On an international level, temporal standardization was increasingly discussed in the last third of the nineteenth century, but how exactly it was defined and implemented in everyday life in late Imperial Germany has awaited investigation. This article comprises three examples that show how administrative attempts to denominate and institutionalize certain homogeneous concepts of time were dealt with

AbstractThe dowsing debate in Imperial Germany and its role in the solution to the ‘water question’ in German Southwest Africa is a window on the three principal themes of this article: environmental challenges, imperial fantasies and the fluidity of epistemologies. First, the water question, as contemporaries termed it, was a significant concern in German Southwest Africa, and discussions of divination

Zeit der Unterhändler. Koordinierter Kapitalismus in Deutschland und Frankreich zwischen 1920 und 1950. By MüllerPhilipp. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. 2019. 480 pp. €32.00 (hardback).

AbstractFeminist domestic violence activists in 1970s West Berlin sought to create a community of women helping women. This was key to feminist work in challenging patriarchal citizenship norms and male violence against women. Tracing the evolution of feminist domestic violence activism in West Berlin, this article argues that feminist ideals and critiques were deradicalized as they were taken up in

AbstractIn their private correspondence German soldiers were often silent about the atrocities they committed on the Eastern front during the Second World War. This article demonstrates that a ‘thick description’ of Holocaust perpetrators’ writing practices can reveal strategies of justification and legitimation for mass murder. Mathias Müller of Police Battalion 309 made use of the performative force

AbstractThe dowsing debate in Imperial Germany and its role in the solution to the ‘water question’ in German Southwest Africa is a window on the three principal themes of this article: environmental challenges, imperial fantasies and the fluidity of epistemologies. First, the water question, as contemporaries termed it, was a significant concern in German Southwest Africa, and discussions of divination

Nineteenth-Century Germany: Politics, Culture, and Society 1780–1918. Second Edition. Edited by BreuillyJohn. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 2020. XIV + 389 pp. £24.49 (paperback).

Der Protestantismus als Forum und Faktor: Sozialethische Netzwerke im Protestantisums der frühen Bundesrepublik. By HoppeSabrina. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.2019. 435 pp. €79.00 (hardback).

Liebe verwalten: “Ausländerehen” in Deutschland 1870–1945. By LorkeChristoph. Paderborn: Brill/Ferdinand Schöningh. 2020. 689 pp. €109.00 (hardback).

Gesellschaft im Excess: Mediziner in Basel um 1600. By SchoberSarah-Maria. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. 2019. 443 pp. €49.00 (paperback).

The Naked Truth: Viennese Modernism and the Body. By GeorgeAlys X. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2020. Xi + 322 pp. $45.00 (hardback).

Feelings Materialized: Emotions, Bodies and Things in Germany, 1500–1950. Edited by HillardDerek, LempaHeikki, and SpinneyRussell. New York: Berghahn Books. 2020. X + 286 pp. £99.00 (hardback).

Friendship Without Borders: Women’s Stories of Power, Politics, and Everyday Life Across East and West Germany. By LeaskPhil. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2020. Xii + 326 pp. £110.00 (hardback).

AbstractThe importance of herring to Cologne’s medieval economy is well-known and the need to control the quality of this long-distance and perishable product has also been widely recognized. The interregional quality norms that Cologne negotiated with Low Countries fishing towns in 1481 have been neglected, however. This article offers the first reconstruction of the diplomatic process that led to

AbstractThis article reconstructs changes in the German art market during the First World War on the basis of an art-price index for the years 1910 to 1918. The art market during the war was closely tied to the monetary deterioration of the German economy, which undermined trust in paper money. Through an analysis of prices and auction reports, this article shows that from 1916 onwards, the public

Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany’s Rise and Fall. By FleischmanThomas . ‘Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books’. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. 2020. 296 pp. $40.00 (hardback).

Hitlers Parteigenossen: Die Mitglieder der NSDAP 1919–1945. By FalterJürgen W. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus Verlag. 2020. 584 pp. €45.00 (hardback).

