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In this overview of the Baltic region from the Vikings to the
European Union, Michael North presents the sea and the lands that
surround it as a Nordic Mediterranean, a maritime zone of shared
influence, with its own distinct patterns of trade, cultural
exchange, and conflict. Covering over a thousand years in a part of
the world where seas have been much more connective than land, The
Baltic: A History transforms the way we think about a body of water
too often ignored in studies of the world's major waterways. The
Baltic lands have been populated since prehistory by diverse
linguistic groups: Balts, Slavs, Germans, and Finns. North traces
how the various tribes, peoples, and states of the region have
lived in peace and at war, as both global powers and pawns of
foreign regimes, and as exceptionally creative interpreters of
cultural movements from Christianity to Romanticism and Modernism.
He examines the golden age of the Vikings, the Hanseatic League,
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the Great, and looks at the
hard choices people had to make in the twentieth century as
fascists, communists, and liberal democrats played out their
ambitions on the region's doorstep. With its vigorous trade in
furs, fish, timber, amber, and grain and its strategic position as
a thruway for oil and natural gas, the Baltic has been-and
remains-one of the great economic and cultural crossroads of the
world.
First time these letters are published in English. Commentary on
the development of psychoanalysis in this period as well as the
broader political situation in Europe. Includes an additional
chapter with extracts of Lampl-de Groot's letters to her parents
First time these letters are published in English. Commentary on
the development of psychoanalysis in this period as well as the
broader political situation in Europe. Includes an additional
chapter with extracts of Lampl-de Groot's letters to her parents
The mother tongue of the Roman Empire and the lingua franca of the
West for centuries after Rome's fall, Latin survives today
primarily in classrooms and texts. Yet this "dead language" is
unique in the influence it has exerted across centuries and
continents. Jurgen Leonhardt has written a full history of Latin
from antiquity to the present, uncovering how this once parochial
dialect developed into a vehicle of global communication that
remained vital long after its spoken form was supplanted by modern
languages. Latin originated in the Italian region of Latium, around
Rome, and became widespread as that city's imperial might grew. By
the first century BCE, Latin was already transitioning from a
living vernacular, as writers and grammarians like Cicero and Varro
fixed Latin's status as a "classical" language with a codified
rhetoric and rules. As Romance languages spun off from their Latin
origins following the empire's collapse-shedding cases and genders
along the way-the ancient language retained its currency as a world
language in ways that anticipated English and Spanish, but it
ceased to evolve. Leonhardt charts the vicissitudes of Latin in the
post-Roman world: its ninth-century revival under Charlemagne and
its flourishing among Renaissance writers who, more than their
medieval predecessors, were interested in questions of literary
style and expression. Ultimately, the rise of historicism in the
eighteenth century turned Latin from a practical tongue to an
academic subject. Nevertheless, of all the traces left by the
Romans, their language remains the most ubiquitous artifact of a
once peerless empire.
With great immediacy, the diaries of Willy Cohn, a Jew and a Social
Democrat, show how the process of marginalization under the Nazis
unfolded within the vibrant Jewish community of Breslau--until that
community was destroyed in 1941. Cohn documents how difficult it
was to understand precisely what was happening, even as people were
harassed, beaten, and taken off to concentration camps. He
chronicles the efforts of the community to maintain some semblance
of normal life at the same time as many made plans to emigrate or
to get their children out.
Cohn and his wife Gertrud were able to get their three oldest
children out of Germany before it was too late. However, burying
himself in his work chronicling the history of the Jews in Germany,
his diaries, and his memoirs, Cohn missed his own chance to escape.
In late 1941, he, Gertrud, and their two young daughters were
deported to Lithuania, where they were shot.
Willy Cohn was a complex individual: an Orthodox Jew and a
socialist; an ardent Zionist and a staunch German patriot; a
realist but also an idealist often unable to cope with reality; a
democrat and an admirer of certain Nazi policies and of their
resoluteness. These contradictions and the wealth of detail that
poured from his pen give us a unique view of those disorienting and
frightening times in Germany.
