Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 52 | Spring 2013
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Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 52 | Spring 2013 3 Preface FEATURES 7 The Straits of Europe: History at the Margins of a Continent Johannes Paulmann 29 Europe from the Outside In: A Comment Helmut Walser Smith 37 Timeless, Modern, and German? The Re-Mapping of Bavaria through the Marketing of Tourism, 1800-1939 Adam Rosenbaum 55 At Home in Almanya? Turkish-German Spaces of Belonging in West Germany, 1961-1990 Sarah Thomsen Vierra 75 1989: How We Lost Political Alternatives Ingo Schulze GHI RESEARCH 95 An Empire of Youth: American Boy Scouts in the World, 1910-1960 Mischa Honeck 113 European Imports? European Immigrants and the Transformation of American Consumer Culture from the 1920s to the 1960s Jan Logemann CONFERENCE REPORTS 137 20th Archival Summer Seminar in Germany Clelia Caruso 141 Bright Modernity: Color, Commerce, and Consumption in Global Perspective Uwe Spiekermann 149 The Cold War and American Music, 1945-2000 Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, Bärbel Harju, Angelika Möller 153 Bosch Foundation Archival Seminar for Young Historians 2012: American History in Transatlantic Perspective Mischa Honeck 157 The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Retrospect and Prospect Lindsay Macumber 163 Immigration and Entrepreneurship: An Interdisciplinary Conference Clelia Caruso, Jessica Csoma, Bryan Hart, Kelly McCullough, Atiba Pertilla, Benjamin Schwantes, Uwe Spiekermann 169 The Transnational Signifi cance of the American Civil War: A Global History Matthew Karp 177 Translating Potential into Profi ts: Foreign Multinationals in Emerging Markets since the 19th Century Corinna Ludwig 185 GHI NEWS 2012 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prizes 2012 Franz Steiner Prize New Staff Publications Staff Changes GHI Fellowships and Internships Recipients of GHI Fellowships GHI Research Seminar, Fall 2012 GHI Doctoral Seminar, Fall 2012 GHI Lecture Series, Spring 2013 GHI Calendar of Events 2013 2 BULLETIN OF THE GHI | 52 | SPRING 2013 PREFACE This issue of the Bulletin features the 26th Annual Lecture of the GHI, which was delivered by Johannes Paulmann last November on the topic “The Straits of Europe: History at the Margins of a Continent.” Paulmann approaches European history in the period 1850-1914 by “circumscribing the continent” and focusing on what he calls the “straits of Europe,” ranging from the Kara Strait in the Arctic to the Straits of Gibraltar and the Bosporus in the South. Paulmann’s approach decenters European history: the perspective from the periphery reveals the “fl uid and permeable” character of Europe’s borders and highlights the continent’s global, imperial, and international connections. From this perspective, he argues, the nineteenth century appears not so much as an age of nationalism, but of internationalism and globalization. Helmut Walser Smith’s wide-ranging comment examines the venerable historical pedigree of approaching Europe from the margins, but also notes that the accelerated interaction of contact zones such as the straits was not typical of all of nineteenth-century Europe. The following two articles present the research of the two win- ners of the 2012 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize, awarded annually by the Friends of the GHI. Adam Rosenbaum’s “Timeless, Modern and German? The Remapping of Bavaria through the Marketing of Tourism, 1800-1939” examines the self-representation of Bavaria through the marketing of two tourist attractions, the mountainous area of “Franconian Switzerland” and the city of Nuremberg, two case studies drawn from his dissertation. The Bavarian tourism industry, Rosenbaum argues, promoted an image of what he calls “grounded modernity,” a romanticized version of the modern present that “rec- onciled tradition with progress and nature with technology.” Sarah Thomsen Vierra’s article “At Home in Almanya? Turkish-German Spaces of Belonging in West Germany, 1961-1990” examines how Turkish immigrants and their children made themselves “at home” in German society by constructing “spaces of belonging” within German society. Focusing on the Sprengelkiez neighborhood in Berlin-Wedding, Vierra’s dissertation examines the practice of “space-making” in the workplace, home, school, and places of wor- ship. In her article, Vierra argues that the school was a site of sig- nifi cant confl ict but was also perceived as a space of opportunity and provided a forum for cross-cultural socialization. PREFACE 3 Our fi nal feature article presents the 2012 Hertie lecture, delivered by the German writer Ingo Schulze at the GHI’s German Unifi cation Symposium. Schulze begins by noting that the key event of the East German revolution of 1989 was not November 9, when the Berlin wall fell, but October 9, the date of the decisive Leipzig “Monday demon- stration” that opened the fl oodgates of revolution. The main point of his lecture is to highlight a paradox: aft er the East German revolution resulted in German unifi cation, East Germans found themselves in a very un-revolutionary “world without alternatives”. “Democracy, freedom, social