Imagining the Witch. Emotions, Gender, and Selfhood in Early Modern Germany. By KounineLaura. Oxford: Oxford University Press.2018. xi + 279 pp. £60.00 (hardback).

Ökonomisierung. Debatten und Praktiken in der Zeitgeschichte. Edited by GrafRüdiger. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. 2019. 415 pp. €43.00 (hardback).

1989. A Global History of Eastern Europe. Edited by MarkJames, IacobBogdan C, RupprechtTobias and SpaskovskaLjubica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2019. Vii + 380 pp. £18.99 (paperback).

Philipp Hainhofer: Handeln mit Kunst und Politik. By WenzelMichael. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag. 2020. 456 pp. €96 (hardback).

Kingship and Justice in the Ottonian Empire. By WangerinLaura E.. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2019. 229 pp. £61.95 (hardback).

German History, 23 May 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghaa032

Ein Ereignis ohne Namen? Zu den Vorstellungen des ‘Bauernkriegs’ von 1525 in den Schriften der ‘Aufständischen’ und in der zeitgenössischen Geschichtsschreibung. By HeidenreichBenjamin. Berlin: de Gruyter. 2019. x + 350 pp. €99.95 (hardback).

AbstractAt the height of the Thirty Years War, news from South America, West Africa and the Caribbean was widespread and quickly distributed in the central European peripheries of the early modern Atlantic world. Despite the German retreat from sixteenth-century colonial experiments, overseas reports sometimes appeared in remote southern German towns before they were printed in Spain or the Low Countries

Research has rejected Ranke’s hypothesis that the Reformation emasculated the Holy Roman Empire and thwarted the emergence of a German nation state for centuries. However, current explanations of the Empire’s cohesion that emphasise the effects of outside pressure or political rituals are not entirely satisfactory. This article contributes to a fuller explanation by examining a factor that so far has

In 1571 two mapmakers, Johannes Mellinger and Tilemann Stella, produced a map of the county of Mansfeld, Luther’s birthplace. This article considers this map as a complex printed material object; it is far more than a straightforward representation of place, since it is covered with historical details, quotes, writing, and references to Luther’s life, the Reformation and Mansfeld’s history. It created

Dreams of Musical Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor. Edited by Neil Gregor and Thomas Irvine. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. 2018. 320 pp. £69.00 (hardback).

This article enhances our understanding of the development and dynamism of early modern witch stereotypes by focusing on the stereotype of the witch-cleric, the Christian minister imagined by early modern people as working for the devil instead of God, baptizing people into witchcraft, working harmful magic and even officiating at witches’ gatherings. I show how this stereotype first developed in relation

Mistresses at the early modern court have only recently been discovered as subjects of political history. They are now increasingly discussed alongside male favourites, and while this essay welcomes this development, it also argues that this should not result in the degendering of the practice of concubinage. The upkeep of extramarital relationships was not a viable option for ruling women, and if

The research for this article was funded by the 'Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom (PIMIC)'ITN, receiving funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 316732; and the 'After Empire: Using and Not Using the Past in the Crisis of the Carolingian World, c.900–1050' HERA project,

The electoral capitulations of the Old German Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, were formulated by the electors and the elected Emperors had to commit themselves to their observance before their coronation. For the constitutional lawyers of the early modern period, they were 'the quintessence of all imperial laws' and the German 'Magna Carta'. Owing to the electoral capitulations, many elements were introduced

The nobleman Werner von Parsberg served the imperial town of Nuremberg between 1430 and his death in 1455 as a mounted retainer and (from 1442) as the town’s imperial chief magistrate. In 1450 he carried Nuremberg’s standard in battle during the Second South German Towns’ War. This long record of close engagement with Nuremberg contrasts with the tradition of reading ‘town’ and ‘nobility’ in Germany

Kirja-arvostelu teoksesta Different Germans, Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives . Edited by Konrad H. Jarausch, Harald Wenzel and Karin Goihl. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017. Xii + 328 pp. £92.00 (hardback).

