Dirk Schumann

Meike Sophia Baader

Till Kössler

Die Beiträge des Bandes befassen sich mit (physischer wie anderer) Gewalt, die von Jugendlichen ausgeübt oder ihnen von Erwachsenen etwa in Schulen und Fürsorgeheimen zugefügt wurde. Sie zeigen, dass solche erfahrene wie diskursiv verarbeitete Gewalt nur dann angemessen verstanden werden kann, wenn sie in einen größeren gesellschaftlichen Kontext gestellt wird – sei es hinsichtlich der Frage nach Wehrhaftigkeit, moralisch angemessenem Verhalten oder nach Generationen- und Geschlechterverhältnissen. Zugleich wird erkennbar, dass es zwar über das 20. Jahrhundert hinweg grundsätzlich eine Tendenz zu erhöhter Sensibilisierung für Gewalt und zu ihrer negativen Bewertung gab, abgeschottete Räume mit starkem Autoritätsgefälle dabei aber eine bemerkenswerte Veränderungsresistenz aufwiesen. The contributions in this volume deal with violence (physical and other types of violence) performed by young adults or inflicted on them by adults, e. g. in schools and foster homes. The contributions show that such experienced and discursively processed violence can only be understood correctly, if it is placed in a larger social context – be it with regard to defensibility, morally appropriate behaviour or generational and gender relations. Despite a general tendency towards an increased awareness of violence and its negative evaluation throughout the 20th century, it becomes obvious that isolated spaces with strong hierarchies showed a remarkable resistance to change.

Erleben – Erörtern – Erinnern

Jugend – Gewalt

A comprehensive analysis of political violence in Weimar Germany with particular emphasis on the political culture from which it emerged. “Today’s readers, living in what Charles Maier calls ‘a new epoch of vanished reassurance’, will find this book absorbing and troubling.”—The Historian The Prussian province of Saxony—where the Communist uprising of March 1921 took place and two Combat Leagues (Wehrverbände) were founded (the right-wing Stahlhelm and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner)—is widely recognized as a politically important region in this period of German history. Using a case study of this socially diverse province, this book refutes both the claim that the Bolshevik revolution was the prime cause of violence and the argument that the First World War’s all-encompassing “brutalization” doomed post-1918 German political life from the very beginning. The study thus contributes to a view of the Weimar Republic as a state in severe crisis but with alternatives to the Nazi takeover. From the introduction: After the phase of civil war, political violence assumed a distinctly limited form. It was no longer aimed at killing or wounding as many opponents as possible; instead, it served political parties and organizations as an instrument for exerting pressure in the struggle over control of the street. This development was driven by the Combat Leagues (Wehrverbände) of all political camps, who, with their uniforms and marches, injected militaristic elements into the political culture. However, since the violence they perpetrated followed a political and not a military logic, it was, as I will show, in principle controllable and did not pose a fundamental threat to the political order, not even in 1932, that particularly turbulent year before Hitler’s assumption of power.

Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War

Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933

Walter Mühlhausen

Christoph Gusy

Der breit angelegte Band entwickelt eine neue Perspektive auf die politische Kultur der Weimar Republik, indem er die Verfassung in ihren Kontext stellt und so einen tiefenscharfen Blick auf Mentalitäten, Kommunikationsformen, Symbole und institutionelles Handeln der Zeit wirft. Im Mittelpunkt steht nicht der Verfassungstext, sondern die Handhabung der Verfassung durch zentrale Akteure und ihre mentalitätsgeschichtliche Aneignung durch Volk und Eliten. Der interdisziplinär angelegte, allgemeinhistorische und rechtsgeschichtliche Beiträge kombinierende Band verleiht der Forschung neue Impulse.

Die Verfassung in der politischen Kultur der Weimarer Republik

Demokratie versuchen

Alon Confino

Paul Betts

Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich.

The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany

Between Mass Death and Individual Loss

"This volume explores the tension between mass death and individual loss by linking long-term patterns of mourning, burial, and grief with the short-term cataclysmic violence unleashed by two world wars. How various "cultures of death" shaped the broader historical relationship between the living and the dead in modern Germany is the main concern of this book. It contributes to a history of death in Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich."--BOOK JACKET.

Dirk Schumann

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