Panels – Historikertag 2018

Gunpowder in Town – Citizens and Weapons

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Die Waffen sind „zurück“ in den europäischen Städten, das scheint zumindest der aktuelle Befund des Chronikteils der Tageszeitungen zu sein, der immer wieder von Schießereien in Lokalen, aber auch von Amokläufen berichtet. Illegaler Waffenbesitz nimmt offensichtlich zu. Doch schon in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit hatten die Stadträte alle Hände voll zu tun, die von bürgerlichen und nichtbürgerlichen Männern getragenen Waffen aus dem Alltag der Stadt zu verbannen oder zumindest zu kontrollieren. Eine insgesamt paradoxe Entwicklung, welche die Sektion zu fassen sucht: Denn die Stadt des Okzidents war ein Wehrverband der Bürger; es war Bürgerpflicht, die Stadtfreiheit zu verteidigen. So mussten die Bürger anlässlich der Bürgerrechtsverleihung Waffen vorweisen; diese waren (zunächst) im Hause aufzubewahren. Doch die Waffen dienten nicht nur der Verteidigung gegen den äußeren Feind und zur Wiederherstellung innerstädtischer Concordia im Rahmen von Partizipationskonflikten. Sie fungierten in der städtischen Öffentlichkeit als wichtige Statussymbole. Und auch die Präsentation bürgerlicher Wehrfähigkeit war von Bedeutung, wie es die zahlreichen Schützenfeste im Stadtraum verdeutlichen. Gleichzeitig aber wurden die Waffen im alltäglichen Konfliktaustrag eingesetzt; schwere oder tödliche Verletzungen waren die Folge. Demzufolge suchten die Stadträte zeitweilige oder permanente Verbote von Stichwaffen oder Bögen durchzusetzen. Auch die Zeughäuser waren Ausdruck dieser Pazifizierungsstrategie, denn sie dienten nicht nur als Lager für die teure Artillerie, sondern in ihnen wurden auch Blankwaffen und Harnische, Gewehre und Munition aufbewahrt; der häusliche Waffenschrank sollte abgeschafft werden. Doch sowohl Bürger als auch städtische Sondergruppen – etwa Klerus, Studenten, Adel oder die unruhigen Handwerksgesellen – standen weiterhin infolge ihres ungestümen Waffengebrauches vor Gericht. Es geht in der Sektion also im Sinne des Rahmenthemas des Historikertages um eine der Sollbruchstellen der Stadt des Okzidents, nämlich um das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Wehrhaftigkeit und innerstädtischer Pax: Der Rat als Organ des „gesonderten Bürgerstandes“ (Max Weber) musste einerseits die Wehrfähigkeit fördern, andererseits den unkontrollierten Waffengebrauch beschränken.

Der Beitrag Gunpowder in Town – Citizens and Weapons erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

Specialised Information Services for researchers: printed, digital, hybrid?

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Der Beitrag Specialised Information Services for researchers: printed, digital, hybrid? erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

Plotting Torture. Representation and Remediation in Divided Societies, 19th to 21st centuries

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Die Überwindung der Folter gehört in Folge der Diskussionen der Aufklärung zu den integralen und normativen Bestandteilen des „moralisch-praktischen Selbstverständnisses der Moderne im ganzen“ (Habermas). Gleichwohl war die Tortur bereits vor ihrer Enttabuisierung im frühen 21. Jahrhundert nicht nur für Diktaturen, sondern auch für Demokratien ein Dispositiv von Macht, wie die Analyse von Prozessen der De/Kolonisierung und der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Terrorismus zeigt. Dieses Paradox schlägt sich bis heute historiographisch im Topos von der „Wiederkehr der Folter“ nieder oder in der Abgrenzung eines Antifolterkonsenses für das 19. Jahrhundert von Revitalisierungsbewegungen für das 20. und Relegitimierungsbemühungen für das 21. Jahrhundert (Kesper-Biermann; Kwaschik). Eine geschichtswissenschaftlich fundierte und differenzierte Überprüfung dieser Erzählung für die Zeit von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart steht jedoch noch aus. Diesen Befund aufnehmend versteht die Sektion die Auseinandersetzung mit der Folter oder dem Foltervorwurf als eine „symbolisch bedeutsame Handlung“ (Geertz) zur Sichtbarmachung und Überwindung von gesellschaftlichen Spaltungen und Brüchen. Die Sektion geht davon aus, dass aufgrund der Bedeutung des Folterverbots für das Selbstverständnis und die Legitimität politischer Ordnungen in der Moderne diese Auseinandersetzungen Geschichten der Selbstverständigung moderner Gesellschaften in Konfliktsituationen erzählen. Im Zentrum der Diskussion steht die Phase der Neukonfiguration „nach dem Bruch“ und die sie kennzeichnenden „Prozesse des Erzählens und Wiedererzählens, Erinnerns und Wiedererinnerns“ zur Neuordnung einer außer Kontrolle geratenen normativen Ordnung (Schuff/Scheel). Vier Vorträge von jeweils 20 Minuten problematisieren diese Konstellationen an Fallbeispielen aus Westeuropa, den USA und Lateinamerika/Afrika.

