The Perils of Plausibility
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Douglas Peifer on Munich 1919: Diary of a Revolution
Victor Klemperer. Munich 1919: Diary of a Revolution. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017. 220 pp. $25.00, cloth, ISBN 978-1-5095-1058-0. Reviewed by Douglas Peifer Published on H-War (December, 2017) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University) Victor Klemperer’s diary created quite a stir came an increasingly desperate struggle. Translat‐ when frst published in Germany in 1995. Klem‐ ed into English in 1998/99, his frst-person reflec‐ perer’s diary entries for the period 1933-45 have tions of life in the Third Reich have been used ex‐ been used extensively by scholars of the Third Re‐ tensively by scholars such as Richad J. Evans, Saul ich and the Holocaust to illustrate how Nazi ideol‐ Friedländer, and Omer Bartov.[1] ogy and racial policies affected even thoroughly Klemperer’s Munich 1919: Diary of a Revolu‐ assimilated, converted Jews. Klemperer, the son tion provides a remarkable eyewitness account of of a rabbi, was born in Wilhelmine Germany. His an earlier crisis in German history, one connected education, professional development, and life to the Third Reich by the myths and memories choices were thoroughly bourgeois, with Klem‐ that ideologues on the far right exploited through‐ perer’s conversion to Protestantism signaling his out the Weimar era. Two days before the abdica‐ self-identification with German culture and his tion of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the declaration of a desire to assimilate. Klemperer attended Gymna‐ German Republic in Berlin on November 9, 1918, sium in Berlin and Landsberg on the Warthe, worker and soldier councils in Munich toppled studied German and Romance philology in Mu‐ the 738-year Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria. -
Review of Reflections on Hanging by Arthur Koestler
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW REVIEW [VOL 25 Rutledge; Taney and Stone surely have little in common. One ends the book with a feeling that the great trait of the best judges is unselfishness, the capacity to see society clearly, without the distortion of vision that accom- panies the drive to succeed, to persuade, to gain power. We trust the justices of our Supreme Court with some of the greatest powers of government; we do so because they are characteristically beyond the desire for power. Much of their labor is disclaiming the exercise of power. In a society of frantic grasp- ing for influence, of shrill competing claims, of strident advertisement, the good judge is calm and quiet. In the troublesome days between 1935 and 1937 there was much discontent among the loquacious because judges were not more like legislators. But perhaps the reverse would be a more wholesome ideal for our time. ARTHUR SUTHERAND* 6 Professor of Law, Harvard University. Freedom, Virtue, and the First Amendment. By Walter F. Berns. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1957. Pp. 264. $4.00. Professor Berns, of the Yale Political Science faculty, has written an un- usual book. In considering the function of the Supreme Court in American government,' he rejects the "libertarian" doctrine of "judicial restraint."' He also rejects the "libertarian" thesis that the freedoms of the Bill of Rights are ultimate and absolute values in our society.3 He would have the Court exer- cise all its power to decree the good, the true and the beautiful.4 Perhaps some day he will provide the touchstone so that we may all readily recognize these qualities. -
HE CONTRIBUTION of GEORGE ORWELL and ARTHUR KOESTLER to the POLIT- ICAL THEORY of TOTALITARIANISM ~Oland James Wensley
~HE CONTRIBUTION OF GEORGE ORWELL AND ARTHUR KOESTLER TO THE POLIT ICAL THEORY OF TOTALITARIANISM ~oland James Wensley ·A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts , Department of Economies and Political Science, McGill University, Montreal. August, 1964. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE i-v CHAPTER I: The Men and the Age 1-18 Situation in the 1930's Pl-2; Koestler's personal background P3-6; Koestler's background related to his thought P6-10; Orwell's personal background Pl0-12; Orwell's background related to his thought Pl2-16; Koestler and Orwell compared in general terms Pl7-18. CHAPTER II: Spain 1937 - The Impact of Totalita rianism on Koestler and Orwell 19-34 Situation in Spain 1936-37, Pl9-20; Koestler's Spanish experience P21-26J Orwell's Spanish experience P26-30; meaning of the Spanish experience for Koestler and Orwell as defined in terms of ''li.m.ited '' and "luxuriant r• totalita rianism P31-34. CHAPTER III: Arthur Koestler and Limited Totalita rianism 35-61 Koestler's view of man and society P35-38J Koestler's idea of the genesis of totalitarianism P39-41; attraction of Communism for Koestler P41-43; Koestler's conception of Stalinism P44-48; Koestler's theory of history P47-48; Koestler's idea of totalita rianism P48-56; the meaning of '' limi ted '' totalitarianism in Koestler's work ex pounded P56-61. CHAPTER IV: George Orwell and Luxuriant Totalita rianism 62-83 Orwell's view of man and society P62-64; Orwell's ideas compared with Koestler's on this P65-69; Orwell's extension of the anomalies of the modern age P69-73; Orwell on totalitarian stability1 distortion of reality, and the in vasion of the human personality P73-80; Orwell's conception of luxuriant totalitarianism P80-83. -
