Volume 299, Issue 1 -

Pericles designed a law that restricted Athenian citizenship to the children of two citizens ([Aristot.] Ath. pol. 26,3 f.; Plut. Perikl. 37,3–5; Ail. var. 6,10; 13,24). Previous attempts at explaining the background, purpose and extent of the law have been unconvincing in that they ignore its retrospective effect and posit exemptions based on anachronistic assumptions. But 4760 Athenians who had been enrolled in deme lists without complying with the rule defined by Pericles were disfranchised on occasion of a grain donation by King Psammetichus in 445/44 BCE (Plut. Perikl. 37; Philochoros, FGrH 328 F 119). As a result, the law appears to have had unlimited force. At any rate, only that revision of the citizen lists seems to offer a plausible demographic and political context for the definition of the law. But in 451/50, the traditional date, which is based on the Aristotelian Athēnaiōn politeia, it would have been difficult to gain the majority of the assembly for the new definition of citizenship: the Athenians had just suffered substantial losses during the First Peloponnesian War, whereas the demand for citizen soldiers in the face of a new campaign against the Persians remained high. Only after the Persian Wars (449) and the First Peloponnesian War (446) did the Athenians reduce their fleet and carry out new settlement projects that are indicative of a surplus of citizens. Therefore, the immediate connection of the citizenship law with the revision of the deme lists in 445/44, as attested by Plutarch, is more credible than the date transmitted in the Athēnaiōn politeia.

For us today, the study of records and files in state archives is a well known and established as well as common procedure to learn something about the past. Yet, state archives were neither primarily designed for nor meant to serve any historical interests. In my paper I will thus firstly examine the political purpose of archives for state governments and societies during the 19th century; in a second step of my analysis I will answer the question as to how and under which circumstances archival holdings were rendered accessible to historical researchers in the face of the continuing legal and social functions of state archives in this span of time. Whereas political reforms in the early nineteenth century failed to establish an institutionally guaranteed access to state archives for historical researchers, the early modern tradition of supplications furnished Central European state governments with a traditional and well established administrative means to reconcile the apparently attractive „scientific exploitation“ of archival holdings with persistent governmental interests in the secrecy of the arcana imperii. A political communication process between petitioner and authority followed and rendered feasible the so-called „opening of the archives“, supervised and monitored by the state government and its administration. In looking into archival records and files, however ‒ and this is the main assertion of my paper ‒, historical researchers did appropriate not only information pertaining to the past but also a specifically legal notion of truth that bestowed their historical representations with a new epistemic status; their histories became truer than others.

The article deals with the career of a perpetrator of the Nazi-Regime in occupied Poland and his Polish-Kashubian girlfriend. In spite of the racist laws to which members of the SS were subjected, the couple married during the German occupation. The example of Alouis Fischotter and his wife Urszula B. shows the divergence between the ideology of National Socialist racist policy and its real and contradictory implementation in occupied East Europe. Furthermore, the variety of sources about this couple allows a biographical perspective on both partners. While the material about the policeman Fischotter provides insights in the everyday life of German policemen in the occupied territories, especially Lublin and Memel, the „woman at his side“ (Gudrun Schwarz) was a local, who fraternized on a sexual level and cooperated politically. Thus, she is a member of a rarely examined group.

Zusammenfassung Von de Gaulle zu Pompidou: Kontinuität und Wandel französischer Außenpolitik im Lichte der Aktenedition „Documents diplomatiques français“