Habbo Knoch. Bürgersinn mit Weltgefühl: Politische Moral und solidarischer Protest in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren. Veröffentlichungen des Zeitgeschichtlichen Arbeitskreises Niedersachsen. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2007. 334 pp. ISBN 978-3-8353-0068-2; EUR 32.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-8353-0068-2.
Reviewed by Michael L. Hughes (Wake Forest University)
Published on H-German (February, 2009)
Commissioned by Eve M. Duffy
Citizenship as Activism and Authenticity
The Federal Republic of Germany, some scholars have argued, was re-founded in the 1960s and early 1970s as a more democratic, more "modern" country. In that spirit, Habbo Knoch’s collection of articles, most from a November 2005 conference, seeks to illuminate the 1960s/70s development in West Germany of fundamentally new forms of citizen (bürgerliche) engagement and participation. While all the articles are of some interest, this review will focus on those that seem most related to the themes the editor discusses.
Knoch's stimulating introduction reviews some key conceptual issues in the FRG's development of a new Bürgersinn, a new sense of the citizen and political citizenship. Bürger and its variants have covered various meanings for Germans, usually relating to the Bürgertum as a distinct and eventually predominant social class or stratum. Those meanings connoted by citoyen in French and citizen in English have often been irrelevant or subsidiary for Germans using the term Bürger. Only since the 1950s have republican and critical conceptions of the Bürger become central. Even then, they did so only against 1960s leftist perceptions of the Bürger as capitalist and of bürgerliche Herrschaft as oppressive. One recent key, although contested, concept has been that of the mündige Bürger, of the politically mature, or perhaps self-reliant and active/activist, citizen. Not all Germans thought that the mündige Bürger should engage in active protest, with the SPD, for example, long seeing citizen participation as meaning support for institutions (such as the parties) and experts. For other Germans, however, active political engagement would come to be the defining characteristic of the politically mature citizen. And, indeed, the overarching issue for Knoch is the breadth and depth of the 1960s changes that resulted, inter alia, in the post-60s new social movements that engaged millions of citizens politically, often in various forms of protest. Knoch notes also the new role of the Bürger as consumer in a mass, commercial society, a development that convinced many Germans to demand authenticity and genuineness as primary virtues of good citizens.
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Briesen, Detlef; Weinhauer, Klaus (Hrsg.): Jugend, Delinquenz und gesellschaftlicher Wandel. Bundesrepublik Deutschland und USA nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Essen: Klartext Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-89861-637-9;177 S.; EUR 19,90.
Kurme, Sebastian: Halbstarke. Jugendprotest in den 1950er Jahren in Deutschland und den USA. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag 2006. ISBN 978-3-593-38175-6; 384 S.; EUR 42,00.
Rezensiert für H-Soz-u-Kult von:
Martin Klimke, German Historical Institute, Washington / Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Universität Heidelberg
E-Mail: [mailto]mail@maklimke.com[/mailto]
Erschüttert über das despektierliche Verhalten und die Aufmüpfigkeit von Teilen der jungen Generation berichtete die "Deutsche Tagespost" 1956: "Die Halbstarken von heute, das ist die HJ des Wirtschaftswunderlandes.[...] Sie terrorisieren uns, weil wir nicht mehr so viel Mark in den Knochen haben, dass wir dem moralischen Nihilismus ein Gran Autorität und eine feste Hand zu zeigen wagen." (bei Kurme, S. 260) Ähnliche Töne der moralischen und politischen Entrüstung waren in den 1950er-Jahren auch auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks zu hören. Ein US-amerikanischer Psychotherapeut etwa verglich 1957 das Bedrohungspotenzial von Rock'n'Roll, der musikalischen Inspiration der rebellierenden Jugend, mit dem italienischen Faschismus: "Why are the rhythmical sounds and motions so especially contagious? A rhythmical call to the crowd easily foments mass ecstasy: "Duce! Duce! Duce!'" (ebd., S. 164)
Mit dem Voranschreiten der Archivsperrfristen und nach dem jüngsten Jubiläumsjahr von "1968" nähert sich die deutsche Zeitgeschichtsforschung nun zunehmend den Entwicklungen der 1970er- und 1980er-Jahre. Dass jedoch auch die gemeinhin als bearbeitet geltenden 1950er-Jahre noch durchaus neue historiographische Impulse freisetzen und Leerstellen der Forschung aufzeigen, beweisen die Dissertation von Sebastian Kurme und ein Sammelband von Detlef Briesen und Klaus Weinhauer zum Thema jugendlicher Dissens, Delinquenz und gesellschaftlicher Wandel.
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Ian McKay. Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2008. 656 pp. $49.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-897071-49-6.
Reviewed by Ian Milligan (York University)Published on H-Canada (February, 2009)Commissioned by Stephanie Bangarth
The Importance of Reasoning Otherwise
Ian McKay’s Reasoning Otherwise, the introductory volume to a three-part series on the Left, examines the understudied and often maligned territory of first-wave Canadian evolutionary socialism. Using a post-polemical methodology of critical reconnaissance, McKay recognizes the cultural gulf between the past and present and addresses those historical ideas that would now be considered racist, sexist, or simply archaic. Through this methodology and his demonstration of how first formation socialists bequeathed an understanding of "reasoning otherwise" to their successors, McKay convincingly demonstrates that the Canadian Left from 1890 to 1920 truly matters. A professor of history at Queen’s University, McKay has made a significant contribution to the history of the Canadian Left.
Reasoning Otherwise has much to offer all Canadian historians, not just those specializing on the Canadian Left. By focusing on those who noticed and challenged the inherent contradictions in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century liberal order, McKay’s book can be seen as an expansion of his pathbreaking “Liberal Order Framework” article in the Canadian Historical Review.[1] How did Canadians respond to the challenges of the liberal order during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century period of industrial modernity? Beyond the much-needed furthering of knowledge of first formation Canadian socialism, McKay’s reconnaissance opens up new and nuanced understandings of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought on "race," sexuality, feminism, and class. McKay stresses the importance of moving away from studies of institutions (such as the Socialist Party of Canada) to a broader study of the socialist cultural context.
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Mary C. Brennan. Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade against Communism. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008. xi + 197 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-87081-885-1.
Reviewed by Erika Kuhlman (Idaho State University)
Published on H-Peace (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Robert A. Jacobs
Women and Conservative Activism in the United States
Mary C. Brennan's book on anticommunist female activists will please instructors of history and political science courses who are searching for conservative voices to add to the cannon of scholarship on U.S. women's activism. Along with Kim E. Nielsen's Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare (2001), Brennan's book adds to recent studies of conservative female activists and of the gendered aspects of twentieth-century conservatism. Like Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988), Brennan's study situates anticommunism not in the seat of government but within the American family.
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