Central Europe Yearbook

Introduction

Meyer Weinshel — 2025-01-27

This introduction provides an overview of the eight scholarly works published in the sixth volume of the Central Europe Yearbook

Die ASKÖ und die Arbeitersportbewegung der Zwischenkriegszeit: Ein Vergleich radikaler Rahmung und Verwirklichung des Programms

Harper Crosson — 2025-01-27

Die Wiener Sozialdemokrat:innen der Zwischenkriegszeit wollten einen neuen sozialistischen Menschen ohne Revolution entwickeln. Dieses Ziel erforderte einzigartige und kreative Mittel welschen in der Privatsphäre der Arbeiter:innen tätig waren. Ein Instrument, das die Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs (SDAPÖ) zu diesen Zwecken nutzte, war der Arbeitersport: Eine einmalige und faszinierende Mischung aus sozialistischen Werten und einem boomenden internationalen Leistungssportverrücktheit. Diese Analyse konzentriert sich zum Teil auf die Veröffentlichungen von Julius Deutsch, dem Leiter der österreichischen Arbeitersportbewegung. Deutschs beschriebene Ziele und radikale Visionen werden dann mit der tatsächlichen Manifestation des Programms verglichen: Es wird gezeigt, dass die proklamierte Radikalität der Bewegung oft hohl war. Diese Erkenntnisse werden dann in die größere Geschichte der SDAPÖ eingeordnet.

Entzauberung der Berliner Clubszene

Arushi Nair — 2025-01-27

Die Berliner Techno-Szene ist seit 2024 offiziell UNESCO Kulturerbe. Es ist für einige Menschen erstaunlich, wie die Techno-Szene in Berlin es soweit geschafft hat, für die meisten ursprünglichen und heutigen Teilnehmern der Szene ist es jedoch gar kein Wunder, denn Techno gehört schon lange zur Berliner Identität. Die Techno-Szene ist ohne Zweifel ein wichtiges Phänomen.Was aber oft übersehen wird, sind die vielen unterliegenden Spannungen, die ein mythisches Vorbild für Freiheit unterstützen. Ich hatte selber viele Erfahrungen in dieser Szene, die meine Faszination im dementsprechenden Phänomen inspirierte, worüber ich in dieser Arbeit erzählen werde und mit akademischen Quellen auch entzaubern möchte.

Russification and Russianization in Modern Historiography: Recent Developments and Future Directions

Nicholas W. Sessums — 2025-01-27

As the Soviet historical archives became accessible to Western scholars beginning in the 1980s, renewed scrutiny was placed on the imperial-colonial policies of the Russian Empire toward its borderlands. These scholars began to interrogate the policies of the imperial administration toward ethnic and national groups in the borderlands from the imperial administrative perspective. In this essay, I geographically circumnavigate the borderlands of the Russian Empire through secondary studies published since the 1980s to understand how scholars have reinterpreted these policies since gaining access to the imperial administrative perspective. I find that they began to challenge the notion that the empire had cohesive and consistently applied policies to Russify its subjects. Instead, scholars now generally argue that policies were applied on a more ad hoc basis depending on the ethnic and national contexts of individual borderlands. Consequently, the concept of ‘Russification’ (obrusenie in Russian) became opaque, difficult to define, and inadequate in capturing the range of imperial policies toward the peoples of the borderlands. Therefore, the application of the term ‘Russianization’ is now more popular among scholars in describing non-assimilatory policies. Further distinction between the two concepts, however, is required in order to understand the full range of policies enacted toward imperial ethnicities and nationalities. Therefore, I also argue in favor of two promising new frameworks in the historiography, namely, the shifting usage of the term inorodtsy (aliens) by imperial administrators over time, and the concept of national indifference. Study of the former, I contend, would highlight the “othering” of non-dominant ethnic and national minorities. The latter permits an understanding of the limits of national constructions, thereby enabling a greater understanding of processes of national construction and, therefore, imperial responses to those constructions. Both would ultimately further clarify the historiographic distinction between Russification and Russianization.

Roma & Sinti Culture as Modern German Studies

Arushi Nair — 2025-01-27

How can we spotlight the second generation of Roma & Sinti in the German speaking world? When the Roma are discussed or invited to speak, it is typically limited to their experience with the atrocities of World War Two, and so their voices become narrowly contextualized before the backdrop of a history of persecution, especially during the Holocaust. Seldom is the attention on their culture and their own history. In a shift to focus on the art, poetry and literature of the Roma, I am hoping to empower the voices within the second generation, all those born in an era disconnected from the war. I argue that these perspectives are invaluable to the discipline of German Studies and that there is much more to this group than the discrimination and pain they have faced. Although the injustices of past and present have indeed been formative in the lives of so many Roma & Sinti, it limits the scope of what we know and can learn from them.