Der Beitrag Plotting Torture. Representation and Remediation in Divided Societies, 19th to 21st centuries erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

Close Distance. Social Segregation in Trading Empires and Colonies

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Historically, societies often are not first united and become then divided, but they get aggregated by way of migration or by imperial conquest or colonisation. Often those different parts of a society do not merge and integrate completely, but they maintain for a long time manifest though perhaps invisible forms of distinction, separation and segregation. With the term Close Distance we try to cover a wide span of those forms of coexistence that might help to effectively compare across the periods: “racial segregation” would be a term seldom fitting for premodern times, but the roots of such forms of spatial segregation in large nineteenth and even twentieth century cities are reaching far back into early modern times at least. In trade cities and colonial towns those patterns of both peaceful exchange among merchants as well as of conflictual coexistence emerge: of a parataxis of physical closeness on the one hand, and of a unconsciously or even consciously maintained distance on the level of culture. The examples of this panel are: economies of trust and mistrust in the possessions of the Dutch Vereenigde Ostindische Companie in Indonesia; Ignorance and knowledge barriers at courts and tribunals in the Dutch Atlantic colonies; ignorance and unconscious non-knowledge concerning the religion of the Eastern Churches on the side of European Levant merchants in the Mediterranean. In high colonial times of the nineteenth century, the more rigid forms of close distance between ´colonizers´ and ´colonized´ emerge at the same time as a far more reflexive and empiricist approach that stands juxtaposed to that very dichotomy: ideologies of segreagtion in Colonial Africa go hand in hand with the early ethnological research into customs and customary law of the ´indigenous´. For the period of decolonisation, the wider notion of Close Distance is very helpful again as it points to the unintentional forms of misunderstanding, ignorance, the continuities and traditions of separate life styles in every-day culture as they become visible only in conflicts and lawsuits. The panel aims at such a sketch of a history of segregation in a global and transepochal comparison in a new way beyond the sometimes belittling speech of “hybridisation” and “mix of cultures, métissages”, without denying that important processes and phenomena of that kind were and are happening. Not knowing of each other, to ignore the other consciously or unconsciously – Societies of and in close distance.

Der Beitrag Close Distance. Social Segregation in Trading Empires and Colonies erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

The Market as a Scandal. Public debates about scope, functionality and legitimacy

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Markets are an efficient institution to negotiate and process needs in an organized way and without open conflicts. This capacity is hardly questioned anymore, still “the market” as an abstraction as well as processes of marketization seem to remain inherently scandalous. Markets seem to produce “divided societies”: in a social and economic perspective, markets continually produce winners and losers; in an intellectual perspective, the idea of the market itself is controversial at all times. Often it is exactly its promise of functionality and efficiency that puts markets in the center of the debate, representing its most attractive and most contentious feature at the same time, as efficiency criteria seem to favor certain results and social groups while ignoring other factors. Debates about the legitimacy, scope and regulation of markets reflect controversies about economics but also about political claims to regulation, social relations and questions of individual quality of life. How “economic” or “moral” were these arguments? Did a prolific negotiation process evolve from the debate, or was it just a moralizing soliloquy of market apologists and critics on either side? Did the debate and the regulation provoked by it provide an impulse for the creation of new markets or the development of existing ones? We assume that the market as a “scandalon” can manifest itself in four ways: 1st concerning access to markets and the (il)legitimacy of market players; 2nd in debates about (il)legitimate goods and their trading on a free market; 3rd in discussions about the marketization or commodification of goods and social relations; and 4th in debates about market failure and blind spots of markets. Each of these dimensions will be at the center of one of the four presentations of the panel.

Der Beitrag The Market as a Scandal. Public debates about scope, functionality and legitimacy erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

The dream of Christian unity. Crusading ideology and crusading plans as means to overcome the fractions of Early Modern Europe

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

In a great part of the pertinent historical literature we find crusades described as something “medieval”, a phenomenon that found its rather inglorious end in the late 14th century. The Austrian and Venetian wars against the Ottomans of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era are usually not referred to as crusades since they lacked overall European support and because of the dominant political nature of these conflicts. Such a perspective, however, underestimates the importance and longevity of the crusading ideology also in the Early Modern Era. In recent years an important strand of research on crusades in the 15th and 16th centuries has emerged which mostly deconstructed the usual classification of crusades as a purely medieval phenomenon. From the perspective of the Early Modern Era, crusading ideology can also be observed to have enjoyed substantial popularity until the early 18th century. Perhaps due to the increasing fear of the Turks all across Europe this ideology even became stronger in the first centuries of the Early Modern Era than it had been in the Late Middle Ages. In premodern Europe the summons to fight against the Muslims seem to have been an important strand of an incessant debate which may be considered one of the most fundamental substrates of an imagined European and Christian unity. Until 1700, the dream of the liberation of the Balkans, Greece, Constantinople and finally Jerusalem had great importance as a frame of reference for appeals for unity and reconciliation among the Christians. Thus, such appeals contained a highly integrative, at times even irenic momentum. In the panel we want to illuminate the phenomenon „crusade“ as an ideology, as a practice and especially as a discourse of premodern Europe from the specific vantage point of the Early Modern epoch.

