Robert Gerald Livingston, senior visiting fellow at the Institute since January 1997, is working on a book that will deal with the politics on both sides of the German-American relationship from 1945-90. Cast in a narrative form and aimed at a general as well as an academic readership, Livingston's survey will be constructed around a dozen or so episodes that characterized the countries' relationship and determined the course of events during that period. It will focus on political leaders and explore their personal interactions as well as the politics in each country that drew them together and occasionally divided them.
As presently envisioned, Livingston's book will treat the Berlin Blockade and German currency reform for the 1940s, highlighting the roles of Lucius Clay, Ernst Reuter, and Ludwig Erhard; for the 1950s, Germany's rearmament and adherence to NATO will be discussed, concentrating on Konrad Adenauer and John Foster Dulles; for the 1960s, the tensions with the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union that culminated with the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 will be the focus, along with Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and John F. Kennedy; for the later 1960s, the Dollar-DM pressures and the American effort to draw Germany into a Vietnam commitment will be treated, concentrating on Erhard and Lyndon B. Johnson; for the early 1970s, American détente and German Ostpolitik will be discussed, highlighting Brandt and Henry Kissinger; for the later 1970s, the European Monetary System, the neutron bomb, and, later, the intermediate-range missile crisis will be discussed, centering on Jimmy Carter and Helmut Schmidt; for the 1980s, the Bitburg visit of 1985 will be treated, with Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan in the foreground; and for 1989-90, the process of German reunification will be discussed, with Kohl and George Bush as the central figures.
Livingston is basing his narrative mainly on secondary literature, memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies, supplemented in the cases of Bitburg, Ostpolitik-détente, and German reunification by interviews with some of the principals.
Gerald Livingston
This research project aims at exploring the process of the ideological Westernization of Germany through a comparison of German and American political cultures and an analysis of their interaction during the development of West German democracy from the end of World War II through the Adenauer era. The results should provide insights into the emergence of a German democratic political culture from conflicting authoritarian and liberal traditions and a clearer understanding of the West as an ideological entity during the Cold War.
In West Germany's political self-conception, the apparent break with authoritarian and antidemocratic political and social traditions after 1945 and 1949 and the sudden appreciation of a liberal democratic order are largely taken for granted. The existence of long-term authoritarian ideological continuities as important elements of West Germany's political culture is generally ignored or denied. During the last twenty years German historiography has recognized numerous and complex economic, social, personal, and political continuities as well as breaks in twentieth-century German history. It is safe to assume that this developmental pattern also is true for West Germany's political culture, that while the departure from National Socialist ideology and politics may have been profound there was no ideological "zero hour" (Stunde Null). The difficulty lies in how to distinguish between elements of continuity and innovation in the development of a German democratic Western political culture, how to even define Westernization, and how to measure its development and success.
Whereas the United States cannot be held up as an absolute yardstick for the measurement of Germany's democratic evolution, the history of German-American interactions and perceptions and a comparison between the two political cultures provide material for an assessment of German Westernization. Distinguished by its strong democratic ideological continuities, the United States provides an excellent backdrop against which the characteristics of a more heterogeneous German political culture stand out in relief. Even more compelling of course is America's dominant role in Germany's democratization. At no time was the debate about Germany and the contact between the American and German systems as intense as during World War II and the postwar occupation period. The content and form of these discourses on Germany, and activities and observations during the occupation, clearly reveal American conceptions of the Western belief system. A more distinct representation of a Western political culture emerges out of the obvious self-referentiality of the American encounter with Germany.
Taken by themselves, German debates and plans during this period appear far less congruous. However, seen from an American point of view the characteristics that emerge define these discourses as distinctly German. The encounter between the political cultures during the occupation, in particular during the writing of the state (Länder) constitutions and the Basic Law, in addition to the gradual establishment of West German sovereignty, further delineate distinctions as well as similarities between the systems.
