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The Memory Factory introduces an English-speaking public to the significant women artists of Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, each chosen for her aesthetic innovations and participation in public exhibitions. These women played important public roles as exhibiting artists, both individually and in collectives, but this history has been silenced over time. Their stories show that the city of Vienna was contradictory and cosmopolitan: despite men-only policies in its main art institutions, it offered a myriad of unexpected ways for women artists to forge successful public careers. Women artists came from the provinces, Russia, and Germany to participate in its vibrant art scene. Ho...
The Invisible Wall is one man's quest to understand the failure of the German-Jewish relationship and to explain the character and attitudes of Germany's assimilated Jews over a three hundred-year period. He found rich and remarkable stories in the lives of six Blumenthal ancestors--all of whom happened to be major figures in German-Jewish history. Jost Liebmann, an itinerant peddler of trinkets and cheap jewels who became court jeweler to the Brandenburg nobility; Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, whose Berlin salon was the meeting place of Prussia's intellectual elite; Giacomo Meyerbeer, a celebrated composer of grand opera who dealt with the antisemitism he encountered by ceaselessly striving for...
In the first English-language history of the Berlin zoo, Gary Bruce traces the fascinating story of one of Germany's most popular cultural institutions, from its 19th century displays of "exotic" peoples to Nazi attempts to breed back long-extinct European cattle. As an institution with broad public reach, the zoo for more than 150 years shaped German views not only of the animal world, but of the human world far beyond Germany's borders.
The Heritage of War is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which heritage is mobilized in remembering war, and in reconstructing landscapes, political systems and identities after conflict. It examines the deeply contested nature of war heritage in a series of places and contexts, highlighting the modes by which governments, communities, and individuals claim validity for their own experiences of war, and the meanings they attach to them. From colonizing violence in South America to the United States’ Civil War, the Second World War on three continents, genocide in Rwanda and continuing divisions in Europe and the Middle East, these studies bring us closer to the very processes of he...
This book addresses the importance of cultural values, local knowledge and identity in building community resilience in place based contexts. There is a growing impetus among policy makers and practitioners to support and empower capacities of communities under changing climatic conditions. Despite this there is little systematic understanding of why approaches work at local levels or not and what makes some communities resilient and others less so. Europe is typically thought to be well equipped for coping with the effects of a changing climate - because of its moderate climate, its manifold urban-industrialized regions, it’s typically highly skilled population, its successes in science a...
In the aftermath of World War II, twelve million German expellees lost their homes in Central and Eastern Europe. The overwhelming majority came to occupied Germany. However, expellees found themselves also stranded in Western Europe, Africa and the Americas, which is often overlooked by researchers and the public. Going beyond the standard narratives of flight, vigilante evictions and transfers, this book follows expellees in West Germany and Canada and shows, for example, how German prisoners-of-war, exilees or immigrants experienced the expulsions in distant Canada. As the author illustrates making extensive use of oral histories, their experiences were an integral part of the multi-faceted expellee story even though they were physically absent from their homes. Juxtaposing the record of two countries with disparate public discourses on immigration, the author also reveals how in both countries expellees eventually adopted national identities which, based on their ethno-regional heritage, reflected their experience of extreme nationalism, war and expulsion as well as the initially difficult settlement into a new political, social and cultural environment.
As conventional understanding would have it, the sometimes brutal business of governing can only be carried out at the price of distance from art, while poetic beauty best fl ourishes at a distance from actions executed at the pole of power. Dramatically contradicting this idea is the fact that violent rulers are often the greatest friends of art, and indeed draw attention to themselves as artists. Why do tyrants of all people often have a particularly poetic vein? Where do terror and fi ction meet? The cultural history of totalitarian regimes is unwrapped in ten case studies, in a comparative perspective. The book focuses on the phenomenon that many of the great despots in history were them...
The Christian Travel Plannerintroduces readers to the world of faith-based travel and identifies the plethora of opportunities available to Christians planning a vacation
'If this doesn’t move you, I suggest you check your pulse.' –John Kay, frontman of Steppenwolf (born in East Prussia in 1944) Told by the children who survived, these stories could well be the last eyewitness report of the aftermath of the Second World War. As the land where they once lived was integrated into the Eastern Bloc, their accounts remained hushed until after the Iron Curtain fell. Now, in The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front, they break their silence. During the bitter winter months of 1944-45, hundreds of thousands of Germans fled East Prussia from an advancing Red Army. With sometimes only minutes’ notice, families escaped in horse-drawn carriages, or they simply ran on...
Cities form an organic development of their own. Underground initiatives give also rise to gradual shifts on the surface. Portrait of Rotterdam and of its creative class, that launched a lot of fruitful initiatives. Cultural entrepreneurs founded theatre and dance groups to do something positive for the community. Artists choose Rotterdam because there is space to work. Survey of activities of the Rotterdam Council and of the permanent cultural battle between Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Rotterdam also is an attractive stage set for flashy television commercials, drama series and films. Review in: Boekman. 19(2007)71(zomer. 106-109).