Articles

Ernst Faber and the Consequences of Failure: A Study of a Nineteenth-Century German Missionary in China
Albert Wu
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 1 – 29
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000600
Published Online on 15th May 2014
In 1898, the year before his death, the German missionary Ernst Faber reflected on his forty-year career in China. The account of his early missions work was suffused with a tone of failure and disappointment. He wrote openly about his difficulties in adjusting to the climate and environment of southern China, the diminutive numbers of converts to Christianity, his frustrations with learning Mandarin and the local dialects used in Guangdong, and the overwhelming feeling of loneliness that he encountered working in rural parishes.

Grounded Modernity in the Bavarian Alps: The Reichenhall Spa Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Adam T. Rosenbaum
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 30 – 53
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000612
Published Online on 15th May 2014
Located on the Alpine frontier between Bavaria and Austria, Reichenhall was once a secluded town, historically defined by its salt industry. Its reputation began to change in the mid-nineteenth century, after a number of enterprising locals opened “cure facilities,” thereby establishing the foundations of a modern health resort. By the end of the century, the spa town drew over 10,000 guests per season. The local community accommodated these visitors with an expanding hospitality industry and a growing number of pleasurable activities. By 1900, the recently renamed Bad Reichenhall had become more than a spa: it was a multifaceted and modern tourist destination, offering progressive medical treatment and cosmopolitan entertainment, along with easy access to the Alpine environment. The following article argues that the marketing of these diverse attractions provides insight into how German society thought about modernity at the turn of the century.

A Right to Beat a Child? Corporal Punishment and the Law in Wilhelmine Germany
Sace Elder
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 54 – 75
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000624
Published Online on 15th May 2014
In 1903, Elisabeth von Oertzen, a widely read author and one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Children from Mistreatment and Exploitation, exhorted her fellow protectionists in the pages of her organization's newsletter to push for greater legal protections for children from abusive adults. The occasion for her admonition was the infamous Bavarian child abuse case in which a young male tutor, Andreas Dippold, had beaten his young charges so badly that one had succumbed to his mistreatment. The case demonstrated, von Oertzen wrote, that while torture had been abolished for adults, it was still widely practiced on children. One of the chief causes of child abuse, according to von Oertzen, was the claim to the so-called Züchtigungsrecht, the right to use corporal punishment. “Because of [the] defenselessness of children it has become customary to exercise on them the right to use corporal punishment, even where it does not exist,” she wrote. A host of people, including tutors, governesses, and babysitters claim the right, but “how far the right to corporal punishment is transferrable is entirely an open question!” Curiously, von Oertzen asserted both that there was an objectively existing “right” to use corporal punishment and that there was no consensus on where that right lay.

Österreichische Aktion: Monarchism, Authoritarianism, and the Unity of the Austrian Conservative Ideological Field during the First Republic
Janek Wasserman
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 76 – 104
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000636
Published Online on 15th May 2014
Even as recently as 2011, in the wake of Otto Habsburg's death, Austrians have contested the place of the monarchy in Austrian identity. For many, the Habsburg monarchy represents a defining feature of Austria's past glory. Dating from late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the earliest examples of an “Austrian myth” stressed the unifying function of the Habsburgs in Mitteleuropa and the importance of German and Catholic traditions for the advancement of European culture. This nostalgic view tended to overlook the myriad problems of the late imperial period—ethnonationalist tensions, declining imperial might, undemocratic government, social unrest. Not surprisingly, many of the earliest proponents of a distinct, pro-Habsburg and non-German Austrian identity—which emerged after the Great War—were Catholic conservatives who wished to create an animating myth for Austrian Germans that would distinguish them from Prussians. This became increasingly important after the establishment of the Austrian Republic, when many of these individuals pressed for a restoration of the Habsburg Kaiser and a return to the prewar status quo.

Nazi Kirchenpolitik and Polish Catholicism in the Reichsgau Wartheland, 1939–1941
Jonathan Huener
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 105 – 137
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000648
Published Online on 15th May 2014
With the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, National Socialist Germany aimed to destroy the Polish nation and Polish national consciousness. The Nazi regime attempted to accomplish this in a variety of ways, including the destruction of Polish cultural institutions, forced resettlement, forced labor, incarceration in prisons and camps, random and systematic roundups of prisoners, and mass murder. To the German authorities in occupied Poland and to many Poles, it was obvious that the occupation would target the Polish Catholic Church with vigor and brutality. Catholicism was the religion of approximately 65 percent of interwar Poland's population: it dominated religious life, held tremendous wealth and political power, and its clergy were widely respected as members of the intelligentsia. More importantly for the Germans, the Catholic Church was a locus and symbol of Polish national identity.

Imagining Yugoslavs: Migration and the Cold War in Postwar West Germany
Christopher A. Molnar
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 138 – 169
doi: 10.1017/S000893891400065X
Published Online on 15th May 2014
In recent years historians have argued that after the collapse of the Nazi regime in May 1945, the concept of race became a taboo topic in postwar Germany but that Germans nonetheless continued to perceive resident foreign populations in racialized terms. Important studies of Jewish displaced persons, the black children of American occupation soldiers and German women, and Turkish guest workers have highlighted continuities and transformations in German racial thought from the Nazi era into the postwar world, particularly in West Germany. In a programmatic essay, Rita Chin and Heide Fehrenbach argue that “the question of race remained at the very center of social policy and collective imagination during the occupation years, as the Western Allies worked to democratize Germany, and during the Bonn Republic,” and they call for a new historiography that is more attentive to the category of race and the process of racialization in Germany and Europe after 1945. While this newfound emphasis on race in Germany's postwar history has been salutary, an approach that puts race and racialization at the center of German interactions with resident foreign populations runs the risk of sidelining the experiences of foreign groups that Germans did not view in primarily racial terms. Indeed, to a certain extent this has already occurred. By the mid-1980s, public and policy discourse on immigrants in West Germany came to focus overwhelmingly on Turks and the problems raised by their “alien” Islamic cultural practices. That West Germany's guest worker program had resulted in the permanent settlement of hundreds of thousands of Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Yugoslavs was largely forgotten. When historians, anthropologists, and scholars in other disciplines began taking more interest in Germany's migration history in recent decades, they too focused overwhelmingly on Turks. Only in recent years has the historiography of Germany's postwar migration history started to reflect the multinational character of Germany's immigrant population.

