct impact on international arbitration or international criminal law was limited, yet—in the authors’ opinion—it ultimately contributed to the further juridification of international relations

The 1914 Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912/13

Philanthropy, Conflict Management and International Law

Anna Kaminsky

Europäische Geschichte: Eine historische Wegmarke aus verschiedenen nationalen Blickwinkeln. Die Erinnerungen der Europäer an den Hitler-Stalin-Pakt weisen erhebliche Differenzen auf, die mit der Teilung des Kontinentes in West-, Ostmittel- und Osteuropa zusammenhängen. Der Pakt steht für den Beginn von Krieg, Besatzung, Deportation und Holocaust. In Ostmitteleuropa steht der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt überdies für die Aufteilung in Interessensphären, deren langfristige Wirkung sich nach Kriegsende in der Ablösung der nationalsozialistischen durch die kommunistische Diktatur zeigte. Die westeuropäische Erinnerungskultur fokussiert stattdessen seit den 1980er Jahren den Holocaust, so dass der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt nur eine geringe Rolle spielt. In der russischen Geschichtspolitik wiederum ist nach wie vor der "Große Vaterländische Krieg" der zentrale Erinnerungsort, der auch mit Gesetzen und staatlichen Kommissionen verteidigt wird. Mit dem Fokus auf die unterschiedlichen Erinnerungskulturen wird in dem vorliegenden Band die Langzeitwirkung des Hitler-Stalin-Pakts erforscht. Der Schwerpunkt liegt bei den Ländern Ostmitteleuropas, darüber hinaus werden die Unterzeichnerstaaten ebenso behandelt, wie England, Frankreich und Dänemark sowie die Juden und Deutschen Ostmitteleuropas.

Dietmar Müller

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