Daniel Brick's Judisk Krönika
Cultural Zionism in Sweden: Daniel Brick's Judisk Krönika Stephen Fruitman Umeå I. Introduction The present study examines the content of the pendence" . Spotlighting those years reveals an Swedish-Jewish Zionist periodical Judisk Krö- especially vibrant, if at times trying period in nika during its earliest years of publication, Swedish-Jewish debate. I consider this reading 1932 to 1950, under the editorship of its found- of Judisk Krönika to be the first step toward a er, Daniel Brick. The onus will be on how the more comprehensive study of cultural Zionism magazine, in its brightest and most ambitious in Sweden, which will include use of archival years, acted as a conduit through which the and secondary sources to provide a more com- ideas of cultural Zionism flowed into Sweden. plete picture of this instance in Swedish-Jewish Through essays, reports, editorial comm- intellectual history. ments, book reviews and debates, the circle of intellectuals grouped around Brick clamoured for a revivification of what they considered to be the moribund cultural life of Swedish Jewry, II. Judisk Krönika: An Overview the result (in their eyes) of decades of Reform dominance in communal life. Not wishing to make themselves any less "Swedish", the cul- tural Zionists nevertheless insisted that Jews Daniel Brick: Voice of a "Reflective Youth" in Sweden (and Norway, Denmark, and Fin- land) needed to adopt an international per- Daniel Brick (1903-87) was the son of an immi- spective, integrating the proposed idea for a grant from Lithuania, a man described as both Jewish national home in Palestine into their "deeply religious" and a "chovev-zionist [lover lives as a source of cultural pride and spiritual of Zion], warmly interested in the Jewish pio- renewal. -
View: "Koestler"
Books Book Review: "Koestler" The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. By Michael Scammell '85GSAS. By Michael Kimmage | Winter 2009-10 Arthur Koestler in New York City. (Bettman / Corbis) When Arthur Koestler arrived in New York City in March 1948 to launch an American speaking tour, his visit was front-page news. An audience of 3000 filled Carnegie Hall, eager to hear Koestler’s thoughts on “the radical’s dilemma” and on America’s pressing need to confront Soviet communism. Koestler had gained worldwide fame for his novel Darkness at Noon, published in 1940. The hero of the novel is Nicholas Rubashov, a devout communist caught in Stalin’s net in the 1930s for straying from the party line. Before his inevitable execution, he is interrogated and forced to confess to ludicrous crimes. At the heart of his ordeal is an “absolute faith in History”: Stalin may be fallible, but the Soviet cause is infallible and can be made to justify countless deaths, including Rubashov’s own. The novel’s taut, philosophical style made it a staple of international literary culture, damaged the Communist Party’s global reputation, and made its author an icon of the engagé intellectual. For much of the Cold War, Koestler was a celebrity anti- communist. Yet when Koestler, the author of some 30 books, died in 1983, his chosen legacy was detached from political parties, movements, and causes. In his will, he left most of his estate to endow an academic chair in parapsychology. This unorthodox evolution can now be traced in Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, a new biography by Michael Scammell ’85GSAS, professor of creative writing at Columbia. -
Honors 392, Cosmology, Self and Society: Prof B
Question Authority...Question Reality...Question the Questioner...Question the act of Questioning… The ultimate questions as to the meaning of our actions and as to the meaning of life in general always tend to involve astronomical problems. Hans Reichenbach Honors 392, Cosmology, Self and Society: Prof B. McGrane Adventures in Cosmologies Fall 2018 Roosevelt 216 COSMOLOGY, SELF AND SOCIETY: ADVENTURES IN COSMOLOGIES (with deference to Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas, 1933) OVERALL COURSE STRUCTURE: The Ancient Greeks, The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, The 20/21st Centuries First, some important philosophical, orienting general statements: "Had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered. But now the sight of day and night, and the months and the revolutions of the years, have created number, and have given us a conception of time, and the power of inquiring about the nature of the universe; and from this source we have derived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was or will be given by the gods to mortal man." (Plato, Timaeus, 360 B.C., my emphasis, in Ferris p19) "Even before the start of history, the sky must have been commonly used as a compass, a clock, and a calendar...We know that the stars were used for similar purposes very early in history." (Weinberg, To Explain the World, 2015, p55) "Why do we need to know whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa? What business of ours is it, anyway? Can this knowledge -