Featured Book Reivew

Zensur im Vormärz. Pressefreiheit und Informationskontrolle in Europa. Edited by Gabriele B. Clemens. Schriften der Siebenpfeiffer-Stiftung, Band 9. Tübingen: Jan Thorbecke. 2013. Pp. 267. Cloth €29.00. ISBN 978-3-7995-4909-7.
James M. Brophy
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 170 – 174
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000661
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Book Reviews

After The History of Sexuality: German Geneaologies with and beyond Foucault. Edited by Scott Spector, Helmut Puff, and Dagmar Herzog. New York: Berghahn Press. 2012. Pp. 310. $95.00 (h) $29.95 (p). ISBN 978-0-85745-373-0.
Michelle Mouton
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 175 – 177
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000673
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517–1648: ‘Printed Poison and Evil Talk.’ By Allyson F. Creasman. Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2012. Pp. xi +282. $119.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-1001-0.
Joy Wiltenburg
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 177 – 179
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000685
Published Online on 15th May 2014

The Defortification of the German City, 1689–1866. By Yair Mintzker. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. xvi + 285. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-107-02403-8.
Brian Vick
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 179 – 181
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000697
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Wissen, Arbeit, Freundschaft: Ökonomien und soziale Beziehungen an den Akademien in London, Paris und Berlin um 1700. By Sebastian Kühn. Göttingen: V&R Unipress. 2011. Pp. 361. ISBN 978-3-8997-1836-2.
Benjamin Marschke
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 181 – 183
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000703
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Remaking the Rhythms of Life German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State. By Oliver Zimmer. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. v + 395. 16 Black and white illustrations. Cloth $65.00. ISBN 978-0-1995-7120-8.
Katherine B. Aaslestad
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 183 – 186
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000715
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Africa in Translation: A History of Colonial Linguistics in Germany and Beyond, 1814–1945. By Sara Pugach. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. 2012. Pp. x + 303. $80.00. ISBN 0-472-11782-6.
Kenneth J. Orosz
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 186 – 188
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000727
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Building a Public Judaism: Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe. By Saskia Coenen Snyder. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. Pp. 350, 20 b/w ill. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-05989-4.
Paul B. Jaskot
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 188 – 190
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000739
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Choral Fantasies: Music, Festivity, and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany. By Ryan Minor. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. viii + 275. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76071-3.
Michael H. Kater
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 190 – 191
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000740
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion After Unification. By Rebecca Ayako Bennette. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2012. Pp. x + 368. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-06563-5.
Kevin Cramer
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 192 – 194
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000752
Published Online on 15th May 2014

The Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Culture. By Charlotte Ashby, Tag Gronberg, and Simon Shaw-Miller (Eds.). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2013. Pp. xii + 244. $95.00. ISBN 978-0-85745-764-6.
James Shedel
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 194 – 196
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000764
Published Online on 15th May 2014

The Business of Transatlantic Migration between Europe and the United States, 1900–1914. By Drew Keeling. Zurich: Chronos Verlag. 2012. Pp. xix + 345. ISBN 978-3-0340-1152-5.
David Meskill
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 196 – 199
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000776
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Lisa Silverman, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture Between the World Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. Xi + 334. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-979484-3.
Gideon Reuveni
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 199 – 200
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000788
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture. By Benjamin Ziemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013. Pp. xi + 315. £60.00. ISBN 978-1-107-02889-0.
Barry A. Jackisch
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 201 – 202
doi: 10.1017/S000893891400079X
Published Online on 15th May 2014

The People's Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle. By Bernhard Rieger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. Pp. 406. $28.95. ISBN 978-0-674-05091-4.
Corey Ross
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 202 – 204
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000806
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930–1945. By Geoff Eley. London and New York: Routledge. 2013. Pp. ix + 233. ISBN 978-0-415-81263-4.
Roderick Stackelberg
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 205 – 206
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000818
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture. By David B. Dennis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. vii + 541. $35.00. ISBN 978-1-107-02049-8.
Joseph W. Bendersky
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 206 – 208
doi: 10.1017/S000893891400082X
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Der vergessene Widerstand der Arbeiter, Gewerkschafter, Kommunisten, Sozialdemokraten, Trotzkisten, Anarchisten und Zwangsarbeiter. Edited By Hans Coppi and Stefan Heinz. Berlin: Diet., 2012. Pp. 383. ISBN 978-3-320-02264-8.
Dieter K. Buse
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 209 – 211
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000831
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare. By Ben Shepherd. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. 2012. Pp. vii + 342. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-674-04891-1.
T. Hunt Tooley
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 211 – 213
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000843
Published Online on 15th May 2014

Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War. By Daniel F. Harrington. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 2012. Pp. 414. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-8131-3613-4.
Noel D. Cary
Central European History , Volume 47 , Issue 01 , March 2014, pp 213 – 216
doi: 10.1017/S0008938914000855
Published Online on 15th May 2014