GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE,WASHINGTON,DC BULLETIN ISSUE 37 FALL 2005 CONTENTS List of contributors 6 PREFACE 7 FEATURES Performing the World: Reality and Representation in the Making of World Histor(ies) 9 Arif Dirlik What Future for the West? Reflections on an Enlarged Europe and the United States in the Twenty-First Century 27 Timothy Garton Ash FORUM:THE MEASURE OF ATROCITY THE GERMAN WAR AGAINST THE HEREROS The Military Campaign in German Southwest Africa, 1904–1907 39 Isabel Hull Coming to Terms with the Past 45 Gesine Krüger Annihilation in Africa: The “Race War” in German Southwest Africa (1904–1908) and its Significance for a Global History of Genocide 51 Jürgen Zimmerer Further Reading 58 GHI RESEARCH How German Jewry Turned Bourgeois: Religion, Culture, and Social Mobility in the Age of Emancipation 59 Simone Lässig The Park International: Park System Planning as an International Phenomenon at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 75 Sonja Dümpelmann CONFERENCE REPORTS Teaching World History 87 Eckhardt Fuchs and Karen Oslund War in an Age of Revolution 95 Roger Chickering Crossing the Atlantic: European Dimensions of American History Young Scholars Forum 2005 97 Thomas Adam and Christof Mauch Raising Americans—Raising Europeans in the Twentieth Century 101 Dirk Schumann German History, 1890–1930 Eleventh Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar 115 Richard F. Wetzell Selling Democracy: Productivity and Propaganda in the Service of American Foreign Policy 120 Jonathan Skolnik and Julia Driesen Rethinking Embourgeoisement and the Jews of Germany Second Annual Joint Symposium of the Leo Baeck Institute and the GHI 122 Jonathan Skolnik Revisiting 1806: Napoleon and German Central Europe Midatlantic German History Seminar at the GHI 124 Marion Deshmukh Animals in History 126 Dorothee Brantz and Christof Mauch The Pursuit of Public Happiness: Gardens and Parks in Europe and North America 134 Sonja Dümpelmann Turning Points in Environmental History 141 Frank Uekötter Archival Summer Seminar 148 Astrid M. Eckert Comparisons in German and American Film 153 Edward Dimendberg and Anton Kaes Fellows Seminars, Spring 2005 155 Dirk Schumann ANNOUNCEMENTS Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar 2006 157 Franz Steiner Prize 158 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize 158 Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships 159 Kade-Heideking Fellowship 160 Thyssen-Heideking Fellowship 160 Internships 161 NEWS German History in Documents and Images 163 Art Enables Exhibition 163 Visit of Bochum Student Group 163 Beate Ruhm von Oppen Donation 164 Library Report 164 New Publications 165 Fellowship Recipients 166 Internship Recipients 167 Staff Changes 167 EVENTS Fall 2005 Lecture Series 169 Events Sponsored by the GHI, 2005–06 170 GHI PUBLICATIONS 173 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS THOMAS ADAM is Assistant Professor of German and Transatlantic Euro- pean History in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Arlington. ROGER CHICKERING is Professor of History at Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of History and the BMW Center for German and European Studies. MARION DESHMUKH is Professor of History at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. EDWARD DIMENDBERG is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the School of Humanities at the University of California at Irvine. ARIF DIRLIK is Knight Professor of Social Science and Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, where he also directs the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies. SONJA DÜMPELMANN is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture in the School of Architecture at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, and Visiting Research Fellow at the GHI. ECKHARDT FUCHS is wissenschaftlicher Assistent and Privatdozent in the History of Education at the University of Mannheim. TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and director of the European Studies Centre as well as Gerd Bucerius Senior Research Fellow in Contemporary History at St. Antony’s College. ISABEL HULL is John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. ANTON KAES is Chancellor Professor of German and Film Studies and currently chair of the German Department at the University of California at Berkeley. GESINE KRÜGER is Professor of Non-European History (außereuropäische Geschichte) at the University of Zurich. FRANK UEKÖTTER is wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in the Department of History at Bielefeld University and a Breuninger Environmental History Fellow at the GHI. JÜRGEN ZIMMERER is Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield. Contributors not listed here are on the staff of the GHI. See inside back cover for more information. 