Browsing by Subject "West Germany"
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Item Bonn, the transitional capital and its founding discourses, 1949-1963(2011-05) Uelzmann, Jan; Broadbent, Philip, 1972-; Hake, Sabine, 1956-; Arens, Katherine; Crew, David; Bos, PascaleMy dissertation reconstructs sociopolitical new-beginning discourses pertaining to Bonn, the provisional West German capital, during the Federal Republic’s founding years. Combining approaches from history, cultural studies, and literary studies, I look at Bonn as a projection screen through which to explore the new-beginning discourses that challenged the FRG during its founding years. I argue that there exists a common pattern of contradiction throughout these discourses, as West Germans attempted to straddle the sociopolitical divides and contradictions between the Nazi past, and a now West-oriented future. With individual chapters addressing different cultural domains, my dissertation offers a cultural cross-section of how Bonn was instrumental in implementing a complex strategy for a new beginning in a post-fascist, war-torn society. Chapter one contextualizes the history of the search for a provisional capital of 1948/9 in symbolisms about Bonn that were seldom explicitly expressed, but which help explain the choice of Bonn as provisional capital, paying particular attention to the fact that it was a provincial city removed from the flashpoints of recent German history. The second chapter investigates city-planning debates about the Bonn federal district to highlight the dynamic ways in which West Germans negotiated the status of their provisional capital in relation to larger geopolitical questions of the Cold War and the division of Germany. Chapter three traces the complex genesis of the Neues Bauen-infused, modernist architecture employed by architect Hans Schwippert in the Bundeshaus and Palais Schaumburg renovations. It goes on to illustrate how the FRG’s early, official architectural stance is one based on contradiction and negotiation between two opposing conceptions of political architecture: the traditionalism of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Schwippert’s moderate modernism. The final chapter examines the spatial configurations of two “Bonn-novels,” Wolfgang Koeppen’s Das Treibhaus (1953) and Günter Weisenborn’s Auf Sand gebaut (1956) to argue that both “Bonn novels” portray the city as a topographical contradiction, divided between the “old Bonn” and the “political Bonn,” with corresponding, largely incompatible social spheres. Both novels exploit this characteristic to express a critique of the democratic process in Bonn.Item Grassroots Intellectualism: "International Youth Meeting Dachau" as a Case Study for Holocaust Education and Awareness through Para-educational Activities(2013-05) Suhl, Mary A.; Fallwell, Lynne A.; Adams, Gretchen A.; Barenberg, Alan; McChesney, AnitaThis thesis examines trends in Holocaust education and awareness after 1945 through the case study of the Youth Meeting Dachau (Internationale Jugendbegegnung-Dachau), a para-educational undertaking initiated by a group of young Dachau citizens starting in the early 1980s. The primary motivation for these youth was a desire to create a forum in which to discuss the implications of the legacy left by the Third Reich. Para-education, like the IJB, shares characteristics with more formalized, institutional education programs but also encompasses unique elements of activism and on-site work that extends beyond the traditional classroom. Since the 1970s, Holocaust education has transitioned into formalized education that is readily available for students in many institutions both in the secondary education systems and also at the university level. The “International Youth Meeting Dachau” is a program that began as a grassroots initiative by young people in Germany who were willing to pitch tents in open fields in order to create the opportunity to come together and have a discussion forum in order to contemplate Germany’s tumultuous past. By examining the foundation of the “International Youth Meeting Dachau” and its youth leaders as well as its program materials, this thesis brings to light much of the ways in which Holocaust awareness has manifested in Germany in the past few decades.Item Men reading men : homophile magazines in 1950s West Germany(2012-08) Boovy, Bradley Robert; Hake, Sabine, 1956-; Belgum, Kirsten; Bos, Pascale; Broadbent, Philip; Crew, David; Rehberg, PeterThis study focuses on how homophile magazines functioned to bring homosexual men together as readers and members of unique reading publics in the wake of National Socialist persecution of homosexuals, and in the context of postwar reconstruction, cultural normalization, and the Cold War. Through a combination of close and contextualized analysis, I argue that the magazines Die Freundschaft, Die Insel, Der Weg, PAN, Hellas, and Der Ring, created a space in which contributors and readers could articulate and come to understand their experience as homosexual West Germans. Through homophile magazines, they engaged in discourses that had bearing on their lives as homosexual men, yet the magazines also spoke to their concerns and interests as men living in the early Federal Republic. Thus on the one hand, homophile magazines provided forums for debate and discussion of homosexuality and other issues of interest to readers such as the nature and genesis of same-sex desire, the “role” of the homosexual man in society, campaigns for reform of Paragraph 175, or portrayals of same-sex desire in world literature. On the other hand, I argue that homophile magazines also reflected contributors’ and readers’ engagement with other, seemingly unrelated West German publics beyond the ones engendered by the magazines themselves. As my examination of the magazines reveals, numerous points of intersection emerged between homophile publics and the larger West German public sphere under conditions of reconstruction. As such, this study contributes to scholarship on homophile cultural production and expands our understanding of sexual publics by asking both how West German homophile magazines were unique and how they were uniquely West German.