Central European History offers articles, review essays, and book reviews that range widely through the history of Germany, Austria, and other German-speaking regions of Central Europe from the medieval era to the present. All topics and approaches to history are welcome, whether cultural, social, political, diplomatic, intellectual, economic, and military history, as well as historiography and methodology. Contributions that treat new fields, such as post-1945 and post-1989 history, maturing fields such as gender history, and less-represented fields such as medieval history and the history of the Habsburg lands are especially desired. The journal thus aims to be the primary venue for scholarly exchange and debate among scholars of the history of Central Europe.
Letter
Letter from the Editor Andrew I. Port Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 1 – 3 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000308 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Articles
Shaping Public Opinion through Architecture and Urban Design: Perspectives on Ludwig I and His Building Program for a “New Munich” Joshua Hagen Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 4 – 30 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000011 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015 As the sovereign of a newly fashioned kingdom facing uncertain prospects, King Ludwig I of Bavaria launched a sprawling building program to transform his capital city, Munich. Ludwig believed that the patronage of art and architecture would enhance his political authority and foster a sense of historical legitimacy in his kingdom. He regarded this building program as a way of expressing and impressing on the public his own views of politics, culture, and history, but the associated financial burden became a source of public discontent, a focal point for political opposition, and, ultimately, a factor in Ludwig's later abdication. Public sentiment and scholarly opinion toward Ludwig nevertheless underwent a broad rehabilitation after his reign. Many soon came to view Ludwig's projects as expressions of the monarch's cultural sophistication and generosity, rather than as instruments of political and ideological calculation.
Occupying Ukraine: Great Expectations, Failed Opportunities, and the Spoils of War, 1941–1943 Kim Christian Priemel Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 31 – 52 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000059 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015 The attack against the Soviet Union was ideologically motivated, but the timing owed a great deal to military and economic considerations. German hopes largely focused on Ukraine, which was expected to be both a giant breadbasket and a reservoir of essential minerals. But plans for the economic exploitation of Ukraine were flawed from the beginning and remained inconsistent throughout the war. Substantial reconstruction efforts only began belatedly and were accompanied by brute force that combined economic logic with ideological zeal. The Nazi policies of racist repression and mass murder were, then, both a means of and an obstacle to exploitation of the East. Yet, they were also successful: without the raw materials obtained from Ukraine, the Nazi war machine would have likely ground to a halt well before 1945. The cost of sustaining the German war effort was consequently borne, to a large extent, by the local population, which labored under appalling conditions both in the Reich and in Ukraine itself.
Missing, Lost, and Displaced Children in Postwar Germany: The Great Struggle to Provide for the War's Youngest Victims Michelle Mouton Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 53 – 78 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000035 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015 In the final months of World War II, more than a million German children took to the roads in search of family and home. Although the majority returned home with little institutional support, hundreds of thousands of other German children could not. Some were orphaned; others remained in camps, children's homes, or foster families in areas that no longer belonged to Germany. Most challenging for authorities were those who were alone and too young to know their own names. This article explores the struggle to locate, identify, and provide for missing, lost, and displaced German children after 1945. It argues that despite a general agreement that children were in peril, Allied denazification policies and the decision by the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) not to help “enemy children” compromised care for children. The division of Germany and the onset of the Cold War further handicapped efforts to aid children by preventing the creation of a unified search service. Yet, despite the many postwar impediments, the effort to care for these children was remarkably successful in the end.
Neue Westpolitik: The Clandestine Campaign to Westernize the SPD in Cold War Berlin, 1948–1958 Scott H. Krause Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 79 – 99 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000047 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015 This article focuses on the joint campaign of “remigrés” and American authorities to “westernize” the local Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin during the early Cold War. The years 1948 to 1958 witnessed one of postwar Germany's most bitter intraparty struggles for leadership within the Berlin SPD, where a faction of remigrés led by Ernst Reuter and Willy Brandt wrestled for control with the so-called Keulenriege around Franz Neumann. Examining clandestine American support for the remigré faction, which included favorable media coverage and considerable financial contributions, this article focuses in particular on the political maneuvering of a German-American network around Shepard Stone, political advisor to U.S. Commissioner John McCloy. An investigation of the postwar power struggle within the Berlin SPD offers fresh perspectives on three related subjects: the role of remigrés in postwar Germany history; the political clout of informal German-American networks; and West Berlin as an alternative laboratory of German democratization.
Review Essay
The German Right from Weimar to Hitler: Fragmentation and Coalescence Geoff Eley Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 100 – 113 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000060 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015 As archival scholarship on National Socialism moved under way during the later 1960s, study of the Right's broader intellectual history relied on a small number of then canonical works—by Klemens von Klemperer (1957), Otto E. Schüddekopf (1960), Fritz Stern (1961), Hans-Joachim Schwierskott (1962), and Kurt Sontheimer (1962), shadowed by Armin Mohler's Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932. Grundriβ ihrer Weltanschauungen (1950)—soon to be joined by George Mosse (1964), Herman Lebovics (1969), and Walter Struve (1973). At this stage, with the exception of Fritz K. Ringer's The Decline of the German Mandarins (1967) and Reinhard Bollmus's study of Alfred Rosenberg's office and its opponents (1970), there was virtually nothing taking a broader social or institutional approach to the contexts of Nazi ideology and the sociology of knowledge under the Third Reich. Gerhard Kratzsch's Kunstwart und Dürerbund. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (1969) stood very much alone as a nuanced, archivally researched case study alive to the complex ambivalences of cultural nationalism in the Wilhelmine years.
