Sina FABIAN: Boom in der Krise. Konsum, Tourismus, Autofahren in Westdeutschland und Großbritannien 1970–1990, in: H-Soz-Kult, 27 June 2017

Als vor einigen Jahren ein kurzlebiges Siebziger-Revival die britischen Inseln erfasste, rief der Kolumnist Jim White seinen Lesern die grundlegende Unzulänglichkeit der Dekade ins Gedächtnis: „[N]othing was any good. Nothing ever seemed to work. We were nearly 20 years on from the gloom of the immediate post-war world, yet we still lived in black and white. Sure, things had progressed. Unlike his dad, my father did have a car. Actually he had a succession of them. The only drawback was, they were forever breaking down.”[1] Read the rest of this entry »

Swantje SCHARENBERG: Die Konstruktion des öffentlichen Sports in der Tagespresse der Weimarer Republik, in: German History, vol 31 (2013), No 4, pp. 590-591.

Sport, from football to Bavarian finger-wrestling (Fingerhakeln), has a central place in German society: according to the German Olympic Sports Confederation, in 2010 roughly every third German was a member of a sports club. Read the rest of this entry »

Sace ELDER: Murder Scenes. Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Berlin, in: German History, vol 29 (2011), No 3, pp. 666-667.

In the Weimar Republic, the explosive rise of homicides and murders after the Great War was a staple statistic used by cultural critics of all political colours to illustrate Germany’s moral and social degeneration. Read the rest of this entry »

Sebastian MARX: Betriebsamkeit als Literatur. Prosa der Weimarer Republik zwischen Massenpresse und Buch, in: Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, vol 103 (2011), No 1, pp. 135-137.

Die Forschung über die Weimarer Republik hat Konjunktur – und das seit Jahrzehnten. Schon mit dem Ende der ersten deutschen Demokratie hob ein gewaltiger Prozess ihrer Deutung an, erst im Exil, dann im geteilten und später wiedervereinigten Deutschland. Und auch im Ausland gibt es wohl mit Ausnahme des Dritten Reiches keine andere Epoche der deutschen Geschichte, die ähnlich viel Interesse hervorruft.

Benjamin CARTER HETT: Crossing Hitler. The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand, in: German History, vol 28 (2010), No 4, pp. 590-592.

Hans Litten, a German-Jewish lawyer, ‘crossed’ Hitler in different ways, not only cross-examining him in one of the most famous trials of the Weimar Republic, but making him angry in the process — and paying the price once the Nazi leader was in power. Read the rest of this entry »

Margaret BARBER CROSBY: The Making of a German Constitution: A Slow Revolution, in: Journal of Contemporary European Studies, vol 17 (2009), No 3, pp. 451-452.

Much has been said and written about Germany as a ‘belated’ nation and its failed revolution of 1848, which deprived the country of a unifying experience and sent Germany on its ‘Sonderweg’ (exceptional path) towards national unity. Margret Barber Crosby’s argument, therefore, that there was indeed a successful German revolution — albeit a slow and non-violent one that stretched over generations — is a welcome change.