What emerges in the German political discourse is the idea of the West as a pre-existing political and cultural entity in which Germany had to retake its rightful place. The resolution of the manifold German catastrophe was to be found in a political order based on a return to the Occident, its Christian and democratic values. The renewal did not so much call for revolutionary change but for the resurrection of old but trusted concepts of state, administrative tradition, political discourse, and civic virtue. From a German perspective Westernization was not innovation or modernization but rather the recollection of past German values, because Germany's well-established political and cultural heritage could be construed as a genuine element of the West.
It is an open question how far these authoritarian traditions stunted the growth of a liberal democracy. At the very least the conservative republic that was founded on these underlying tenets looked far different from what American democratization policies were trying to achieve in Germany. In fact, the Eisenhower administration was concerned about the authoritarian outlook and statist principles of the chancellor's democracy (Kanzlerdemokratie). Adenauer not only reestablished an autocratic style of government but also reinstated a traditionalistic and undemocratic bureaucracy that even included a large number of former Nazis as important functionaries of the new republic.
However, the Westernization of Germany cannot be interpreted solely from an American perspective because the realization of vaguely defined Western ideals can take very different forms. A new German democracy could well be far removed from the American system and still embrace democratic and Western values. And as domestic strife in the 1950s showed, the United States was not without its own antidemocratic excesses and imperfections.
What helped both countries to overcome their differences and to closely align these two rather distinct political cultures was the Cold War. Once the conflict with the Soviet Union started and the immediate postwar period came to an end, ideological differences and concerns about the democratic character of the West German state rapidly declined in importance. The common threat of the Soviet bloc called for ideological unity and obscured inherent dissimilarities, contradictions, and variances in the Western belief system. The realities of the Cold War made an inclusive approach to an indispensable German military power not only strategically important but also necessary as a containment of the German situation. Although the United States was not wholly unconcerned about the direction German domestic developments took, there nevertheless was an anxiously optimistic attitude fed by the recognition of actual improvements in West Germany's democratic sensibilities and the exigencies of the Cold War. Ironically, the Germans perceived America's policy of double containment as a friendly embrace. It reinforced their conviction that Germany's future was in the West and thus furthered the acceptance of a Western democratic system of government.
Raimund Lammersdorf
An interministerial committee chaired by the German Federal Ministry of Trade and Commerce recently reviewed our project and decided to extend its full funding through the end of 1999. We plan to finish our work on the English edition of the book by April of that year and submit the German edition to the press shortly thereafter.
Detlef Junker
The Summer Program has been on hold for the last three years, pending new funding after a generous grant from the Volkswagen Foundation ended.
The first part of the new program will consist of a summer course in Koblenz (Bundesarchiv and Landesarchiv) that will introduce graduate students to German handwriting styles of various periods. It also will introduce them to the organization of archives in Germany.
The second part of the Summer Program will consist of a tour of various German archives (church, city, media, trade, and university). The exact itinerary has not yet been determined, but the grant will include round-trip air fare to Germany, ground transportation, and hotel accommodations (double occupancy).
Details of the Summer Program will be published on our Web page and in the fall Bulletin. The application deadline is December 31, 1998.
Christof Mauch
Students will be admitted to the United States as "Exchange Visitors" with a J-1 visa under Section 101 (A)(15)(J) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. They are responsible for obtaining their own visas through the Bonn office of the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) and for covering the costs of visas and insurance. They also are obliged to demonstrate that they have enough assets at their disposal for the duration of their stay.
Christof Mauch
To offer a comprehensive overview of the many activities the GHI has sponsored between 1987 and 1997, we have prepared a ten-year report that will highlight the most important aspects of our work. Two research fellows, Thomas Goebel and Edmund Spevack, compiled information on the international conferences sponsored by the GHI and on the scholars who participated in them; on our various lectures series (Annual Lecture, Alois Mertes Memorial Lecture, Spring and Fall Lecture Series); on the historians, social scientists, and other staff members who have worked here over the last ten years; on the fellowships we have awarded; on projects we have supported; on the publications published by the Institute; and on the development of the library. The final version of the report will be published this summer. A copy will be sent to everyone on our mailing list.
