GHI Bulletin 38, Spring 2006

Bulletin of the GHI Washington Issue 38 Fall 2006 Copyright Das Digitalisat wird Ihnen von perspectivia.net, der Online-Publikationsplattform der Max Weber Stiftung – Stiftung Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, zur Verfügung gestellt. Bitte beachten Sie, dass das Digitalisat urheberrechtlich geschützt ist. Erlaubt ist aber das Lesen, das Ausdrucken des Textes, das Herunterladen, das Speichern der Daten auf einem eigenen Datenträger soweit die vorgenannten Handlungen ausschließlich zu privaten und nicht-kommerziellen Zwecken erfolgen. Eine darüber hinausgehende unerlaubte Verwendung, Reproduktion oder Weitergabe einzelner Inhalte oder Bilder können sowohl zivil- als auch strafrechtlich verfolgt werden. GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE,WASHINGTON,DC BULLETIN ISSUE 38 SPRING 2006 CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 6 PREFACE 9 FEATURES Transnational Borderlands: Metropolitan Growth in the United States, Germany, and Japan since World War II 11 Kenneth T. Jackson The Suburbanization of German and American Cities 33 Adelheid von Saldern Historical Upheavals, Fractured Identities 51 Monika Maron German Institutes of Contemporary History: Interviews with the Directors 59 Gerhard Besier, Konrad Jarausch, Horst Möller, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, and Axel Schildt interviewed by Christof Mauch and Richard F. Wetzell STERN PRIZE Strangers and Neighbors: The Tactics of Toleration in the Dutch Exile Community of Wesel, 1550–1590 81 Jesse Spohnholz Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic: Toward an Economic, Consumer, Design, and Cultural History 89 Eli Rubin GHI RESEARCH In Pursuit of “Freedom”: African-, Anglo-, and German-American Alliances in the Abolition Movement 99 Mischa Honeck Migration, Citizenship, and Polish Integration in the Ruhr Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1870–1924 119 Brian McCook CONFERENCE REPORTS Crossing Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Environmental History 135 Uwe Lübken and Karen Oslund Bucerius Seminar 2005: American History and American Archives 138 Andreas Etges U.S. Intelligence and the Gehlen Organization, 1945–1956 143 James C. Van Hook Competing Modernities: The United States of America and Germany Since 1890 147 Christof Mauch and Kiran Klaus Patel Translation, the History of Political Thought, and the History of Concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) 149 Martin J. Burke American Occupations: Germany 1945–1949, Iraq 2003–2005 153 Rebecca Boehling Medieval History Seminar 2005 156 Patrick J. Geary American Presidents and the Germans, 1945–2005 159 Robert Gerald Livingston Fritz Stern Dissertation Award and Symposium of the Friends of the GHI 161 Richard F. Wetzell The Place of Nature in the City in Twentieth-Century Europe and North America 163 Dorothee Brantz and Sonja Dümpelmann Fellows Seminars, Fall 2005 169 Dirk Schumann ANNOUNCEMENTS:FELLOWSHIPS AND INTERNSHIPS Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships 171 Kade-Heideking Fellowship 171 Thyssen-Heideking Fellowship 172 Postdoc-Stipendium für Nordamerikanische Geschichte 173 NEH Program 173 GHI Körber Internship 174 Internships 174 NEWS New Publications 177 Library Report 178 Recipients of GHI Fellowships for 2006 179 Internship Recipients 181 Staff Changes 181 EVENTS Spring 2006 Lecture Series 183 Events Sponsored by the GHI, 2006–07 185 GHI PUBLICATIONS 189 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS GERHARD BESIER is director of the Hannah-Arendt-Institut fu¨ r Totalitarismusfor- schung in Dresden and professor of totalitarianism research at the University of Dresden. He is the author of numerous works, including Der Heilige Stuhl und Hitler-Deutschland: Die Faszination des Totalita¨ren (Munich, 2004). REBECCA BOEHLING is Associate Professor of History and Interim Director of the Honors College at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is the author of A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reform and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany (Berghahn Books, 1996). DOROTHEE BRANTZ is Assistant Professor in the department of history at SUNY Buffalo. MARTIN BURKE is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of The Conundrum of Class: Public Discourse on the Social Order in America (Chicago, 1995). SONJA DÜMPELMANN is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, and Visiting Research Fellow at the GHI. She has published a book on the Italian landscape designer Maria Teresa Parpagliolo Shephard (1903–1974). ANDREAS ETGES is Assistant Professor of North American History at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin. In 2005/06 he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the GHI Washington. Among his publications is John F. Kennedy (Munich, 2003). PATRICK GEARY is