Visits at the Institute

Academic Advisory Council of the GHI

This year, the annual meeting of the Academic Advisory Council of the German Historical Institute took place in Washington, D.C., on August 27 and 28. The council's main purpose is to advise the director and the members of the Institute on all academic and scholarly matters. The council has eight German and American members and is chaired by Professor Klaus Hildebrand (University of Bonn). The other members are: Professors Margaret L. Anderson (University of California at Berkeley), Johannes Fried (University of Frankfurt), Jürgen Heideking (University of Cologne), Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich (Free University Berlin), Wolfgang Jäger (University of Freiburg), Paul C. Schroeder (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Hans-Peter Schwarz (University of Bonn). Also present at the meeting were Ministerialdirigent Volker Knoerich and Regierungsdirektor Dr. Manfred Pusch of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology.

On the occasion of the visit, the research fellows of the Institute presented their individual projects and discussed them with the members of the council. Manfred Berg presented the findings of his study, "'The Ticket to Freedom': The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Struggle for African-American Voting Rights, 1909-1970," which has just been completed and will be published next year. Peter Becker reported on his project, "'Fallen Angels and Impaired Men': The Criminalists' Image of the Criminal in 19th Century Germany," which is near completion. Afterwards Andreas Daum presented a new research project entitled "America's Berlin: The Divided City and the Cold War in American Culture, Society, and Politics, 1945-1963," and Eckhardt Fuchs reported on the progress he has made on his work, which bears the title "The Myth of an International Republic of Letters: Possibilities and Limits of the Scientific Cooperation between Germany and the United States before World War I." In the final session of the morning, Philipp Gassert gave an outline of his new project, a biography of the former German chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1904-1988). In the afternoon, Thomas Goebel presented his research on "'A Case of Democratic Contagion': Direct Democracy in the United States, 1890-1940," Petra Marquardt-Bigman discussed her project on "U.S. Policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa, 1945-1965," and Wilfried Mausbach gave an overview of his research on "Germany, the United States, and the Vietnam War." Finally, Edmund Spevack introduced his study on "American Political and Ideological Influences on the Shaping of the West German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) of 1948/49."

MdB Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg

The member of parliament and deputy director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg, visited the GHI Washington on May 6, 1997. He engaged the Institute's director and research fellows in a very lively discussion about the history of German-American relations since 1945 and about current problems of the transatlantic relationship. The research fellows profited from Dr. Stoltenberg's insights and especially from the great variety of transatlantic experience that he has gathered in his long political career.

Dr. Stoltenberg's distinguished career in German politics has included service as the minister of defense, minister of finance, and minister for science and research. He was first elected to the Bundestag in 1957 and also served as the minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein for eleven years. His scholarly background includes a Ph.D. in history, social studies, and philosophy, as well as a Habilitation in political science from the University of Kiel.

Friedrich Ebert Foundation Stipend Recipients

On May 28, a group of twenty highly gifted recipients of scholarships from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation visited the GHI in Washington. The group members were studying political science, economics, and history. After a presentation of the Institute's work by the director, a very lively discussion took place between the visiting students and the Institute's research fellows. This discussion began with German-American relations in general and later evolved to include nearly all aspects of life in the contemporary United States; it was a tour d'horizon related to the main theme of the students' three-day stay in Washington, "American Dream(s)-Revisited."

Calendar of Events

Fall 1997 Lecture Series

Annual Lecture 1997

We are pleased to announce that Professor Thomas A. Brady Jr. of the University of California at Berkeley will deliver the Institute's Eleventh Annual Lecture:

The lecture will take place in our lecture hall on November 13, 1997. Professor Dr. Heinz Schilling of the Humboldt University Berlin will serve as commentator.

Upcoming Conferences and Workshops

"The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848: Episode or Model?" Conference at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, October 31-November 2, 1997. Conveners: Peter Krüger and Paul W. Schroeder.

"The Genesis of Nazi Policy: Structure and Decision-Making Process: New Research on the National Socialist System of Rule." Conference at the University of Florida, Gainesville, April 9-12, 1998. Conveners: Geoffrey Giles and Eberhard Jäckel.