Selected Biographies
Selected Biographies Abramovitch, A.E. (pseud. Albrecht) (1888–?) – Bolshevik, from 1911 in Switzerland, contact with Lenin, 1917 return to Russia, 1919 Comintern tasks in Berlin and Munich, 1920–21 in France (pseud. Salewski), 1921 headed Comintern news service, 1925–30 Comintern secretariat in Moscow. Alpári, Gyula (Julius) (1882–1944) – 1891 Hungarian Socialist Party, 1902 editor of its central organ Nepszava, 1910 expelled, 1919 Hungarian Communist Party, head of press commission and deputy people’s commissar for foreign affairs in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, from September 1919 often illegally in Germany, Switzerland and France, del- egate to the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Seventh Congresses of the Comintern, 1921–39 editor-in-chief of Inprekorr and its successor Rundschau, 1940 arrested by Gestapo in Paris, solitary confinement in Sachsenhausen, murdered. Balabanova, Angelica (1877–1965) – left Russia 1897, Italian Socialist Party, 1912–14 editor of Avanti, 1917 return to Russia (in Lenin’s ‘sealed train’), 1919 delegate to Comin- tern founding congress, first secretary of ECCI, left Soviet Russia 1922, 1923 Vienna, 1925 Paris, 1936–46 USA, 1947 return to Italy. Barth, Emil (1879–1941) – plumber, from 1914 SPD and union official, 1915 soldier, from 1916 head of plumbers’ section in Berlin’s engineering union, 1917 USPD, 1918 chair of Berlin revolutionary shop stewards, November 1918 on executive of workers’ and sol- diers’ councils, November/December 1918 member of people’s executive council, the provisional government led by Ebert, 1921 SPD, 1921–24 secretary then president of the Berlin central factory council, 1933 imprisoned. Bebel, August (1840–1913) – master carpenter in Leipzig, 1869 co-founder SDAP (prede- cessor of SPD), 1872 two years’ imprisonment, until 1913 president of SPD. -
Ld1 in PURSUIT of TRUTH
IN PURSUIT OF TRUTH Essays on the Philosophy of Karl Popper on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday Edited by PA UL LEVINSON \ with Fore words by (t 21). Isaac Asimov and Helmut Schmidt Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany I1b2. f'.- t4 z;-Ld1 HUMANITIES PRESS INC. Atlantic Highlands, NJ 248 liv PURSUIT OP TROT/I hope and no proof is Stoicism and Judeo-Christian religion, in which irrationalism and stoicism alternate. Yet there is no inconsistency in the philosophy of hope without proof, especially as a moral injunction to oiler the benefit of doubt wherever at all possible. Now, the philosophy of hope without proof is not exactly Popper's. It began with T. H. Huxley, the famous militant Darwinian, and H. C. Wells. Its best expression is in Bertrand Russell's Free A Popperian Harvest0 Man's Worship," the manifesto of hope born out of despair, clinging to both despair and reason most heroically. This famous paper, published in Russell's W. W. BARTLEY, III Philosophical Essays of 1910, is a sleeper. It was hardly noticed by It is by its methods rather than its subject-matter that philosophy contemporaries and followers, yet now it is the expression of current religion, is to be distinguished from other arts or sciences. ofcurrent scientific ethos. Here, I think, Popper's philosophy of science gave it A. J. Ayer, 1955' substance. Philosophers arc as free as others to use any method in searching Or perhaps Russell's "Free Man's Worship" gives Popper's philosophy of truth. There is no tnethod peculiar to philosophy. -
Forced and Slave Labor in Nazi-Dominated Europe
UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES Forced and Slave Labor in Nazi-Dominated Europe Symposium Presentations W A S H I N G T O N , D. C. Forced and Slave Labor in Nazi-Dominated Europe Symposium Presentations CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM 2004 The assertions, opinions, and conclusions in this occasional paper are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. First printing, April 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Peter Hayes, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Michael Thad Allen, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Paul Jaskot, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Wolf Gruner, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Randolph L. Braham, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Christopher R. Browning, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by William Rosenzweig, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Andrej Angrick, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Sarah B. Farmer, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2004 by Rolf Keller, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Contents Foreword ................................................................................................................................................i -
Finding Aid Was Produced Using Archivesspace on June 11, 2021
