INHALT:

ARTIKEL:

Shmuel N. Eisenstadt:
Zivilisatorische Rahmungen von Barbarei und Genozid
S. 6-30

Summary:
Genocide, the extermination of one group of people by another, be it through war, deliberate policy or intergroup violence, constitutes a very widespread, potentially universal aspect of human society and history, a basic manifestation of destructive potential of human behavior, but its concrete manifestations, intensity and impact vary greatly between different societies. The article examines how the general tendency towards destructive intergroup behavior is rooted in the very core characteristics of the constitution of collective boundaries and identity. Collectivities, collective identities and boundaries are not, as has been often assumed in relevant literature, epiphenomenal or secondary to power and economic forces and relations constituting "imagined" communities, nor are they continual semi-natural, primordial and ontologically independent entities, existing as it were almost in eternity. Rather the construction of collective identities is a basic social component: it focuses on the definition of the distinctiveness of any collectivity, with the specification of criteria for membership in it and the definition of the attributes of similarity of the members in these collectivities. The essay consequently addresses the problems of identity and membership, the definition of similarity and the definition of order, in particular regarding the constitution of primordiality, civility, and sacredness (sacrality). As a very central component in the construction of collective identities the article discusses the self-perception of a society as "modern": the universalistic components of the cultural program of modernity and the ideal model of the nation state. The destructive potentialities of modern society cannot be discussed without the basic characteristics of the constitution of modern collectivities and above all totalizing visions. The extreme fascist or national-socialist regimes promulgated ideologies and practice of total exclusion, total barbarization without possibilities of challenge from within to the total demonization of the excluded. These destructive potentialities and forces, most fully manifest in the ideologization of violence, terror and wars, and the ideological exclusivity and demonization of the excluded, are not outbursts of old "traditional" forces, but outcomes of modern reconstruction: they are inherent potentialities in the modern program.

Trutz von Trotha:
Genozidaler Pazifizierungskrieg. Soziologische Anmerkungen zum Konzept des Genozids am Beispiel des Kolonialkriegs in Deutsch-Südwestafrika, 1904-1907
S. 31-58

Summary:
The study considers some basic conceptual problems in dealing with genocide, emphasizing the relationship between the theory of violence and the theory of genocide, follows the theoretical threads of the "new research on violence", and compares the "limited war of pacification" in colonial Togo under German rule with the "unlimited" or "genocidal war of pacification" in German South West Africa. It attempts to answer the following question: how does the limited war of pacification become a genocidal one? The author argues that the key lies in analyzing the massacre. In genocidal wars of pacification, the "logic of the massacre" becomes steady in a process of escalating violence. The dynamics of this escalating violence are the violent resistance of the subjugated population, the interests and ideas of invading settler communities, the antagonisms of the "colonial situation", the mobilization of violent fantasies, and a growing influence of the highly ideological metropolitan power centers. Using the example of the "concentration camps" of the German colonial administration, the article therefore documents how, in German South West Africa, massacring power is transformed into genocidal domination.

Michael Rißmann:
Nationalsozialismus, völkische Bewegung und Esoterik
S. 59-92

Summary:
History increasingly interprets National Socialism as a "political religion" and therefore searches for sources of the National Socialist ideology that can be classified as religious. In recent years, historians have, with greater frequency, investigated occult and esoteric influences on National Socialist ideology. The problems resulting from such research related to the history of ideas are explained through the example of the Austrian esoteric Rudolf Steiner. In recent years, his "anthroposophy" has occasionally been interpreted as a precursor of National Socialism. A detailed comparison of Steiner’s esotericism with "völkischen" and National Socialist positions does indeed uncover several anti-Semitic, racist and nationalist statements in Steiner’s works. However, Steiner’s views clearly differ from the fundamental ideas of the extreme right. This essay therefore argues for a highly differentiated analysis of the religious movements of the first half of the 20th century: they should never be judged merely as potential precursors of National Socialism, but should also always be seen in their correlation with other spiritual currents; only then can a complete view of the religious scene before 1933 be possible. This also opens up new perspectives concerning the question of to what extent National Socialist ideology was nourished from religious sources.

