12. Jahrgang, April/Mai 2003, Nr. 2

Bernd Greiner
Zwischen »Totalem Krieg« und »Kleinen Kriegen«. Überlegungen zum historischen Ort des Kalten Krieges

Summary
This contribution on the historical locus of the Cold War examines how and with what consequences the political, military, and intellectual confrontation between the Eastern and Western blocs transformed the societies involved in this conflict. A further aim of this analysis is to probe the lasting effects of the changes which shaped these societies in the course of five decades. What is the heritage of the Cold War for 21st century politics? The approach taken in addressing these questions is a comparative analysis of social transformation processes in various states and regions worldwide.

Literaturbeilage zum Thema

Mark Mazower
Gewalt und Staat im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert

Michael Wildt
Die politische Ordnung der Volksgemeinschaft. Ernst Fraenkels »Doppelstaat« neu betrachtet

Summary
The National Socialist regime cannot be explained as a mere dictatorship; it was based on the concepts of Volk and race and not on the state as a principle of order. Ernst Fraenkel was the first to analyze the multi-dimensionality of the National Socialist political order and to characterize it with the terms normative state and prerogative state. Fraenkel’s analysis of the Dual State – conceptualized as a permanent state of emergency, aimed not only at destroying the civil legal order, but civil society as well – can be extended to describe the transformation of German society into a racist »Volksgemeinschaft«, as a genuinely National Socialist political order of inequality.

Formen der Bürgerlichkeit. Reinhart Koselleck im Gespräch mit Manfred Hettling und Bernd Ulrich

Summary
This interview with Reinhart Koselleck, historian and social theoretician and professor emeritus at the University of Bielefeld, begins by taking up issues linked to the historical semantics of civic society. These questions are examined within the framework of the constitution of the young German Federal Republic (founded in 1949) and its cultural self-understanding. In the second part, the interview focuses on Professor Koselleck’s autobiography, exploring both the characteristic history of a bourgeoisie family between the two world wars and the intellectual climate of the German university town of Heidelberg in the 1950s. Koselleck portrays encounters with Carl Schmitt, Viktor von Weizsäcker and Martin Heidegger, among others, and the formative effect of such contacts on his intellectual physiognomy.

Peter Schöttler
Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich – eine historiographische Fußnote

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Wolfgang Kraushaar: Aus der Protest-Chronik

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