Germany Archives

Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World

Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World is the first volume dedicated to exploring the interface of medicine, the human and the humane in the German-speaking lands.

The volume tracks the designation and making through medicine of the human and inhuman, and the humane and inhumane, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Eight individual chapters undertake explorations into ways in which theories and practices of medicine in the German-speaking world have come to define the human, and highlight how such theories and practices have consolidated, or undermined, notions of humane behaviour. Cultural analysis is central to this investigation, foregrounding the reflection, refraction and indeed creation of these theories and practices in literature, life-writing and other discourses and media.Contributors bring to bear perspectives from literary studies, film studies, critical theory, cultural studies, history, and the history of medicine and psychiatry. Thus, this collection is historical in the most expansive sense, for it debates not only what historical accounts bring to our understanding of this topic. It encompasses too investigation of life-writing, documentary, and theory and literary works to bring to light elusive, paradoxical, underexplored – yet vital – issues in history and culture.

Conversations with Third Reich Contemporaries

Conversations with Third Reich Contemporaries presents a selection of excerpts from a recently opened collection of filmed interviews conducted by British documentary filmmaker Luke Holland (1948-2020). Most of the interviewees were young adults when the war ended. Some of them, or their families, had benefited materially through ‘Aryanisation’, Party-facilitated careers or exploiting forced labour. Others had enabled and enacted persecution or perpetrated violence, perhaps in anti-partisan warfare. They all built new lives in the three successor states of West Germany (FRG), East Germany (GDR), and Austria, and dealt with the Nazi past in different ways, including Holocaust denial, attempts at separating their lives from Nazi crimes, and reform.

The role played by ‘ordinary Germans’ in the ‘Third Reich’ and the Holocaust continues to stir debate. In the wider context of mass public engagement with the Holocaust and in light of new forms of racism, antisemitism and prejudice, this compelling sourcebook raises critical awareness of important issues around representation, authenticity, and the co-production of narratives. It attends to the issues of how and by whom knowledge is produced, the contingency of life narratives, performativity, and pedagogy. By suggesting critical questions and providing a reading list, it is an urgent and effective tool for thinking and teaching.

Brexit and Beyond

Brexit will have significant consequences for the country, for Europe, and for global order. And yet much discussion of Brexit in the UK has focused on the causes of the vote and on its consequences for the future of British politics. This volume examines the consequences of Brexit for the future of Europe and the European Union, adopting an explicitly regional and future-oriented perspective missing from many existing analyses.

Drawing on the expertise of 28 leading scholars from a range of disciplines, Brexit and Beyond offers various different perspectives on the future of Europe, charting the likely effects of Brexit across a range of areas, including institutional relations, political economy, law and justice, foreign affairs, democratic governance, and the idea of Europe itself. Whilst the contributors offer divergent predictions for the future of Europe after Brexit, they share the same conviction that careful scholarly analysis is in need – now more than ever – if we are to understand what lies ahead for the EU.

Beards and Texts

Beards and Texts explores the literary portrayal of beards in medieval German texts from the mid-twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries. It argues that as the pre-eminent symbol for masculinity the beard played a distinctive role throughout the Middle Ages in literary discussions of such major themes as majesty and humanity. At the same time beards served as an important point of reference in didactic poetry concerned with wisdom, teaching and learning, and in comedic texts that were designed to make their audiences laugh, not least by submitting various figure-types to the indignity of having their beards manhandled.

Four main chapters each offer a reading of a work or poetic tradition of particular significance (Pfaffe Konrad’s Rolandslied; Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm; ‘Sangspruchdichtung’; Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring), before examining cognate material of various kinds, including sources or later versions of the same story, manuscript variants and miniatures and further relevant beard-motifs from the same period. The book concludes by reviewing the portrayal of Jesus in vernacular German literature, which represents a special test-case in the literary history of beards. As the first study of its kind in medieval German studies, this investigation submits beard-motifs to sustained and detailed analysis in order to shed light both on medieval poetic techniques and the normative construction of masculinity in a wide range of literary genres.