Ute Ackermann, "Internationalisierungsstrategien deutscher multi-nationaler Unternehmen nach 1945-1960 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Alan Milward, European University, Florence.
Delia Gonzalez Afonso, "Der Sonderweg Sonoras: Eine mexikanische Region als Interessensgebiet und Experimentierfeld ausländischer Mächte, 1821-1876." Doctoral advisers: Prof. Dr. Günter Kahle and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heideking, University of Cologne.
Frank Biess, "Returning Prisoners of War and the Reconstruction of Citizenship in East and West Germany, 1945-1955." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Volker Berghahn, Brown University.
Kai Dreisbach, "Die Vereinigten Staaten und Südostasien von 1969 bis 1995. Die US-amerikanische Aussenpolitik gegenüber ASEAN und Indochina zwischen Wirtschafts- und Sicherheitsinteresse." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heideking, University of Cologne.
Jennifer Evans, "From Nazi Weiber to Veronikas: Rape, Citizenship, and the Political Public in Postwar Berlin, 1944-1958." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Jean H. Quataert, State University of New York- Binghamton.
Alexander Freund, "Subjektivität und Migration: Lebensgeschichten von Zeitzeugen der deutschen Überseewanderung 1945-1960." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Dr. Dirk Hoerder, University of Bremen.
Eric J. Goldberg, "Creating a Medieval Kingdom: Carolingian Kingship, Court Culture, and Aristocratic Society under Louis of East Francia (826-876)." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Thomas F.X. Noble, University of Virginia.
Diana Gring, "Die Auflösung der Konzentrationslager: Evakuierungsmärsche, Massaker, Auffanglager." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Dr. Claus Füllberg-Stolberg, University of Hannover.
Thomas Grumke, "Rechtsextremismus in den USA." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Dr. Margit Mayer, Technical University of Berlin.
Russell A. Kazal, "Becoming 'Old Stock': The Waning of German-American Identity in Philadelphia, 1900-1930." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Michael Katz, University of Pennsylvania.
Jens Knappe, "The Influence of Ethnic Groups on American German Policies: Marshall-Plan, Ostpolitik, German Unification Process." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Dr. Knud Krakau, Free University of Berlin.
Anette Neff, "Die Amerikaner auf dem Dorf 1947-1952: Die Reaktionen der ländlichen deutschen Bevölkerung auf Maßnahmen der amerikanischen Besatzungsmacht zur Beeinflussung politischer und gesellschaftlicher Bedingungen." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Dr. Christof Dipper, Technical University of Darmstadt.
Howard Sargent, "The Struggle over the Nation Between Volk and Staat: Framing the German Citizenship Law of 1913." Doctoral adviser: Prof. Roger Chickering, Georgetown University.
Richard D. Wiggers, "Allied Compliance with the 1929 Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Rules of Land Warfare in the Postwar Occupation of Germany." Doctoral adviser: Prof. David Painter, Georgetown University.
For the immediate future we plan to post full text versions of our Reference Guides (see the Publications List at the end of this issue). Please have a look and feel free to make suggestions on how we can improve our site.
1. Gorzny, Willi, ed., Deutscher Biographischer Index (German Biographical Index), 8 vols. (Munich, 1998), meant to be used in conjunction with the Deutsches Biographisches Archiv (German Biographical Archive), microfiche (Munich, 1998). This index should be of great interest to students of German history because it contains an alphabetical listing of biographical information on about 451,000 subjects. In addition, it provides data on locations of articles and references to the sources on the person cited. The Library owns a microfiche printer-reader, available for use by our visitors in the reading room.
2. Tolzmann, Don Heinrich, ed., German-Americans in the World Wars: A Documentary History, 5 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1995-8). This five-volume collection is a documentation of the German-American experience during the two world wars. It deals with anti-German hysteria, the internment of German-Americans, and the persecution of German-Americans.
Also, we would like to remind our readers that the library has subscriptions to over 200 scholarly journals and to the following German periodicals: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), Die Tageszeitung (Berlin), and Die Zeit (Hamburg). We will shortly begin receiving the Berliner Zeitung. Current issues are kept for a period of two to four weeks. However, we have a complete set of back issues of Der Spiegel from 1947 to present (on CD-ROM for 1993 to present).