This is a groundbreaking study of the prestigious Berlin and Vienna
Philharmonics during the Third Reich. Making extensive use of
archival material, including some discussed here for the first
time, Fritz Trumpi offers new insight into the orchestras' place in
the larger political constellation. Trumpi looks first at the
decades preceding National Socialist rule, when the competing
orchestras, whose rivalry mirrored a larger rivalry between Berlin
and Vienna, were called on to represent "superior" Austro-German
music and were integrated into the administrative and social
structures of their respective cities-becoming vulnerable to
political manipulation in the process. He then turns to the Nazi
period, when the orchestras came to play a major role in cultural
policies. As he shows, the philharmonics, in their own unique ways,
strengthened National Socialist dominance through their showcasing
of Germanic culture in the mass media, performances for troops and
the general public, and fictional representations in literature and
film. Accompanying these propaganda efforts was an increasing
politicization of the orchestras, which ranged from the dismissal
of Jewish members to the programming of ideologically appropriate
repertory-all in the name of racial and cultural purity. Richly
documented and refreshingly nuanced, The Political Orchestra is a
bold exploration of the ties between music and politics under
fascism.
An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures
off-kilter "Probability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a
suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the
tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail."
-Vilem Flusser Two years after his Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the
philosopher Vilem Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a
collection of twenty-two "scenarios for the future" to be produced
as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break
the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and
economic future of the universe. What If? is not just an
"impossible journey" to which Flusser invites us in the first
scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to
humanity. Flusser's disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught
with nightmares offer new visions that range from the scientific to
the fantastic to the playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our
present sense of understanding the world, considering the
exploitation of nature and the dangers of global warming,
overpopulation, and blind reliance on the promises of scientific
knowledge and invention. What If? offers insight into the radical
futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have much to do with
speculative fiction, with Flusser's concept of design as "crafty"
or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of
failure versus reasonable, "good" computing or calculability. As
such, the book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may
yet become and be.
This is a groundbreaking study of the prestigious Berlin and Vienna
Philharmonics during the Third Reich. Making extensive use of
archival material, including some discussed here for the very first
time, Fritz Tr mpi offers new insight into the orchestras' place in
the larger political constellation. Tr mpi looks first at the
decades preceding National Socialist rule, when the competing
orchestras, whose rivalry mirrored a larger rivalry between Berlin
and Vienna, were called on to represent "superior" Austro-German
music and were integrated into the administrative and social
structures of their respective cities becoming vulnerable to
political manipulation in the process. He then turns to the Nazi
period, when the orchestras came to play a major role. As he shows,
each philharmonic, in its own unique way, became a tool of soft
power by showcasing Germanic culture through the mass media,
performances for troops and the general public, and fictional
representations in literature and film. Accompanying these
propaganda efforts was an increasing radicalization of the
orchestras, which ranged from the dismissal of Jewish members to
the programming of ideologically appropriate repertory all in the
name of racial and cultural purity. Richly documented and
refreshingly nuanced, The Political Orchestra is a bold exploration
of the ties between music and politics under fascism.
The mother tongue of the Roman Empire and the lingua franca of the
West for centuries after Rome's fall, Latin survives today
primarily in classrooms and texts. Yet this "dead language" is
unique in the influence it has exerted across centuries and
continents. Jurgen Leonhardt has written a full history of Latin
from antiquity to the present, uncovering how this once parochial
dialect developed into a vehicle of global communication that
remained vital long after its spoken form was supplanted by modern
languages. Latin originated in the Italian region of Latium, around
Rome, and became widespread as that city's imperial might grew. By
the first century BCE, Latin was already transitioning from a
living vernacular, as writers and grammarians like Cicero and Varro
fixed Latin's status as a "classical" language with a codified
rhetoric and rules. As Romance languages spun off from their Latin
origins following the empire's collapse-shedding cases and genders
along the way-the ancient language retained its currency as a world
language in ways that anticipated English and Spanish, but it
ceased to evolve. Leonhardt charts the vicissitudes of Latin in the
post-Roman world: its ninth-century revival under Charlemagne and
its flourishing among Renaissance writers who, more than their
medieval predecessors, were interested in questions of literary
style and expression. Ultimately, the rise of historicism in the
eighteenth century turned Latin from a practical tongue to an
academic subject. Nevertheless, of all the traces left by the
Romans, their language remains the most ubiquitous artifact of a
once peerless empire.
