1,266 research outputs found
How to read Hitler
No full textIncoherent, obsessive and violent, Hitler’s ideas nonetheless found an audience of millions and led to one of the most horrific and devastating conflicts of the 20th century. Taking two of Hitler’s texts as his starting point, Neil Gregor discusses ‘this second-rate mind of great power’ and helps the reader to understand the nature and popular reception of Hitler’s crude but hugely influential writings
Siegmund von Hausegger, The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and Civic Musical Culture in the Third Reich
No full textThe normalisation of barbarism: Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich
No full textThis article summarises the contents of my 1998 book on the same subject
Beethoven, Bayreuth and the origins of the Federal Republic of Germany
No full textThis article takes the reception of the opening concert of the 1951 Bayreuth festival – a performance of Beethoven's IX symphony under Wilhelm Furtwängler - as a prism through which to examine the political culture of the early Federal Republic. It examines the main traditions of Beethoven reception in the first half of the twentieth century, and in Bayreuth in particular, stressing that the discourse surrounding the event was rooted in critical traditions overwhelmingly associated with the nationalist right in German politics. Secondly, it examines the place of Furtwängler in the reception of the concert, arguing that he can best be seen as the representative of a residual Wilhelmine nationalism distinct from the Third Reich but also capable of surviving inside it, which made the brief transition into the Federal Republic before fading in the 1950s. This provides the key to what gave the concert its significance for contemporaries. Finally, it contrasts this concert with another, equally illuminating, but entirely forgotten one given at the same festival two years later, when the former modernist exile Paul Hindemith conducted the same symphony. The reception of this concert underlines that the early 1950s were a period in which not only the residual traces of Wilhelmine nationalism lingered, but also one through which more immediate memories of the conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s resonated profoundly . The events surrounding this concert also demonstrate that the liberalising impulses associated with the late 1950s were manifesting themselves earlier and in the unlikeliest of places
Vergangenheitspolitik, CSU-style: the memory of forced labour in Nuremberg
No full textThis article focuses on the debates surrounding the industrialist Karl Diehl between 1997 and 1999. Elevated to the status of honorary citizen by the city council of Nuremberg, Diehl became the centre of a running scandal when it transpired that he had exploited concentration camp inmates in his factories during the Third Reich. This article surveys the outlines of the ensuing debate, placing it within the context of broader debates in the 1990s over big business and Nazism
Haunted city: Nuremberg and the Nazi past
No full textNuremberg - a city associated with Nazi excesses, party rallies, and the extreme anti-Semitic propaganda published by Hitler ally Julius Streicher - has struggled since the Second World War to come to terms with the material and moral legacies of Nazism. This book explores how the Nuremberg community has confronted the implications of the genocide in which it participated, while also dealing with the appalling suffering of ordinary German citizens during and after the war
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