Book Reviews
Ludwig Camerarius (1573–1651). Eine Biographie. By Friedrich Hermann Schubert. Second rev. ed. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2013. Pp. xv + 773. Cloth €89.00. ISBN: 978-3402130186. Philip M. Soergel Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 114 – 115 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000084 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany. By Maria R. Boes. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. xii + 279. Cloth $119.95. ISBN 978-1409431473. Joel F. Harrington Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 115 – 116 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000096 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
The Iron Princess: Amalia Elisabeth and the Thirty Years War. By Tryntje Helfferich. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Pp. 319. Cloth $39.95. ISBN 978-0674073395. Howard Louthan Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 116 – 118 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000102 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800. By H. Glenn Penny. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. 372. Cloth $45.00. ISBN 978-1469607641. Helmut Walser Smith Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 118 – 120 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000114 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm. By Harold James. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. Pp. vii + 360. Cloth $37.50. ISBN 978-0691153407. Peter Hayes Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 120 – 121 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000126 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Kriegskrankenpflege im Ersten Weltkrieg. Das Pflegepersonal der freiwilligen Krankenpflege in den Etappen des deutschen Kaiserreiches. By Astrid Stölzle. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013. Pp. 227. Cloth €42.00. ISBN 978-3515104814. Ann Taylor Allen Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 121 – 122 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000138 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Metropolis Berlin 1880–1940. Edited by Iain Boyd Whyte and David Frisby. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Pp. xvi + 638. Cloth $85.00. ISBN 978-0520270374. Steve Hochstadt Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 123 – 124 doi: 10.1017/S000893891500014X (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School. By Emily J. Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xx + 444. Cloth $45.00. ISBN: 978-0226061689. Davide Stimilli Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 124 – 126 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000151 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy. Edited by Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. 464. Cloth $35.00. ISBN: 978-0691135106. Warren Rosenblum Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 126 – 127 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000163 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
The German Research Foundation, 1920–1970: Funding Poised between Science and Politics. Edited by Mark Walker, Karin Orth, Ulrich Herbert, and Rüdiger vom Bruch. Translated by Ann M. Hentschel. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013. Pp. 515. Cloth €69.00. ISBN 978-3515101950. Kristie Macrakis Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 128 – 129 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000175 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics. By Nitzan Lebovic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 316. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 978-1137342058. Egbert Klautke Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 129 – 130 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000187 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Selling under the Swastika: Advertising and Commercial Culture in Nazi Germany. By Pamela E. Swett. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 344. Cloth $65.00. ISBN 978-0804773553. Nancy Reagin Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 130 – 132 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000199 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. By Alon Confino. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 284. Cloth $30.00. ISBN: 978-0300188547. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 132 – 134 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000205 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi Perpetrators. By Katharina von Kellenbach. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 304. Cloth $35.00. ISBN: 978-0199937455. Rebecca Wittmann Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 134 – 136 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000217 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. By R. M. Douglas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 486. Cloth $25.00. ISBN: 978-0300198201. Eagle Glassheim Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 136 – 137 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000229 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Wiederaufbau europäischer Städte/Rebuilding European Cities: Rekonstruktionen, die Moderne und die lokale Identitätspolitik seit 1945/Reconstructions, Modernity and the Local Politics of Identity Construction since 1945. Edited by Georg Wagner-Kyora. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014. Pp. 485. Cloth $127.00. ISBN 978-3515106238. Andrew Lees Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 137 – 139 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000230 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Composing the Party Line: Music and Politics in Early Cold War Poland and East Germany. By David G. Tompkins. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 290. Paper $39.95. ISBN 978-1557536471. David Imhoof Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 139 – 140 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000242 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
The People's Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism, and Dictatorship in East Germany. By Scott Moranda. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. Pp. x + 229. Cloth $70.00. ISBN 978-0472119134. Astrid M. Eckert Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 140 – 142 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000254 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies. Edited by Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk, and Thomas Lindenberger. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012. Pp. x + 385. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 978-0857452436. Bernd Schaefer Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 142 – 143 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000266 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015
War of Words: Culture and the Mass Media in the Making of the Cold War in Europe. Edited by Judith Devlin and Christoph Hendrik Müller. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2013. Pp. xiv + 226. Cloth €60.00/$99.95. ISBN 978-1906359379. Joe Perry Central European History , Volume 48 , Issue 01 , March 2015, pp 143 – 145 doi: 10.1017/S0008938915000278 (About doi) Published Online on 29th April 2015