Der Beitrag The dream of Christian unity. Crusading ideology and crusading plans as means to overcome the fractions of Early Modern Europe erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

Faded – Supressed – Forgotten? The Loss of the Past as a Research Problem

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Der Beitrag Faded – Supressed – Forgotten? The Loss of the Past as a Research Problem erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

The Sea in Antiquity: Division and Polarization

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

Der Beitrag The Sea in Antiquity: Division and Polarization erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

Worlds apart: Jewish Witnesses in Israeli and West German Criminal Proceedings against Perpetrators of National Socialist Extermination Camps, 1970–1990

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

The trials against Nazi perpetrators in Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany represented an earlier engagement with the crimes of the Holocaust than took place in other fields. In both countries, this broke the social resistance, motivated in each society for entirely different reasons, towards engaging with the Jewish catastrophe on the one hand and with the German perpetrators on the other. Hundreds of survivors testified in Israel and West Germany in enquiries and criminal proceedings against the perpetrators. In the courts, the survivors often for the first time were able to publicly articulate their knowledge and experience, even if in a legally regulated form. Concepts and categories describing events and contexts of the Holocaust were developed which were to inform the engagement with Nazi crimes for a long time to come. Aside from the spectacular appearance of 110 survivors in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, the impact of which has been researched extensively, little is known to date about the concrete circumstances, conditions, and consequences of the appearance of survivors as legal witnesses in Israel and Germany, and the corresponding source materials are hardly used in scholarship. Moreover, hardly any systematic analyses exist in either country on the development of legal engagements with Nazi crimes in the 1970s and 1980s, following the much publicized trials of Nazis in Jerusalem and Frankfurt am Main. The divergent legal basis in each country – in Israel the 1950 “Nazi and Nazi Collaborators law” and in West Germany the regular German criminal law – had in certain areas a massive impact on the function of Jewish witnesses and their position in the trials of Nazis. Nevertheless, parallel developments are discernible in the period after the 1970s with regard to the legal recognition of survivors and their testimonies, which essentially point to an advancing schism between law and society: While the social perception of Holocaust survivors as public contemporary witnesses rose successively, their significance as legal witnesses continuously fell.

Der Beitrag Worlds apart: Jewish Witnesses in Israeli and West German Criminal Proceedings against Perpetrators of National Socialist Extermination Camps, 1970–1990 erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.

The Dynamics of Violence and Divided Societies: The Holocaust, Occupation, and the Reconfiguration of Social Relations (1939-1945)

Christoph Schüßler — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 19:03:15 +0000

The Second World War was a period marked by extremely violent social division. Throughout Europe, the ideology and practices of the German occupiers and their allies employed existing social conflicts for their own purposes. However, they also established new social orders that led to violence, mass murder, and the Holocaust. This section explores the reconfiguration of social and ethnic relations in societies under occupation during the Second World War. The first speaker, Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Bergische Universität Wuppertal) will begin by examining the main European historical narratives concerning the Second World War, which are, for the most part, characterized by a strong national focus. However, as she will show, the spheres of the “German occupiers” and “local occupied peoples” cannot be so neatly separated, as both groups interacted and depended on each other in various ways. Alexander Korb (University of Leicester) will then consider different conceptions of a new political and demographic social order in Southeastern Europe, as developed by National Socialist Germany and its allies, and explore their intersections and divergences. Although among Germans, debates arose between numerous factions and different models of occupation, on the whole, the system of so-called “single-people states” (Einvolkstaaten), propagated by völkisch scholars and preferred Hitler, prevailed. Finally, Melanie Hembera (IdGL Tübingen) will draw on the case study of the Galician city of Tarnów to analyze the character of social relations among a population which underwent diverse transformation processes following Germany’s invasion of the territory in September 1939. She will argue that Raul Hilberg’s triad of “perpetrators-victims-bystanders” offers an insufficient analytic framework for conceptualizing the diverse types of behaviors exhibited among populations in the violent context of National Socialist occupation.

Der Beitrag The Dynamics of Violence and Divided Societies: The Holocaust, Occupation, and the Reconfiguration of Social Relations (1939-1945) erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2018.