In order to approach these questions, I will analyze and discuss a memoir and poems by a Sinteza author, musician and rights activist named Dotschy Reinhardt. Born in 1975, Reinhardt has used her voice in many ways to speak about her identity and represent her culture beyond the scope of the war. In her memoir she explores the distinctions between Sinti and Roma, her ambitions, and her connection to generations of Roma artists. She tells a new story, a different story that opens up a very different perspective from the view provided by scholarship on the Roma and Sinti. In her poems, she grapples with a continued struggle to find her own voice, like so many others in her generation interested in recovering an identity which doesn’t get served to them on a silver platter. The intended outcome of my project is to rediscover that lost voice of the Roma and Sinti and make widely available what it is saying.

Genocidaire Alfried Krupp: The Implications of Memorializing a Criminal Against Humanity

Elizabeth Edwards — 2025-01-27

This research paper explores the implications of naming institutions after convicted criminals against humanity, as seen through the case of the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald in Germany. It highlights the vital importance of incorporating survivor testimonials to direct the narrative and reveal the true nature of (in this case) Alfried Krupp's crimes, while questioning the acceptance of Krupp's name as a desirable brand for the Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald. Furthermore, the paper delves into the larger political failures in addressing these implications effectively and aims to initiate a discussion on the role of businesses in remedying the Holocaust's horrors and ensuring the appropriate recognition of Nazi crimes. Through historical discourse and survivor accounts, this paper seeks to foster a deeper understanding of the suffering caused by Alfried Krupp and the implications of continuing to honour his name. The methodology involves an examination of the historical context, survivor testimonials, and the wider societal implications of perpetuating the recognition of Nazi crimes through institutional nomenclature.

How Was the Restructuring of Antisemitism Used to Fuel German Nationalism (1871-1890)?

Flora Warshaw — 2025-01-27

This essay seeks to explain through textual analysis of speeches and writings of key antisemitic figures of the time, how German nationalists used antisemitism as a unifying force for citizens, who were disappointed with the lack of German cultural homogeneity in the wake of German unification in 1871. Taking a distinct turn from the religious prejudice suffered by many Jews in what became the German Empire, a new form of racialized antisemitism emerged and created a legacy of racialized hatred that was most commonly associated with the Third Reich.

Negotiating National Equality in the Austrian Silesian Diet 1905-1914

Paula Krajnik — 2025-01-27

At the turn of the twentieth century, nationalized conflicts affected all levels of politics in the Habsburg monarchy. Since the 1890s, Polish and Czech members of the Austrian Silesian provincial diet demanded equality with Austria’s German-speaking citizens, granting them the Basic Law as two of the crownlands’ recognized nationalities. With the Moravian Compromise of 1905, which attempted to solve the national conflict between Czechs and Germans and ensured national equality on a provincial level, Czechs and Poles of Silesia called for electoral and language law reforms of a similar model. Despite many years of attempts, the Silesian diet found no national compromise. This article will provide an overview of the struggle for national equality and attempts at a national compromise in Silesia from the Moravian Compromise in 1905 until the closure of the provincial diet in 1914. By analyzing the stenographic minutes of the Silesian provincial diet, this article traces the attempts at national equalization and pacification, how members of the provincial parliament debated national equalization and pacification, and aims to identify the reasons for their failure of these attempts. Reforms of the administrative language laws and school politics to resolve national conflicts never concretized, although national conflicts heavily characterized these topics. The Viennese central government rejected two electoral reform drafts for their lack of measures to solve the national conflicts; further drafts never materialized. A Silesian Compromise never became realized in part due to the unwillingness and lack of interest to find a compromise on the side of the diet’s German majority, which was easily able to outvote its Slavic minority and refused many of their demands out of fear of losing their hegemony.

Jewish Women, Identity, and the Aufklärung: The German-speaking Enlightenment around 1800

Josephine Porter — 2025-01-27

This paper poses the question, “how enlightened was German-speaking central Europe around 1800?” The initial idea was to explore how marginalized groups accessed the German Enlightenment. During the process of writing, it developed into a wider exploration of female Jewish identity. This revised and lengthened paper, therefore, has become a critical analysis of civil society’s perception of Jewish female participants and their unique identity in nineteenth-century Germany.