"The International Financial System in the 20th Century: Past and Present." Conference at Princeton University, April 16-18, 1998. Conveners: Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich and Harold James.

"Microhistories of Modernization: Society, Culture, Politics, and Regional Identity in Central Germany." Conference at the University of Toronto, September 1998. Conveners: James Retallack and Thomas Goebel.

"Violence and Normality: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s." Conference in Marienheide, Germany, October 8-11, 1998. Cosponsored by the GHI London. Conveners: Richard Bessel and Martin Geyer.

"Views of the Criminal in Scholarship." Conference in Florence, Italy, October 1998. Conveners: Peter Becker and Richard Wetzell.

"America's War in the World: Vietnam in International and Comparative Perspectives." Conference at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., November 19-22, 1998. Conveners: Lloyd C. Gardner, Andreas Daum, and Wilfried Mausbach.

International Media Conference

Atlantik-Brücke and Deutsche Welle, in cooperation with the German Historical Institute, have organized an international media conference with forty German and American journalists. The conference will take place November 6-8, 1997, at the Institute. Concern about inappropriate reporting in the media of the two countries has prompted the organizing institutions to invite leading American and German journalists for a discussion about their experiences. Furthermore, the rapid development of the "new media" - worldwide television channels, the Internet, etc. - necessitates an exchange of opinions about the future of journalism. The program is as follows:

Friends of the GHI

Friends Dissertation Prize Awarded

A total of fourteen dissertations from all over the United States and Canada were nominated by their supervisors for this prize, following the initial announcements last year. Members of the prize committee included Vernon Lidtke (The Johns Hopkins University), chair, Kathleen Conzen (University of Chicago), and Jonathan Petropoulos (Loyola College in Maryland). After careful evaluation of the applications, the committee read a number of dissertations in their entirety. Ranking them independently of one another, they were then pleased to find that they were unanimous in their choice of the two joint winners.

Sandra Chaney completed her doctoral dissertation in 1996 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under the direction of Professor Konrad Jarausch. Her title was "Visions and Revisions of Nature: From the Protection of Nature to the Invention of the Environment in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1975." She now teaches in the Department of History and Government at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina.

Dr. Chaney finds a discursive shift during the postwar decades from a concern about protecting nature (Naturschutz) to the broader effort of ensuring the safety and health of humanity in general (Umweltschutz). She argues that this period, during which the Federal Republic of Germany became densely populated, highly urbanized, industrialized, and polluted, also saw a decline of the predominantly romantic understanding of nature, heavily influenced by German cultural traditions, and a move to a highly technical and scientific one, shaped by international trends. Germans worried less about protecting nature from the forces of change and more about restoring some parts of their surroundings to a "natural" condition.

Chaney argues that concepts such as "nature" or "the environment" are socially constructed and continually debated. Her discussion uses three case studies to highlight changing perceptions. The first section demonstrates the emphasis in the first postwar decade on the management of natural resources such as water, soil, and forests with the example of the citizens' initiative against the damming of the Wutach Gorge near Freiburg im Breisgau by a utilities company. In the following period, from 1955 to 1967, conservationists struggled with the negative aspects of economic prosperity, such as haphazard development, pesticides, and other forms of pollution. By the 1960s there was a growing ecological awareness of the increasing danger for both nature and people. Conservation became linked to public health and regional planning concerns. The second case study focuses on the canalization of the Mosel for shipping. Although opponents failed here to block the scheme, the protest resulted in cooperation with planners to restore a more "natural" order to the canal.

The third section explores the rise of "environmental" issues in the years 1968 to 1975. Influenced by international trends, including environmental legislation passed in the United States, the SPD/FDP coalition sponsored laws to protect the environment in 1970. The final case study looks at the establishment of the country's first national park in the Bavarian Forest. People now had to accept that human activity had changed nature to such an extent that constant management was necessary in order to keep certain parts of their surroundings "natural."

The FGHI prize committee felt that this dissertation examined a still neglected issue in modern German history in a thoroughly innovative way. The case study approach in particular moved the argument beyond the conventional discussions about the rise of the Green Party or the influence of National Socialist romanticism.