6 GHI BULLETIN NO.37(FALL 2005) PREFACE Germany and the United States may stand at the center of the GHI’s research program, but they have never been treated in isolation. Many of the projects and conferences the GHI supports focus on the broader trans- atlantic community. Conferences such as “Natural Disasters and Cultural Strategies” and “Historical Justice in International Perspective” have ex- plored the particular national experiences of events, developments, and trends that transcend national borders. In collaboration with our col- leagues at the German Historical Institute in London, we have also gath- ered scholars from across the globe on three occasions to reflect on the theory and practice of world history. The third of these conferences, held in Washington in the spring of 2005, focused on teaching world history. This issue of the Bulletin features the keynote lecture on the problem of conceptualizing world history by Arif Dirlik that opened the conference. World history, Professor Dirlik persuasively argues, is defined as much by the perspective it promotes—by its insistent questioning of established analytical categories and its focus on complexity—as by its subject matter. Like Dirlik’s model world historian, Timothy Garton Ash has de- voted his career to challenging conventional ways of looking at the world. As a chronicler-participant in Eastern Europe’s independent civic initia- tives during the 1980s, Garton Ash explained to readers in the West the alternative vision of a united and democratic Europe espoused by groups such as Poland’s Solidarity and activists like Vaclav Havel. With that vision now largely realized in the expanded European Union, Garton Ash has turned his attention to the broader ramifications of European inte- gration. Thanks to the generous support of the ZEIT Stiftung Gerd und Ebelin Bucerius, the GHI was able to invite Professor Garton Ash to Washington to share his thoughts on relations between the enlarged Eu- rope and the United States. True to form, Garton Ash called prevailing opinion into question by arguing against the widely held view that the transatlantic partnership has outlived its usefulness. The EU and the United States, he contends, can and should work together as strategic partners in building “an international community of democracies”. Professor Garton Ash’s lecture was typical of many of the GHI’s public events in bringing a historical perspective to contemporary issues and debates. Highlighting the pertinence of the past for the present was certainly one of the main objectives of the panel discussion the GHI organized last winter on the German suppression of the Herero uprising of 1904. German colonial forces employed not only conventional military tactics against the Hereros but also resorted to measures such as poison- GHI BULLETIN NO.37(FALL 2005) 7 ing water sources and cutting off access to food. This horrific chapter in the history of German imperialism is the subject of current political dis- cussion in both Germany and Namibia. At issue is not only the question of memory and commemoration, but also more immediately tangible matters such as aid policy and financial reparations. The suppression of the Herero revolt is also directly pertinent to ongoing debates on the definition of genocide and the use of military force against noncomba- tants. Three essays based upon presentations delivered at the panel dis- cussion “The Measure of Atrocity: The German War Upon the Hereros” appear in this issue of the Bulletin. Isabel Hull examines the military background to the German response to the Herero uprising. Gesine Krüger considers the contemporary import of colonial-era violence in Africa. Jürgen Zimmerer situates the massacre of the Hereros within the history of twentieth-century genocide. The GHI’s panel discussions and lecture programs serve as a forum for dialogue between the scholarly community and the broader public. Public outreach is an important part of the GHI’s mission. It thus was a great pleasure to offer the services of GHI research fellows Bernd Schaefer and Astrid Eckert on the two occasions this summer that producers at PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” called to ask if the GHI had someone on hand to help explain the day’s events from a historical perspective. The GHI has also been featured in the German press recently. Early this summer, several radio stations and newspapers, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reported at length on the conferences “Animals in History: Studying the Not So Human Past,” held at the Literaturhaus Köln and “Turning Points in Environmental History,” jointly organized by the GHI and the University of Bielefeld’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. One recent public program had particular resonance for the GHI’s staff and many longtime supporters. The conference “War in an Age of Revolution” opened with a panel discussion on the concept of total war that provided occasion to pay tribute to one of the initiators of the GHI’s series of conferences on total war, GHI founding director Hartmut Leh- mann. This event probably came as close as any could to reflecting the diversity of Professor Lehmann’s scholarly interests. He has written widely on the cultural history of the early modern era as well on the points of intersection in the histories of Europe and the United States.