Peter Becker, Research Fellow, left to accept a professorship with the History Department at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. While at the Institute he organized several conferences, workshops, and other events; he also led the Summer Program, presented papers at various conferences, and pursued his research project on "The Image of the Criminal Among the Anglo-American, French, and German Police in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries."
Iris Golumbeck, Librarian, has left the Institute to accept a position as the sales manager for Germany with Ex Libris, an Israeli company based in Hamburg that develops and sells library automation systems. Under her direction, the Library's holdings were reorganized into a new computerized catalog. She also oversaw the design and installation of a new compact shelving system for the collection.
Raimund Lammersdorf, Research Fellow, born in 1960 and raised in Cologne. He studied history, English language and literature, and musicology at the University of Cologne, the Free University of Berlin (M.A., 1985), and Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in modern history at the Free University of Berlin in 1992 and taught American history at the FU's Kennedy Institute for North American Studies (1989-93) and American and British history at the English department of the Technical University in Chemnitz (1993-5). He also was a Kennedy Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University (1996-7).
His Ph.D. thesis was published as Anfänge einer Weltmacht: Theodore Roosevelt und die transatlantischen Beziehungen der Vereinigten Staaten, 1901-1909 (1994). He has written a number of articles on American foreign policy at the start of the twentieth century and is currently working on his second book (or habilitation), a study of the Westernization of West Germany's political culture after 1945 (for a full description, see New Research Topics in this issue).
Memberships: American Historical Association, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, Organization of American Historians, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Annette Marciel, Copy Editor for in-house publications, born in Kassel, Hessen. B.A., ancient history, University of Texas. M.A., criminal justice, currently in progress, American University.
Ms. Marciel has a 10-year background in scholarly and commercial publishing; she also is a certified German-English translator through the American Translators' Association, where she is a member.
Ms. Marciel recently completed a translation of the book, The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Chemistry (1997).
Christof Mauch, Deputy Director, born in Sindelfingen, 1960. Studied history, literature, theology, and philosophy at the University of Tübingen, King's College and Leo Baeck College, London. Dr. phil. University of Tübingen (1990). Lecturer, Tübingen (1990-4), Bonn, and Cologne (1994-5, 1996); Visiting Professor, The American University (1996); Director, OSS Oral History Project, Georgetown University (since 1996). Fellowships: Volkswagen Foundation (1989-91); American Council of Learned Societies (1993); German Research Foundation (1996-7).
Major Publications: Für eine Welt ohne Krieg. Otto Umfrid und die Anfänge der Friedensbewegung (with T. Brenner, 1987, 1995); Kurt Marti (ed., 1991); Poesie - Theologie - Politik. Studien zu Kurt Marti (1992); Geheimdienstkrieg gegen Deutschland (ed. with J. Heideking, 1993); USA und deutscher Widerstand (ed. with J. Heideking); American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler (ed. with J. Heideking, 1996). Articles on German and American cultural and political history in various books, as well as in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Amerikastudien/American Studies, and Prologue.
Current research interests include American intelligence, the "Hessians" in American and German history and historiography, and nineteenth-century environmentalist movements in America and Germany.
Janine Micunek, Copy Editor, left the Institute after more than seven years of service to pursue other interests. During her tenure she copy edited and revamped the GHI's in-house publications. She also worked on numerous projects, including reference guides, the Transatlantische Historische Studien series, and the Summer Program.
Following his visit to the new Center, Dr. Rüttgers met with German journalists and diplomats, the fellows of the GHI, and scholarship recipients of the GACVS in the Institute's lecture hall for a 90-minute discussion. The discussion, led by the director of the GHI, centered on the German university system and proved to be both lively and contentious. Two questions were particularly controversial: The first centered on whether, and to what extent, the current German institutions and mentalities are prepared for and capable of fundamental reform; the second dealt with whether or not reforms could be instituted without additional government funding. Dr. Rüttgers's prediction that the number of German university students would rise by approximately 350,000 over the next few years was especially significant in this context.