Paul Lerner worked with Professor István Deák at Columbia University in New York. His 1996 dissertation covered the topic of "Hysterical Men: War, Neurosis and German Mental Medicine, 1914-1921." After one year as a postdoctoral fellow in the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, he is now taking up a teaching position in history at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

The dissertation of Dr. Lerner examines the phenomenon of war neurosis among tens of thousands of German soldiers, beginning in the trenches already in 1914. Doctors were at first puzzled by the symptoms that so closely paralleled those of female hysteria. Within two years they believed they had found the answer and boasted a virtually guaranteed success rate in curing their patients. Having established a strikingly low frequency of the epidemic among prisoners or the seriously wounded, they declared soldiers behind the front lines, many of whom had not yet seen action, to be more prone to the illness. This hypothesis led them to interpret the neuroses as a flight into illness, either as a physical manifestation of the fears and terrors of war, or as a means of acquiring a pension. The desire to return neurotic soldiers to active duty, or after the war to the labor force, revolutionized German mental medicine: rejected treatments such as the use of electricity or hypnosis were suddenly embraced as miracle cures. A new generation of university-based psychiatrists came to the fore in the midst of what was presented as a national emergency.

Lerner first explains the acceptance of male hysteria in the late nineteenth century as a diagnosis for the victims of industrial trauma. Doctors began to locate the pathological source of post-accident nervous symptoms in the patients' psyche, the diagnosis of which (significantly) made them ineligible for pensions and mandated their return to work. The author sees here a powerful and uniquely German opposition between hysteria and work that displaced the traditional femininity of the disease. Wartime doctors interpreted neuroses in similar terms, viewing the First World War, as it were, as a gigantic industrial accident. Their primary goal was to restore the patients' ability and will to work, thus serving the ends of the state and the military, and also enhancing their own professional status.

The dissertation suggests that the demands of war accelerated the turn away from a mental health approach based on the individual patient toward a collectivistic paradigm. Partly pushed in this direction by the unprecedented numbers of patients, doctors came to view speed and efficiency as the primary medical values. National utility became the focus of therapeutic goals, as neurotic patients were channeled as quickly as possible back into the nation's war economy. Dr. Lerner also demonstrates how university psychiatrists and neurologists moved into the gray area between legal, military, and medical spheres to exercise authority as the self-appointed caretakers of the nation's mental and nervous health. Siding with the state in postwar pension claims suits, they used their new prestige to promote views of German manhood based on duty, obedience, and, most of all, productivity.

The committee found Dr. Lerner's dissertation to make a most valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on the evolution of German science and medicine from its nineteenth-century liberal origins to its role in medical atrocities of the Third Reich. They were impressed by the way in which Dr. Lerner elucidated the differences among the approaches followed in Germany, England, France, and the United States, and showed how dealing with shell-shocked soldiers was part of a broader rationalization process, which influenced German military, economic, and medical organization.

Sixth Annual Symposium of the Friends of the GHI

In an effort to better acquaint the Friends with the work of the research fellows at the Institute, their sixth annual symposium will feature presentations by two of the fellows, Andreas Daum and Edmund Spevack, as well as the two winners of the Friends Dissertation Prize, Sandra Chaney and Paul Lerner. The event takes place on November 14, 1997, in the GHI lecture hall. In the morning, Dr. Daum will give a talk on "The Invention of a Hero: Alexander von Humboldt in the American Public Sphere, 1850-1900," and Dr. Lerner will present "Hysterical Men: War, Memory and German Mental Medicine, 1914-1926." After lunch, Sandra Chaney will speak about "Visions and Revisions of Nature: From Naturschutz to Umweltschutz, 1945-1975," and Edmund Spevack will discuss the topic "Members of the Bonn Parliamentary Council (1948-49) and their Links to the United States of America."

Notices and Announcements

German-American Center for Visiting Scholars

The government of the Federal Republic of Germany is currently undertaking new initiatives to strengthen transatlantic relations. As part of that effort, the German-American Academic Council Foundation (GAAC) in Bonn, the German Historical Institute (GHI), and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), both in Washington, D.C., have jointly established a German-American Center for Visiting Scholars (GACVS). The Center will be located in Washington, D.C.