Spalek, John M.; Papers ger106 This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on June 11, 2021. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives Spalek, John M.; Papers ger106 Table of Contents Summary Information .................................................................................................................................... 3 Administrative History ................................................................................................................................... 3 Scope and Contents ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Arrangement of the Collection ...................................................................................................................... 5 Administrative Information ............................................................................................................................ 5 Controlled Access Headings .......................................................................................................................... 6 Collection Inventory ....................................................................................................................................... 6 Tape Recordings .......................................................................................................................................... 6 Photographs .............................................................................................................................................. -
Praise for All Power to the Councils! a Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919
PRAISE FOR All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919 Gabriel Kuhn’s excellent volume illuminates a profound global revolutionary moment, in which brilliant ideas and debates lit the sky, and from which emerged the likes of Ret Marut, a.k.a. B. Traven, perhaps history’s greatest proletarian novelist. Herein lie the roots of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and much else besides. —Marcus Rediker, author of Villains of all Nations and The Slave Ship This remarkable collection, skillfully edited by Gabriel Kuhn, brings to life that most pivotal of revolutions, crackling with the acrid odor of street fighting, insurgent hopes, and ulti- mately defeat. Had it triumphed, millions would have been spared the inferno of fascism; its failure ushered in counter- revolution far beyond its borders. In an era brimming with anticapitalist aspirations, these pages ring with that still unmet revolutionary promise: I was, I am, I shall be. —Sasha Lilley, author of Capital and Its Discontents and co-author of Catastrophism Drawing on newly uncovered material through pioneering archival historical research, Gabriel Kuhn’s powerful book on the German workers’ councils movement is essential reading to understanding the way forward for democratic worker con- trol today. All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918–1919 confers important lessons that will avert the setbacks of the past while providing pen- etrating and invaluable historical documentation crucial for anticipating the inevitable dangers in the struggle for building working class democracy. —Immanuel Ness, Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College An indispensable resource on a world-historic event. -
Munich in the 1920S
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 1 No. 20; December 2011 Hitler’s Beer Hall Politics: A Reassessment based on New Historical Scholarship Jeffrey Gaab, Ph. D. Professor of History Department of History, Economics, and Politics SUNY College Farmingdale 2350 Broadhollow Road Farmingdale, New York. USA 11735. Abstract As the eightieth anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in Germany approaches in 2013, recent scholarship has revised Hitler’s description of his formative experiences. This new scholarship demonstrates that Hitler’s time in Munich was far more significant than his period in Vienna. The new secondary literature demonstrates conclusively that Munich, not Vienna, became the “school of his life.” It was in Munich, as a “beer hall agitator,” where Hitler learned the political skills he would later employ to outmaneuver Germany’s professional politicians and seize power in 1933. Ian Kershaw has described Hitler’s years in Munich as “the years of his political apprenticeship.” Hitler developed an “aggressive obstinacy” during his years in Munich that lead to his political success. The “aggressive obstinacy” developed after numerous experiences in Munich’s beer halls. This paper argues that the road to the Reich’s Chancellery in 1933 lead through Munich’s beer halls in the 1920s. Key Words: Adolf Hitler, Germany, Third Reich, National Socialism, Munich, Beer Hall. Introduction In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that his political development occurred during his time in Vienna before he came to Germany in 1913. In Vienna, Hitler wrote, “I obtained the foundations for a philosophy in general and a political view in particular which later I only needed to supplement in detail, but which never left me.” In fact, Hitler argues that his political “awakening” caused him to leave Vienna for Munich.