Peter Thompson, director of the Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies at the University of Sheffield, is writing a series in The Guardian about the Frankfurt School. It might be useful to anybody teaching the subject to pass on to their students as introductory read.
Tag: Resource
Cabaret Berlin blog
Brendan Nash runs an interesting blog ‘exploring the entertainment of the Weimar era’, covering topics like the 1920s roots of David Bowie’s famed Dschungel on Berlin’s Nürnberger Strasse or the history of the Titania-Palast, Weimar Berlin’s grandest cinema. He also organises walking tours ‘through the Schöneberg of the late 1920s as seen by Christopher Isherwood’.
Martin Miller Archive opened
For anyone interested in Weimar-era theatre, the IGRS has just opened the private collection of Martin Miller to interested researchers. The on-going archival process is documented in a blog: ‘The Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert Miller collection is one of a number of important archives relating to German theatre and exile studies held by the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies (IGRS) at the University of London. Continue reading “Martin Miller Archive opened”
Early Analysis of Weimar’s Collapse
One of our members, Emma Anderson, has found this fascinating analysis of Germany’s political situation at the dawn of the Third Reich. The author, Moritz Julius Bonn, was an internationally respected Jewish economist who had to leave Germany in 1933. It’s available for free download from the archive of The Political Quarterly.
Virtual Tour of 1920s Berlin
The exhibition Berlin Transit on Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s at the Jüdisches Museum is (sadly) over already, but its website is still a great resource. Among other things, it offers a virtual tour of important places of Jewish life in 1920s Berlin.
German Digital Library online
The beta version of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek goes live today. Financed by the Federal Government, by the states and by local authorities, the DDB offers ‘everyone unrestricted access to Germany’s cultural and scientific heritage, that is, access to millions of books, archived items, images, sculptures, pieces of music and other sound documents, as well as films and scores, from all over Germany.’
Database for German History
The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities offers an online database of the Jahresberichte für deutsche Geschichte, a bibliography of publications on German history. The JDG was founded in 1880 and lists all German and foreign-language publications (monographs, articles in edited books, journal articles, etc.). Its database reaches back to 1974 and is searchable for keywords, titles and authors. Digitalized versions of the JDG from 1925-1938 are also available.
Hans Schäffer papers online
The private papers of Hans Schäffer, a leading civil servant from 1918-1932 and later the director general of the Ullstein publishing house, offer a fascinating insight into the tumultuous political history of the Weimar Republic. In his diaries, Schäffer minutely recorded his daily meetings with Weimar’s major political players, from Hindenburg and Schleicher to Hilferding, Müller and Brüning. They have been digitized by the Leo Baeck Institute and available online on the Internet Archive.
Staasbibliothek stipends
The Staatsbibliothek in Berlin offers research grants for international students and scholars planning to use its archives and holdings. The monthly stipends are €900 (for applicants with a first degree) or €1,200 (for applicants with a PhD) and are awarded for 1-3 months depending on the individual project. There is also an additional travel grant of €500. Deadline for applications is 30 September.
Online databank on Weimar press
A very useful tool for research on the Weimar press is the Austrian Academy of Sciences’s online database Hypress. Besides detailed information on the Austrian press from 1848-1945, there is a comprehensive part on the press of Weimar Berlin, listing even obscure or short-lived papers, complete with circulation, political affiliation and other details.
Online periodicals page
The Weimar Studies Network website now features a sub-page with an alphabetical list of German and French journals and newspapers from 1840 – 1950 available online. Any further suggestions are very welcome.
Art and satire magazines online
The University of Heidelberg has opened a real treasure trove of historical journals to researchers worldwide. The University Library has digitized over 50 German and French art and satire magazines from its collections. The material dates from the 19th to the early part of the 20th century, including PAN, Jugend, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, Der Kunstwart, Die Form, Kladderadatsch, Ulk and Le Fifre.
Many thanks to Mary-Ann Middelkoop for pointing it out.
Weimar Berlin reconsidered
The enduring allure of the Weimar Republic is inextricably intertwined with its capital city, Berlin. However, the problem of Berlin’s historical image has always been the fact that it largely relies on a handful of canonical texts, most of which supply a seriously skewed image of the city, variously describing it as ‘Germany’s most American city’, ‘Chicago an der Spree’ and ‘Spree-Athen’; Christoper Isherwood’s famous account of Berlin’s debauchery further added to its mystery – which is being reanimated today.
European Newspapers online
The Staatsbibliothek Berlin together with 16 partner institutions in Europe has started an exciting new project: over the next three years, Europeana Newspapers will digitize 18 million newspaper pages from the archives of all participating libraries. Continue reading “European Newspapers online”
Digital Tools for Historians
There are some online tools that can help the historian with analyzing large bodies of text:
– The Voyant website is a very simple tool, where the user uploads texts or pastes them right into a textbox. It is also possible to use URLs (of online journals, for example). The program will count the frequency of unique words in the text and also supply a visual representation in the form of a tag cloud.
– The Google Ngram Viewer is a very powerful, if somewhat crude, program that trawls through Google’s vast digital library (20 million books and counting), spitting out a graph charting the popularity of user-defined words through the ages (1800 – 2008).
There are also various podcasts and online workshops on digital tools for historians on the Institute of Historical Research‘s History SPOT website.