A number of participants, including the director of the GHI, also pointed out a grave contradiction between theory and practice in the German university system's support and furtherance of education and training. Although announcements and public statements repeatedly demand that young German scholars widen their horizons by spending a longer period of time abroad, those scholars who take that step often encounter disadvantages in practice. Younger scholars in particular are confronted repeatedly with the fact that it is extremely difficult to re-enter the German university system because the positions available when they left the country were filled in the meantime by those who elected to stay.
Christof Mauch
Organized by the GHI in collaboration with the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University and the Conference Group for Central European History, with support from the German-American Academic Council, this conference will focus on "Germany in the Early Modern Era." The following doctoral candidates have been invited to participate:
Andreas Bähr, University of Halle
Michael Carhart, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Eileen Crosby, Cornell University, Ithaca
Magdalena Drexl, Ruhr University, Bochum
David Freeman, Emory University, Atlanta
Dennis Frey, Syracuse University, New York
John Holloran, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Vera Jung, University of Saarland, Saarbrücken
Andreas Klinger, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena
Amy Leonard, University of California, Berkeley
Franz Mauelshagen, Friedrich Wilhelms University, Bonn
Eva Ortlieb, Westphalian Wilhelms University, Münster
Harriet Rudolph, University of Trier
Claudia Stein, University of Stuttgart
Andre Wakefield, University of Chicago
Michele Zelinsky, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
The conference sessions will be moderated by:
Prof. Peter Becker, European University Institute, Florence
Prof. Thomas A. Brady, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Andreas Daum, GHI, Washington, D.C.
Prof. Roger Chickering, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Prof. Hartmut Lehmann, Max Planck Institute, Göttingen
Prof. Mary Lindemann, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
Prof. Luise Schorn-Schütte, University of Potsdam
"New Research Topics in German History." In 1997 the Friends altered the format of their annual symposium. Held on November 14, the meeting highlighted new research being carried out by junior scholars. We were interested to hear in detail about some of the projects being pursued by the research fellows of the GHI itself, and at the same time we were keen to present the joint winners of the Friends of the GHI Dissertation Prize. All those who attended were highly satisfied with the less hurried program of only four presentations during the daylong meeting, instead of six or eight, because this allowed for expansive discussions, and everyone went away with the feeling that they had gained a solid grasp of the theses proposed by these outstanding scholars and colleagues. It was enthusiastically agreed at the Friends of the GHI board meeting the next day that the new format should be repeated in 1998.
The symposium began with a fascinating paper on a German-American topic by Research Fellow Andreas Daum, "The Invention of a Hero: Alexander von Humboldt in the American Public Sphere, 1850-1900." Daum analyzed how the world-renowned German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, until his death in 1859 an eminent figure in the intellectual life of the nineteenth century, became an American icon during the second half of that century. Daum revealed the intricate processes involved in how Humboldt and his achievements were appropriated and functionalized by succeeding generations in the United States. He argued that these generations used Humboldt's heritage to invent their own cultural traditions and strengthen particular national, ethnic, and intellectual identities.
Humboldt himself had visited the United States only once, in 1804, stopping briefly on the return trip from his five-year journey through Central and South America. In the following years, however, he maintained a vigorous correspondence with scientists in the United States. Moreover, there was a constant flow of Americans visiting Humboldt in Europe.
Whereas the historiography has hitherto explained Humboldt's appeal to Americans in terms of his scientific achievements, his interest in the scientific exploration of America, and his sensitivity toward both the political and economic problems accompanying the growth of the United States, Daum offered a new interpretation: Instead of following biographical traditions, he combined the approaches of cultural and social history in order to explain the striking facts that the peak of Humboldt's veneration in the United States was reached in the two decades following his death and that his popularity radiated widely into American society, far beyond the realm of scientific institutions. Humboldt the hero, he argued, was "invented" by a peculiar mixture of groups based mainly on immigrant milieus but not limited to them.