Professor of Medieval History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of numerous books, including The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (German translation: Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter: Zur Legende vom Werden der Nationen). MISCHA HONECK is the GHI Kade-Heideking Fellow for 2005/06 and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. KENNETH T. JACKSON is Director of the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History and the Jacques Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University. He is best known for his prize-winning Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985). KONRAD JARAUSCH is co-director of the Zentrum fu¨ r Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and Lurcy Professor for European Civilization at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of many publications, including most recently, Die Umkehr: Deutsche Wandlungen 1945–1995 (Munich, 2004). MONIKA MARON is a well-known German author. Raised in the former GDR, she worked as a journalist before writing fiction; unable to publish her work in the 6 GHI BULLETIN NO.38(SPRING 2006) GDR, she left for West Germany in 1988. Among her novels are Flugasche (1981), Stille Zeile Sechs (1991), Pawels Briefe (1999) and Endmoränen (2002). BRIAN MCCOOK is the current GHI Thyssen-Heideking Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Cologne. He is working on a project examining Polish return migration from Germany and the United States and its influence on Polish society during the interwar period. HORST MÖLLER is director of the Institut fu¨ r Zeitgeschichte in Munich and professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Munich. He is the author of numerous books, including Die Weimarer Republik: Eine unvollendete Demokratie (8th edition, 2006). JAN PHILIPP REEMTSMA is director of the Hamburger Institut fu¨ r Sozialforschung and professor of modern German literature at the University of Hamburg. He is the author of numerous publications, including most recently Folter im Rechtsstaat? (Hamburg, 2005). ELI RUBIN is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Western Michigan University. He is currently revising the book manuscript based on his dissertation, Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic. AXEL SCHILDT is director of the Forschungsstelle fu¨ r Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg and professor of modern history at the University of Hamburg. He is the author of numerous works, including Zwischen Abendland und Amerika: Studien zur west- deutschen Ideenlandschaft der 50er Jahre (Munich, 1999). JESSE SPOHNHOLZ is Assistant Professor of History at Grinnell College. He is currently revising his dissertation for publication. JAMES C. VAN HOOK is the joint historian of the U.S. Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the author of Rebuilding Germany: The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945–1957. ADELHEID VON SALDERN is Professor for Modern History at the University of Han- over, Emerita since 2004. Most recently, she has edited Inszenierte Einigkeit: Herr- schaftsrepräsentationen in DDR-Städten and Inszenierter Stolz: Stadtrepräsentationen in drei deutschen Gesellschaften (1935–1975) (Stuttgart, 2003/2005). Contributors not listed here are on the staff of the GHI. See inside back cover for more information. GHI BULLETIN NO.38(SPRING 2006) 7 PREFACE However much they might have in common, Berlin and New York look nothing alike. Germany’s Ruhrpott and California’s Orange County were both shaped by rapid industrial growth and the social change that fol- lowed, but these sprawling conurbations bear little resemblance to one another—and it’s not just the weather that makes it impossible to confuse Bottrop, Gelsenkirchen, and Essen with Lakewood, Fullerton, and Ana- heim. Why are the urban landscapes of Germany and the United States so different? For its Nineteenth Annual Lecture last November, the GHI invited two acclaimed scholars—Kenneth T. Jackson and Adelheid von Saldern—to grapple with this question. Urban history, as Jackson’s and Saldern’s masterful forays into comparative synthesis made clear, is a meeting point of many lines of historical inquiry as well as a promising point of departure for broader historical reflection. Explaining the diverg- ing patterns of German and American urban development over the past half century ultimately requires trying to make sense of the deep-seated commonalities and fundamental differences that simultaneously link and divide the two countries. Some of the themes Jackson and Saldern touched upon were the focus of an international conference at the GHI three weeks later. “The Place of Nature in the City in Twentieth-Century Europe and North America,” organized by former GHI postdoctoral fellows Dorothee

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