As of January 1, 1998, the Center will award office space and material support to eight young German and American scholars, particularly those in the humanities and social sciences. The Center may grant housing subsidies. The period of each award will vary from one to six months. The purpose of this award is to aid scholars wishing to do research in Washington who have either received another scholarship or who bring with them other means of support.

A committee from the sponsoring institutions will select the grant recipients. Selections will be made semi-annually. The first application deadline is November 30, 1997.

Applications must be in English and should consist of a curriculum vitae and a description of the proposed research project. Please send applications to:

German-American Academic Council Foundation (GAAC)

1055 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW

Suite 2020

Washington, DC 20007

Tel: (202) 296-2991

Fax: (202) 833-8514

E-mail: gaac@pop.access.digex.net

Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History 1998

"Germany in the Early Modern Era."

The German Historical Institute in Washington, the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University, and the Conference Group for Central European History are pleased to announce the fourth Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History. The conference, once again supported by the German-American Academic Council, will convene in Göttingen between April 22 and 25, 1998.

The conference is meant to bring together young scholars from Germany and North America who are nearing completion of their doctoral degrees. The seminar will focus this time on Germany in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. We plan to invite eight scholars from each side of the Atlantic to debate their doctoral projects, and we shall cover travel costs and lodging expenses. The discussion will be based on papers submitted in advance of the conference. The conference languages will be English and German.

We are now accepting applications from doctoral students whose works fall principally in the early modern era and who will finish their degrees after June 1998. Applications should include a short (2-3 pp.) project description, a resume, and a letter of reference from the major advisor.

Please send applications by December 1, 1997, to:

German Historical Institute

Transatlantic Doctoral Seminars

c/o Christa Brown

1607 New Hampshire Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20009

GHI Dissertation Scholarships 1999

The German Historical Institute offers scholarships for up to six months to doctoral students working on topics related to the Institute's general scope of interest. Applications for 1999 should be sent to the Director no later than May 31, 1998, and should contain the following information:

• a curriculum vitae;




• a detailed plan of study, including research proposal, time frame needed to carry it out, and locations in the United States to be visited;




• a letter of recommendation from the doctoral advisor.

American students applying for these scholarships should be working on topics of German history for which they need to evaluate source materials located in the United States.

German-American Research Networking (GARN)

The German-American Academic Council Foundation (GAAC) is making funds available for a German-American Research Networking Program (GARN) for individuals who took part in the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminars on Modern German History in 1996 and 1997. The purpose of the GARN program is to strengthen transatlantic contacts by providing an opportunity for closer cooperation on joint research ventures between younger scholars and scientists from the United States and Germany.

Those eligible for application are pairs or groups of scientists and scholars under the age of 40 who participated in the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminars in either 1996 and 1997. There must be at least one American and one German participant among the members of the research team. Coworkers of direct participants may be included in the project activities. While the deadline for applications for this program has passed, further questions may be directed to the Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute.

Call for Papers

"America's War and the World: Vietnam in International and Comparative Perspectives." Conference at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., November 19-22, 1998. Conveners: Lloyd C. Gardner (Rutgers University), Andreas Daum and Wilfried Mausbach (GHI Washington)

Almost twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, this conference seeks to put "America's War" into international perspectives and to reassess its place in the history of world conflicts. First, we want to compare the Vietnam War with other conflicts between centers of power and peripheral states in modern history. Second, we would like to look at the consequences of the United States' preoccupation with Southeast Asia for the political and economic structure of the international system between 1960 and 1975. Turning to domestic politics, our third major interest is to gauge the influence of the Vietnam War on the domestic political discourses of some of the key allies of the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Fourth and finally, we intend to trace the impact of the Vietnam War on the culture and collective memory of different states.

The papers will be given in English. We encourage younger scholars and colleagues from Asia to submit proposals. Preference will be given to those papers that include comparative aspects. The German Historical Institute is prepared to cover travel expenses and accommodations for participants.

Proposals should include a short (1-2 pp.) abstract, a curriculum vitae, and a list of publications. Please send proposals by December 15, 1997, to:

Vietnam Conference

German Historical Institute

1607 New Hampshire Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20009

tel. (202) 387-3355

fax (202) 483-3430