Citing a number of regional examples, Daum delineated in detail how, from the 1850s on, German-American groups, other immigrant groups, and even the native-born population celebrated Humboldt as a cultural hero. This veneration of Humboldt culminated in spectacular festivities, the erection of monuments, and a vast memorializing literature. According to Daum, in a time of rapid social change, the new ethnic groups in particular were in need of a cultural hero to create a common cultural consciousness and project their self-definitions onto an undeniably positive figure. Consequently, Humboldt became an embodiment of various and sometimes conflicting cultural values - such as cosmopolitanism, the German idea of education, the free-thinking ideology of German radicals, and even creationist thinking. Daum differentiated among a whole set of Humboldt narratives that could be used for the varying purposes of different social groups. Humboldt was venerated by urban German-American, freemasons, and some Irish immigrants; he became so Americanized that he was honored on such occasions as the centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
With this interpretation, Daum made a strong case for studying science and the work of scientists not only as endemic, internal phenomena of high culture but also as elements of popular culture during the nineteenth century. This approach also characterizes Daum's book, The Popularization of Science in the Nineteenth Century: Bourgeois Culture, Scientific Education, and the German Public Sphere, 1848-1914, which was published recently in Germany.
The second presentation was by Paul Lerner (Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles), the joint winner of the Friends of the GHI Dissertation Prize. His paper was based on his manuscript in progress titled "Hysterical Men: War, Memory and German Mental Medicine, 1914-1926," discussed the response of German psychiatrists and neurologists to the "epidemic" of male hysteria during and shortly after World War I. Covering the period from the late 1880s through the war, the November Revolution and into the Weimar Republic, it sketched the story of the hysteria diagnosis, the doctors who diagnosed it, and the soldier-patients whom they examined and treated. Lerner explored the context for the acceptance of hysteria, once considered an exclusively female affliction, as the preferred diagnosis for Germany's tens of thousands of "shell shocked" men and then surveyed the therapeutic and administrative dimensions of the war-neurosis problem.
Lerner put forward four distinctly intertwined arguments. First, he showed that male hysteria became an acceptable diagnosis when used on sufferers of industrial trauma in the late nineteenth century. By attributing the condition to the patient's psyche rather than to the direct effects of an accident, the hysteria diagnosis offered an attractive alternative to "traumatic neurosis," the other available diagnostic choice. That is, explaining the symptoms as manifestations of hysteria made trauma patients ineligible for pensions and mandated their return to work. In this context, a powerful - and uniquely German - opposition between hysteria and work was forged that, he argued, displaced the traditional "femininity" of the affliction, partially replacing its gender dichotomy with one based on class. German doctors conceived of the war neuroses in precisely these terms, viewing neurotic soldiers within the framework of peacetime trauma cases and seeing the war - and its psychological consequences - as an industrial accident writ large.
Second, Lerner claimed that the demands of war accelerated the turn away from an approach to mental health based on the individual patient to a collectivistic paradigm. Forced to handle unprecedented numbers of patients with limited resources, wartime doctors borrowed from industrial models - they developed "assembly line" techniques for making diagnoses, giving treatments, and reaching decisions on pension and discharge matters. Speed and efficiency became the primary medical values as methods of treatment and administration were centralized and rationalized, and a comprehensive approach to the psychic health of the whole nation was adopted. Furthermore, therapeutic goals were redefined around national utility, and as particularly labor shortages reached crisis proportions, psychiatric and neurological treatments concentrated on efficiently channeling neurotic patients into the nation's war economy. As such, Lerner opposes the facile continuities often drawn between shell-shock treatment and the euthanasia program carried out by psychiatrists in the Nazi period, stressing instead the connections between rationalized psychiatric care and other features of Weimar Germany's economic and cultural history.