Dori Laub mit Marjori Allard:
Geschichte, Erinnerung und Wahrheit. Ein Versuch, den Ort der Überlebenden zu bestimmen
S. 93-113

Summary:
The essay deals with the role of clinical listening in survivor testimony. The authors focus on conditions, intentions, promises, and hazards of the testimony itself. Testimony can offer a way in which to reconstruct identity: the trauma of surviving the holocaust is not only a reaction to radical violence, but also to a total loss. Surviving means the loss of family, home, language, belief or history. The survivor is characterized by a total loneliness. Testimony itself can invent and reconstruct these losses. However, the Holocaust not only erased physical or historical elements of a Jewish presence, it also annihilated the position of the "other" in the social dyad of interaction. How can a testimony be made if there is nobody to listen, to answer, to accept the survivor’s remembrance? The essay discusses the concepts of "place", "presence", and "absence", "empty space", and in particular "trauma" to underline the significance of testimonial narration for the individual integration of traumatic experiences. It considers film and literature in order to highlight the difficulties of testimony: the narration is formulated in a language that nobody understands; the narration has to be told outside each communication. The core of the analysis is the question of which (real or imaginary) "other" can be part of the creation of a place for the survivor’s memory.

FOKUS:

"Globale Erinnerung"

Mihran Dabag:
Globale Erinnerung? Neue Ordnungsvorschläge für die "historischen Irrtümer" der Geschichte der Moderne
S. 115-132

Summary:
The essay analyses the strategies of a current debate: the construction of "global remembrance" as an element of transnational solidarity. Does international political discourse show distinct changes in its topics? Or do discussions about "global morality" follow traditional frameworks of national perceptions, e.g. reflecting the necessity of a civil unity provided by a social mutuality? The article examines processes of remembering and points out that, in contrast to association-based individual memory, the political memory demanded is constructed as a normative system. To enable a more precise evaluation of the political strategies, the author looks at efforts to establish a documentation center that focuses on the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe after the Second World War. A critical look on the concepts of Europeanization, transnationalization and global memory highlights the motivation to shift the Holocaust towards an artificial, comfortable history of global violence – a global violence without recognizable perpetrators, motivations, institutions, or aftereffects.

REZENSIONEN:

James Kaye / Bo Stråth (hrsg.): Enlightenment and Genocide. Contradictions of Modernity, Brüssel 2000; Dan Stone (hrsg.): Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust, Amsterdam 2001, besprochen von Egbert Witte

Waclaw Dugloborski / Franciszek Piper: Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studien zur Geschichte des Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz.. 5 Bde., Oswiecim 1999, besprochen von Joachim Neander

Erwin Oberländer (hrsg.), in Zusammenarbeit mit Rolf Ahmann, Hans Lemberg und Holm Sundhaussen: Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa 1919-1944, Paderborn 2001, besprochen von Boris Barth

Josias Semujanga: Origins of Rwandan Genocide, Amherst NY 2003, besprochen von Gerd Krüger

Phillip Cole: Philosophies of Exclusion. Liberal Political Theory and Immigration, Edinburgh 200, besprochen von Egbert Witte

Brigitta Huhnke / Björn Krondorfer (hrsg.): Das Vermächtnis annehmen. Kulturelle und biographische Zugänge zum Holocaust. Beiträge aus den USA und Deutschland, Gießen 2002, besprochen von Renate Franke

Matthias Kessler: "Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder?" Die Lebensgeschichte von Monika Göth, Tochter des KZ-Kommandanten aus "Schindlers Liste", Frankfurt a. M. 2002, besprochen von Simone P. Schmidt

Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, Karoline Tschuggnall: "Opa war kein Nazi". Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, besprochen von Simone P. Schmidt

FORSCHUNGSBIBLIOGRAPHIE:

Schwerpunkt: Auswahlbibliographie aus Zeitschriftenbeiträgen des Jahres 2002

Autoren dieses Heftes:

Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Dr., Professor (em.) für Soziologie an der Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Trutz von Trotha, Dr., Professor für Soziologie an der Universität Siegen

Michael Rißmann, Dr., Studium der Germanistik und Geschichte, Historiker in München

Dori Laub, Dr., praktizierender Psychoanalytiker in New Haven, Connecticut, Professor für Psychiatrie an der Yale University

Mihran Dabag, Dr. phil., Direktor des Instituts für Diaspora- und Genozidforschung an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum