Call for Papers: Settlement and Unsettlement – The Ends of World War I and their Legacies
German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
Deadline: 31 March 2016
Continue reading “CfP: The Ends of World War I and their Legacies”
Category: Military History
New Approaches to Weimar History
Two recent conferences in Germany have focused on new historical approaches to the study of the interwar years. At Neue landesgeschichtliche Ansätze zur Erforschung der Weimarer Republik in Munich, delegates discussed new approaches to the Weimar Republic informed by regional history. The conference Aktuelle Forschungen zur Nachkriegsgewalt 1918-1923 in Marburg broadened the focus to Central Europe, exploring new studies to the role of violence in postwar societies.
Weimar’s Republican War Veterans
Benjamin Ziemann’s new study Contested Commemorations. Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture adds to the growing literature on the strength of republican cultures of commemoration in Weimar that challenge the traditional view of the dominance of nationalist and anti-democratic political culture: ‘This innovative study of remembrance in Weimar Germany analyses how experiences and memories of the Great War were transformed along political lines after 1918. Continue reading “Weimar’s Republican War Veterans”
German PoWs in London
The Guardian has published an interesting photo of German prisoners of war sightseeing in London on 22 September 1919. A great reminder that many Germans only experienced the foundation of the Republic from afar. The last of the German prisoners was freed from custody in 1920.
Military magazines in the Weimar Republic
This new study investigates the role of military magazines in forming the memory of the World War among their readers:
Online Encyclopedia of the First World War
In 2014, the project “1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War” will go live. It promises to be an indispensable source for research on the Great War and its aftermath, but the website is already worth a look. Particularly the collection of WWI websites is a handy guide for anyone interested in the era.
Secret rearmament after 1918
The study Die bellizistische Republik. Wehrkonsens und “Wehrhaftmachung” in Deutschland 1918–1933 sheds new light on the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr during the Weimar Republic. The central argument is that the rearming was supported by republican forces and based in an intellectual tradition of ‘Wehrhaftigkeit‘, but led to the formation of a ‘state within a state’, outside of legal norms and democratic control.
New Study on 1918
A harbinger of the great flood of books on the First World War that will be published in 2014, David Stephenson study With Our Backs to the Wall. Victory and Defeat in 1918 takes an unusual look at the last year of the war. In his view, even after the US entered the conflict, its outcome was still undecided in 1918.
Journal Review: VfZ 2/2012
In the current issue of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Daniel Schmidt charts the life of Hans Ramshorn (1892-1934), from Prussian officer to SA leader:
‘How does the conventional life and career of a Prussian officer veer off course and onto the winding path of a Völkisch (ethnic nationalist) paramilitary? This article will address the above question using the biography of Hans Ramshorn (1892–1934) as an example. Continue reading “Journal Review: VfZ 2/2012”
CfP “Marginalized War Veterans in postwar Germany”
Call for papers for a panel, “From Frontgemeinschaft to Volksgemeinschaft? Marginalized War Veterans in postwar Germany,” at the German Studies Association meeting, October 4 – October 7, 2012, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Deadline: January 15, 2012
Germany’s defeat in 1918 as well as “front experience” left an indelible mark on the postwar German veterans’ culture. War veterans had been traditionally accorded immense social prestige in modern Germany. After the First World War, however, the veterans’ movement was increasingly clad in a nationalist mantle that excluded many groups blamed for Imperial Germany’s defeat – Jews, socialists, communists, and pacifists. Moreover, many former soldiers from Alsace, Lorraine, or the territories ceded to Poland and Belgium became pariahs under their new governments. Despite the different national and political contexts, all these individuals shared several similarities that were shaped by the experience of war, defeat, and questioned patriotism.
I am looking for one or two more papers on post-WWI German war veterans for a panel at the upcoming 2012 GSA meeting. Specifically, the panel shall address those former soldiers ostracized from the mainstream veterans’ community due to racial or political reasons, or rendered “homeless” in an actual and spiritual sense through postwar territorial settlements.
Please send a 1-2 page paper proposal by January 15, 2012 to Michael Geheran at <mgeheran@clarku.edu.edu>
CfP: Perspectives on the ‘Great’ War
International Conference August 1 – 4, 2014
Perspectives on the ‘Great’ War / Rückblick auf den Ersten Weltkrieg
ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS: An interdisciplinary conference will be hosted at Queen Mary, University of London to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. The parties presently involved are the School of Languages Linguistics and Film (QMUL); the School of History (QMUL); the Leo Baeck Institute (London); the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations (QMUL); and the German Department (UCL).
Keynote speakers will include:
– Professor Christopher Clark (Cambridge)
– Professor Jonathan Steinberg (Pennsylvania)
– Professor Samuel Williamson (Sewanee History Project)
It is intended that the conference be truly international and interdisciplinary. Subject sections will include political, military and social history; historiography; colonialism; discourse analysis and cultural history. We welcome all suggestions for the conference as well as offers to chair sections and round-table discussions.
Please address all initial enquiries to: Professor Felicity Rash f.j.rash@qmul.ac.uk or Dr Falco Pfalzgraf f.pfalzgraf@qmul.ac.uk
Cultural History of WWI in France and Germany
No. 54 of the Historische Zeitung‘s Beihefte series takes a comparative look at the political consequences and literary interpretations of Burgfrieden and Union sacrée after the war. Contributions include a juxtaposition of French republican and German völkisch nationalism by Manfred Kittel, and a study on the use of literary sources in historical research by Nicolaus Beaupré. David Midgley adds a British perspective.
German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War
Tim Grady’s new study on German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory charts the development of remembrance of Jewish soldiers fighting for Germany in WWI from the Weimar Republic to post-WWII Germany:
‘By examining Germany’s complex and continually evolving memory culture, this book opens up a new approach to the study of both German and German-Jewish history. In doing so, it draws out a narrative of entangled and overlapping relations between Jews and non-Jews during the short twentieth century. The Jewish / non-Jewish relationship, the book argues, did not end on the battlefields of the First World War, but ran much deeper to extend through into the era of the Cold War.’
WWI. in a Gender Context
While this upcoming conference is focusing on the period from 1914-1918, its range of topics might also be interesting for Weimar scholars:
The First World War in a Gender Context. Topics and Perspectives
Vienna, 29.09.2011 – 01.10.2011
This international conference intends to reflect on the necessity and potential of a gendered history of the First World War, focusing on five selected topics that appear to be constitutive for the field: the complex relationship between home front and front line, experiences of violence, forms of visualization of the war, peace efforts, and the impact of war on concepts of citizenship.
First World War Digital Collection – your help is needed
Europeana 1914-1918 is an international online digitization project funded by the European Union. Several libraries from eight European countries will digitize a selection of their holdings from World War I and unite them virtually. By the year 2014, the centenary of the outbreak of war, the project will make 400,000 outstanding sources from the time of World War I available online. Europeana 1914-1918 will also create a new virtual overview of materials and sources for historical research on World War I
For this project a questionnaire was prepared to consider the wishes and requirements of future users in the selection of materials and sources and the development of functionalities. The survey is intended not only to scientists but to all persons interested in the history of World War I. Europeana invites you to fill in this questionnaire to support the development of a comprehensive digital collection of First World War in the next few years.