Third, Lerner argued that by choosing particular treatments and diagnoses, psychiatrists and neurologists gained opportunities to further their own ideas about acceptable soldierly conduct. Their self-appointed task as caretakers of the nation's mental and nervous health cast them in the roles of judge, teacher, and disciplinarian and enabled many to exercise a decisive influence over the fates of thousands of soldiers. Lerner showed that although they were at first baffled by the war neuroses, by 1916 certain doctors could point to incredible treatment successes. Reversing the long-standing "therapeutic crisis" in German psychiatry, these doctors supervised the creation of a set of institutions and facilities over which they had complete control. Treating war neurotics thus gave a generation of university-based doctors the opportunity to cast their authority and professional expertise over issues that lay in a gray area among the legal, military, and medical spheres; mental health practitioners continued to exercise this authority, acting as state agents against an increasingly hostile population in pension claims filed during and after the war. Doctors, according to Lerner, used their newly achieved control and authority over the patient to promote medical views of German manhood, which were based on duty, obedience, and, most of all, economic productivity.
In his final thesis Lerner examined the relationship between traumatic wartime events and post-traumatic conditions. Through a series of case histories, he treated the struggle between psychiatrists and patients over the reality and significance of traumatic war experiences as a contest between the competing narratives of war and its traumatizing impact. In denying the pathogenic power of the "traumatic" war event, Germany's psychiatrists ultimately rejected any causal connection between war service and mental illness, contributing to a broader Weimar-era narrative that celebrated the combat environment and undermined the victim status of its veterans. Lerner showed that for most psychiatrists, the war neuroses essentially had nothing to do with the war, meaning that they did not consider the tens of thousands of nervously ill casualties to be victims of the war in any real sense. Denying that war was damaging to the individual's mind and nerves, Lerner concluded, meant that psychiatrists implicitly denied the traumatizing impact of war as a whole, constructing the war experience as a positive influence on the minds of individuals and the lives of nations.
The afternoon session opened with a paper by Sandra Chaney (Assistant Professor, Erskine College), who was the second joint winner of the Friends of the GHI Dissertation Prize. Chaney's presentation was titled "Visions and Revisions of Nature: From the Protection of Nature to the Invention of the Environment in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1975." The period covered by her study was the most critical to the evolution of an ecological consciousness in West Germany. Precisely during this time, as the Federal Republic became more densely populated, highly urbanized, industrialized, and polluted, concern about preserving nature (Naturschutz) came to be an important, yet subordinate aspect of managing and protecting the human environment (Umweltschutz). Using the shift in discourse from an emphasis on Naturschutz to Umweltschutz as a broad framework, Chaney addressed the people, ideas, events, and developments that contributed to the replacement of "nature" by the "environment." She argued that the meaning of these concepts, and the definition of environmental problems, are socially constructed and change according to shifting contexts. She also discussed the implications of replacing "nature" with "environment."
According to Chaney, between 1945 and 1954 conservationists demanded the long-term, careful use of limited natural resources that were being exploited more than ever before to promote economic recovery. From 1955 to 1967, conservationists responded to public health and regional planning concerns by establishing nature parks for a growing urban population and advocating professional land-use planning of the country's limited space. Conservationists warned that people had radically changed their surroundings to such an extent that they had become de-natured and unhealthy. With effective land-use planning, however, conservationists hoped to construct a "more natural living space" for human beings. To an extent, Chaney asserted, "nature" had been replaced in discourse by the more abstract and versatile concept "space."
After the late 1960s conservationists and wider circles of the public addressed worsening pollution and strains on the land by demanding the protection of humanity's threatened surroundings, which they called the "environment." Chaney argued that the arrival of the SPD/FDP coalition government, the media, and especially international developments, such as the legislation passed in the United States in 1969 and 1970 to protect "the environment," European Conservation Year in 1970, and the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, contributed to the invention of the environment in popular discourse. The invention of the environment in the early 1970s, Chaney submitted, indicated that people had come to regard themselves as the primary architects of their surroundings. The implications were that people had to accept the responsibility for ensuring that parts of the environment retain varying degrees of "naturalness."
In the final session of the day, Research Fellow Edmund Spevack, presented a stimulating paper on "Members of the Bonn Parliamentary Council (1948-1949) and Their Links to the United States of America." Spevack explained that the paper stands in the context of his book project, titled "American Political and Ideological Influences on the Shaping of West German Basic Law (Grundgesetz), 1948-1949."
