Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert
-
Edited by:
Joachim von Puttkamer
Russia and the East occupy a special place in the Polish history of ideas and perception. The study examines this phenomenon based on the example of the collapse of the Russian Empire and its depiction in autobiographic writings of the Polish intelligentsia. It also develops a history of the crisis and transformation of the Polish intelligentsia in the 20th century.
Catastrophe and Utopia studies the biographical trajectories, intellectual agendas, and major accomplishments of select Jewish intellectuals during the age of Nazism, and the partly simultaneous, partly subsequent period of incipient Stalinization. By focusing on the relatively underexplored region of Central and Eastern Europe – which was the primary centre of Jewish life prior to the Holocaust, served as the main setting of the Nazi genocide, but also had notable communities of survivors – the volume offers significant contributions to a European Jewish intellectual history of the twentieth century. Approaching specific historical experiences in their diverse local contexts, the twelve case studies explore how Jewish intellectuals responded to the unprecedented catastrophe, how they renegotiated their utopian commitments and how the complex relationship between the two evolved over time. They analyze proximate Jewish reactions to the most abysmal discontinuity represented by the Judeocide while also revealing more subtle lines of continuity in Jewish thinking.
Ferenc Laczó is assistant professor in History at Maastricht University and Joachim von Puttkamer is professor of Eastern European History at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and director of the Imre Kertész Kolleg.
The traditional industrial and mining metropolis of Katowice is being transformed into center of culture and technology. The study discusses this forward-looking transformation, examining how it was reconciled with historical tradition. What kinds of historical narrative arise in times of rapid change? How is historical meaning constructed and what are the functions of official history during times of structural change?
This volume highlights the specific experiences and challenges of modernity in twentieth-century Eastern and Central Europe. Contributors ask how spatial and temporal conditions shaped the region’s transformation from a rural to an urban, industrialized society in this period and investigate the state’s role in the mastery of space, particularly in the context of state socialism. The volume also sheds light on the ruralization of cities and mutual perceptions of the rural and urban populations in this region.
This work adopts an unusual perspective. Rather than looking at a general remembrance of the Second World War, it explicitly focuses on memories of Soviet mass crimes, especially in the Gulag. At the same time, it examines the role of a diverse set of actors from different places and in changing combinations, thus providing varied interpretations of Stalin's crimes.
The First World War began in the Balkans, and it was fought as fiercely in the East as it was in the West. Fighting persisted in the East for almost a decade, radically transforming the political and social order of the entire continent. The specifics of the Eastern war such as mass deportations, ethnic cleansing, and the radicalization of military, paramilitary and revolutionary violence have only recently become the focus of historical research. This volume situates the ‘Long First World War’ on the Eastern Front (1912–1923) in the hundred years from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century and explores the legacies of violence within this context.
Content
Jochen Böhler/Włodzimierz Borodziej/Joachim von Puttkamer: Introduction
I. A World in Transition
Joachim von Puttkamer: Collapse and Restoration. Politics and the Strains of War in Eastern Europe
Mark Biondich: Eastern Borderlands and Prospective Shatter Zones. Identity and Conflict in East Central and Southeastern Europe on the Eve of the First World War
Jochen Böhler: Generals and Warlords, Revolutionaries and Nation-State Builders. The First World War and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe
II. Occupation
Jonathan E. Gumz: Losing Control. The Norm of Occupation in Eastern Europe during the First World War
Stephan Lehnstaedt: Fluctuating between ‘Utilisation’ and Exploitation. Occupied East Central Europe during the First World War
Robert L. Nelson: Utopias of Open Space. Forced Population Transfer Fantasies during the First World War
III. Radicalization
Maciej Górny: War on Paper? Physical Anthropology in the Service of States and Nations
Piotr J. Wróbel: Foreshadowing the Holocaust. The Wars of 1914–1921 and Anti-Jewish Violence in Central and Eastern Europe
Robert Gerwarth: Fighting the Red Beast. Counter-Revolutionary Violence in the Defeated States of Central Europe
IV. Aftermath
Julia Eichenberg: Consent, Coercion and Endurance in Eastern Europe. Poland and the Fluidity of War Experiences
Philipp Ther: Pre-negotiated Violence. Ethnic Cleansing in the ‘Long’ First World War
Dietrich Beyrau: The Long Shadow of the Revolution. Violence in War and Peace in the Soviet Union
Commentary
Jörn Leonhard: Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War – A Commentary from a Comparative Perspective