In this overview of the Baltic region from the Vikings to the
European Union, Michael North presents the sea and the lands that
surround it as a Nordic Mediterranean, a maritime zone of shared
influence, with its own distinct patterns of trade, cultural
exchange, and conflict. Covering over a thousand years in a part of
the world where seas have been much more connective than land, The
Baltic: A History transforms the way we think about a body of water
too often ignored in studies of the world's major waterways. The
Baltic lands have been populated since prehistory by diverse
linguistic groups: Balts, Slavs, Germans, and Finns. North traces
how the various tribes, peoples, and states of the region have
lived in peace and at war, as both global powers and pawns of
foreign regimes, and as exceptionally creative interpreters of
cultural movements from Christianity to Romanticism and Modernism.
He examines the golden age of the Vikings, the Hanseatic League,
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the Great, and looks at the
hard choices people had to make in the twentieth century as
fascists, communists, and liberal democrats played out their
ambitions on the region's doorstep. With its vigorous trade in
furs, fish, timber, amber, and grain and its strategic position as
a thruway for oil and natural gas, the Baltic has been-and
remains-one of the great economic and cultural crossroads of the
world.
An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures
off-kilter  “Probability is a chimera, its head is true,
its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to
eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the
tail.” —Vilém Flusser Two years after his
Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the philosopher Vilém Flusser engaged
in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two
“scenarios for the future” to be produced as computer-generated
media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam
in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the
universe. What If? is not just an “impossible journey” to which
Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a
distorting mirror held up to humanity. Flusser’s disarming
scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new
visions that range from the scientific to the fantastic to the
playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our present sense of
understanding the world, considering the exploitation of nature and
the dangers of global warming, overpopulation, and blind reliance
on the promises of scientific knowledge and invention. What If?
offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream
Anthropocene that have much to do with speculative fiction, with
Flusser’s concept of design as “crafty” or slippery, and with
art and the immense creative potential of failure versus
reasonable, “good” computing or calculability. As such, the
book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may yet
become and be.
The Vatican's dealings with the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich
have long been swathed in myth and speculation. After almost
seventy years, the crucial records for the years leading up to 1939
were finally opened to the public, revealing the bitter conflicts
that raged behind the walls of the Holy See. Anti-Semites and
philo-Semites, adroit diplomats and dogmatic fundamentalists,
influential bishops and powerful cardinals argued passionately over
the best way to contend with the intellectual and political
currents of the modern age: liberalism, communism, fascism, and
National Socialism. Hubert Wolf explains why a philo-Semitic
association was dissolved even as anti-Semitism was condemned, how
the Vatican concluded a concordat with the Third Reich in 1933, why
Hitler's Mein Kampf was never proscribed by the Church, and what
factors surrounded the Pope's silence on the persecution of the
Jews. In rich detail, Wolf presents astonishing findings from the
recently opened Vatican archives-discoveries that clarify the
relations between National Socialism and the Vatican. He
illuminates the thinking of the popes, cardinals, and bishops who
saw themselves in a historic struggle against evil. Never have the
inner workings of the Vatican-its most important decisions and
actions-been portrayed so fully and vividly.
Originally published in German in 2012, this comprehensive history
of Jewish life in postwar Germany provides a systematic account of
Jews and Judaism from the Holocaust to the early 21st century by
leading experts of modern German-Jewish history. Beginning in the
immediate postwar period with a large concentration of Eastern
European Holocaust survivors stranded in Germany, the book follows
Jews during the relative quiet period of the fifties and early
sixties during which the foundations of new Jewish life were laid.
Brenner's volume goes on to address the rise of anti-Israel
sentiments after the Six-Day War as well as the beginnings of a
critical confrontation with Germany's Nazi past in the late sixties
and early seventies, noting the relatively small numbers of Jews
living in Germany up to the 1990s. The contributors argue that
these Jews were a powerful symbolic presence in German society and
sent a meaningful signal to the rest of the world that Jewish life
was possible again in Germany after the Holocaust. This landmark
history presents a comprehensive account of reconstruction of a
multifaceted Jewish life in a country that carries the legacy of
being at the epicenter of the Holocaust.
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