Spevack mentioned that whereas the activities of the Parliamentary Council are well documented and have received much scholarly attention, the contributions of the Western Allies are much less widely known. At the London six-power conference of 1948, the Allies preplanned the constitutional reconstruction of western Germany, and they later took steps to implement their plans and to influence the Parliamentary Council's work.
In the intermediate postwar period, a new political elite formed in the western zones of Germany: It participated in the shaping of both the Länder constitutions and the Basic Law. Spevack argued that the constitutional reconstruction of western Germany would have been very different had members of the Parliamentary Council not had intensive links to Western countries, above all to France, Great Britain, and the United States. Spevack first supplied selected statistics on the composition of the Parliamentary Council's members (age, profession, educational background, political experience) and then evaluated some of the data he collected on the members' links to Britain, France, and, most importantly, the United States.
Spevack found that 12 of the 77 members of the Parliamentary Council had links to the United States; these 12 members included some of its most central figures. A number of these connections were established long before 1945, some in the immediate postwar period and some in 1948 and thereafter. Seven specific examples were treated in some detail by Spevack: Hermann von Mangoldt (expert on American constitutional law), Rudolf Katz (proponent of a German supreme court), Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner and Fritz Eberhard (returning socialist emigrés), Ludwig Bergsträsser and Walter Menzel (constitutional experts), and Georg-August Zinn (legal expert).
Spevack closed with the thesis that members of the Parliamentary Council with links to the United States functioned in three ways: some were able to establish contact with the Allies and understand their languages and legal systems; some actively worked for the inclusion of Western legal and ideological assumptions in the new West German constitution; and all were in favor of the German and American shared interest of western European integration.
Geoffrey Giles
Austenfeld, Thomas, Ph.D. "A World in Turmoil: Four American Women Writers in Nazi Germany." Drury College.
Beestermöller, Gerhard, Dr. theol. habil. "The Call for Reconciliation as a Challenge to Theology." Institute for Theology and Peace, Barsbüttel.
Greven, Thomas, Doctoral student, "Coping with Globalization: International Labor Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy." Technical University of Berlin.
Grimm, Heike, Dr. "The Role of Entrepreneurship in Germany and the U.S." Union Mittelständischer Unternehmer, Munich.
Grzymala-Busse, Anna, Doctoral student. "The Adaptation of Communist Parties to Democracy in East Central Europe After 1989." Center for European Studies, Harvard University.
Hauser, Susanne, Dr. "The Aesthetics of Revitalization: Industrial Wasteland Regained." Berlin.
Hillmann, Felicitas, Dr. "Integration of Immigrants into Labor Markets." Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung, Berlin.
Keil, Hartmut, Prof. Dr. "German Immigrants and African- Americans in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America: A Study for Group Interaction." University of Leipzig.
Krankenhagen, Stefan, Doctoral student. "Contemporary Forms of Representation of Auschwitz." University of Hildesheim.
Kühlen, Michael, Doctoral student. "Newt Gingrich's Breach of Contract with America." University of Münster.
Remy, Steven, Doctoral student. "Nazification, Denazification and the Future of the University: The Case of Heidelberg." Ohio University.
Schild, Georg, Dr. "Development of Social Policy in the U.S. in the Twentieth Century." University of Bonn.
Schneider, Ulrike, Dr. "Living and Care Arrangements of German and U.S. Elderly." University of Hannover.
Schwanitz, Wolfgang, Dr. "The Third Reich and the Near East." Technical University of Berlin.
Schwarte, Ludger, Dr. "Geschichte des öffentlichen Raums." Institute for European Studies, Paris.
Siedschlag, Alexander, Dr. "Institutionalization and Conflict Management in the New Europe." Technical University of Berlin.
Zittel, Thomas, Dr. "Democracy in the Information Age." University of Mannheim.
The GHI building was chosen by the filmmakers "because of its embassy-like appearance" in lieu of the old Soviet Embassy building.
Letting the film team do their work in the Institute's building was, in the words of Director Detlef Junker, part of "our contribution to Cold War research."