The German War of 1866 was a turning point in the consolidation of Prussian hegemony over the emerging German nation-state. This article engages with a neglected aspect of this process by investigating the destabilizing effect of Prussia’s territorial expansion at the expense of fellow monarchies in Hanover, Hessen-Kassel, Nassau and Schleswig-Holstein. It argues that the hostile response of ruling

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact scholarcommons@usf.edu. Recommended Citation Ter-Matevosyan, Vahram (2017) "Book Review: Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians

The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess: The Paths of Prophecy in Reformation Europe By Jonathan Green. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor. 2014. xii + 207 pp. $75.00 (hardback)

After Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, West Germans began to accept the more permanent division of the country and rediscovered the regional fundaments of their federal political system. A catalyst for this process was provided by a massive regionalization of the daily press in the aftermath of the recession in 1973. That regionalization entailed the delineation of new regional distribution and advertising

There are two approaches to writing a significant history book. One is ‘going big’ and covering the broadest range of historical phenomena within a large geographical space during a wide time span. This approach makes use of vast and variegated historical bibliographies and well-selected primary sources. The result is an all-encompassing interpretation that helps to make sense of the chaotic matter

The council annals of Johannes Hass, the last Catholic mayor of the West Bohemian town of Gorlitz, are a fascinating document. In a single source we can see the author’s changing interpretation of divine intervention between c.1509 and 1542. After the introduction of the Reformation, Hass steadily decreased the importance of God, whilst the Devil became increasingly important. Regardless of Hass’s

The final third of the twentieth century has been described by the intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers as an ‘age of fracture’, when the means of talking about the ‘aggregate aspects of human life’ changed dramatically. Similarly, Tony Judt argues in his magnum opus Postwar, old political constituencies based on ‘elective affinities of large groups of voters’ gave way to interest in specific policies

Research for this article has been supported, at different stages, by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Gates Cambridge Trust.

This volume stems from a conference held in 2009 on the island of Reichenau under the auspices of the Konstanzer Arbeitskreis fur mittelalterliche Geschichte. It focuses on political violence in the later Middle Ages, and in particular on violence both by and against rulers. Geographically it covers continental Europe, with side trips to England and Scotland. Nevertheless, it devotes significant attention

Während die politischen Generationen der „1945er" und „1968er" zum festen Inventar vieler Deutungen der bundesdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte gehören, ist das ostdeutsche Wendejahr 1989 nicht zum Ausgangspunkt einer generationsprägenden Erzählung geworden. Versuche, generationelle Etiketten wie „Wendekinder" oder „Dritte Generation Ost" zu popularisieren, entfalteten bisher allenfalls auf dem literarischen

This article contributes to a reassessment of gay liberation by focusing on how matters of sex and desire featured in the gay press and the gay movement in 1970s West Germany. Gay liberation has often been viewed through an affirmative lens, contrasted favourably with the supposed shame-filled conformism of the post-war homophile movement. I problematize this perspective by analysing ambivalence about

The Gregorian reform movement in general, and events at Canossa in 1077 in particular, have been credited with tarnishing the lustre of sacral kingship within the Empire. In this paper narrative, liturgical and material sources are drawn upon, to demonstrate the extent to which the image of kingship within the Hohenstaufen Empire continued to be rooted in biblical and liturgical soil. The paper focuses

The largest cache of medieval liturgical furnishings that survives is in Protestant Germany. This survival has sometimes been attributed to Martin Luther’s doctrine of the ‘indifference’ of objects. Using several examples, one from south Germany (the altar at Rothenburg ob der Tauber) and two from women’s convents in the north (especially some devotional statues and their dresses from Kloster Wienhausen)

This essay reviews recent works on the cultural history of music. Arguing that there are not one but several discrete interdisciplinary interfaces at which such work is undertaken, it explores work that analyses musical culture as a site at which ideological politics cohere; studies that examine the place of music in social and cultural practices that served to mark and cross different kinds of space;