justice, and prosperity seemed only to be possible in a market economy where the means of production were privately owned.” In his lecture, Schulze seeks to challenge the “self-evident truths” (Selbstverständlichkeiten) that govern present-day politics. In this issue’s “GHI Research” section, two Research Fellows present their current research projects. In “An Empire of Youth: American Boy Scouts in the World, 1910-1960,” Mischa Honeck examines the nexus of “youth, hegemonic manhood, and American Empire” by explor- ing how transnational forces shaped the identities of American Boy Scouts and how these identities enabled them to endorse or challenge America’s role in twentieth-century world politics. In “European Imports? European Immigrants and the Transformation of American Consumer Culture from the 1920s to the 1960s,” Jan Logemann argues that European immigrants of the interwar period — many of them émigrés fl eeing Hitler’s Germany — played a key role in the development of consumer psychology, market research, and product design in the United States, all of which were crucial in turning this country into a mass consumer culture aft er the war. The remainder of this Bulletin presents conference reports of recent GHI conferences, whose topics once again ranged widely: from the American Civil War to the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and from American music in the Cold War to an interdisciplinary conference on the role of immigrants as entrepreneurs. The “News” section pres- ents recent prizes, fellowships, and staff publications and includes a calendar of events that informs you of upcoming GHI events and conferences, at which we hope to welcome you. Hartmut Berghoff (Director) and Richard F. Wetzell (Editor) 4 BULLETIN OF THE GHI | 52 | SPRING 2013 Features GHI Research Conference Reports GHI News THE STRAITS OF EUROPE: HISTORY AT THE MARGINS OF A CONTINENT 26TH ANNUAL LECTURE OF THE GHI, WASHINGTON DC, NOVEMBER 8, 2012 Johannes Paulmann LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, MAINZ Writing a history of Europe requires placing a story in time and space. The time chosen here is the nineteenth century and more specifi cally its second half, the period between the European revolutions of 1848 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. While there are interesting debates about the character of this period and its position in what has been called the long nineteenth century, this article will focus on the other dimension of history; it will seek to describe Europe in terms of space.1 For historians, it is always appropriate to begin by asking what con- temporaries thought about the issue at hand. In this case, however, the sources from the past are not very helpful. The experts of the time, the geographers, who were just establishing their discipline at universities, were divided on the question of where and what ex- actly Europe was, geographically speaking.2 Coming from diff erent scholarly backgrounds, geographers defi ned Europe in a variety of 1 The paper is based on a chapter from my ways: in terms of its geology and physical or biological features; in forthcoming book terms of its ethnic, cultural, or economic geography; and in terms Globale Vorherrschaft und Fortschrittsglaube: Europa of combinations of determining factors. Moreover, contemporary 1850-1914 (Munich: C.H. experts could not agree whether Europe was a continent in its own Beck). References have been kept to a minimum. right or a mere appendix of Asia. The exact borders of Europe always remained an issue, particularly its borders in the east. Some even 2 See Hans-Dietrich Schultz, Europa als geographisches adhered to an expansive notion by speaking of a “Greater Europe” Konstrukt (Jena, 1999). that included white settler colonies and by pointing toward Europe’s 3 The Cambridge Modern part in integrating world trade.3 What they all could agree on was History Atlas, ed. A. W. Ward et al. (Cambridge, that Europe’s geography was something special and the foundation 1912); George G. of its superior global position. Chisholm, Handbook of Commercial Geography (London, 1889). This geographical distinctiveness was oft en attributed to the char- acter of Europe’s coastlines and its special relationship with the 4 Emil Deckert, Über die geographischen Grundvor- sea. In the early twentieth century, Emil Deckert of the University aussetzungen der Haupt- of Frankfurt am Main pointed to the “many seas at the boundaries bahnen des Weltverkehrs. Eine verkehrsgeographische as well as the continental waters and bays cutting into the mass of Studie (Leipzig, 1883), 11, [Europe’s] body” and to “the large number of peninsulas and coastal 18; see also Michel Mollat du Jourdin, L’Europe et la islands.”4 He concluded that the Atlantic Ocean provided “such a mer (Paris, 1993). PAULMANN | THE STRAITS OF EUROPE 7 spectacular range of nautical diffi culties that it was no surprise that the world’s most enterprising and profi cient sea-faring race grew at the extended European coasts” and that culture and trade developed. Here we recognize the deterministic view of the relationship between environment and culture or politics, which many nineteenth and twentieth century geographers took for granted.