Joachim Whaley

Book Review: Kara L. Ritzheimer: ‘Trash’, Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany‘Trash’, Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany. By RitzheimerKara L.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. x + 318. £64.99 (hbk).

peak. Almost no one would probably name Nanga Parbat, the eighth-highest mountain in the range. Yet this is the German and Austrian ‘mountain of destiny’. Nanga Parbat was discovered in 1856 by the German explorer Adolph Schlagintweit as part of an expedition hoping to execute Alexander von Humboldt’s plan for a precise topographical survey of the world. The mountain entered the German imagination in 1910 when the Munich author, publisher and mountaineer Walter Schmidkunz acquired the German rights to Albert Frederick Mummery’s My Climbs in the Alps and the Caucasus, which contained enthusiastic descriptions of the apparently impregnable mountain which had claimed Mummery’s life in 1895. Schmidkunz worked out that there was in fact a way the mountain could be conquered but did not share his view with fellow-climbers until after the First World War. As German and Austrian mountaineers, having thoroughly conquered the Alps before 1914, turned their sights on the Andes, the Caucasus, the Pamir and the Himalaya, Kangchenjunga was the initial target of their ambitions. Yet from the early 1930s, after two failed expeditions to Kangchenjunga, the focus turned to Nanga Parbat, albeit without much success initially. Between 1932 and 1939 six expeditions failed, claiming the lives of 15 local porters and nine German and Austrian climbers. Nanga Parbat was in fact only conquered by another German expedition in 1953. The sheer persistence of German-Austrian endeavours in the 1930s made Nanga Parbat into ‘their’ mountain. Success in 1953 was celebrated as a post-war triumph, the re-entry of the Germans into the world of mountaineering. In 2003 German television and other media commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the ascent, and its long pre-history, as the mountaineering dimension of Germany’s complex twentieth-century history. Harald Höbusch’s absorbing book explores the ramifications of this story in three parts. The first two chapters consider the plans for the ascent of Nanga Parbat and the various expeditions between 1932 and 1953 in its changing national contexts: the growing popularity of mountaineering in the 1920s and the fascination with the Bergroman and the Heimatfilm; and National Socialist appropriation of Himalayan expeditions. The third and fourth chapters examine the printed records of the expeditions: the official expedition reports, German and Austrian newspaper and magazine coverage and the historical accounts of the post-1945 period. The final two chapters survey the filmic record, showing how the various expedition documentaries related to the Bergfilm and Heimatfilm genres. Höbusch’s study will naturally appeal to anyone interested in the history of mountaineering. It also offers an unusual perspective on some of the major themes of twentiethcentury German history.

Book Review: Rebecca Jinks: Representing Genocide: The Holocaust as Paradigm?Representing Genocide: The Holocaust as Paradigm? By JinksRebecca. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. Pp. viii + 269. £65.00 (hbk).

members and denounced them for their alleged role in Germany’s defeat. By the time Hindenburg appeared to give evidence in November 1919, all semblance of a balanced enquiry had been lost and he himself confirmed the myth: the German army could have avoided defeat if it had not been stabbed in the back. Since the enquiry had descended into chaos it was decided to commission four subcommittees to pursue specific questions. The military and internal causes for Germany’s defeat were investigated by the fourth sub-committee, which, after 104 mostly closed sessions, published an eight-volume report in November 1927. It was balanced, in that each political party had insisted on having its own interpretation of events included. By the time it appeared, however, it was too late to make much difference. As chapters devoted to two high-profile legal cases show, most people had made up their kinds already. In 1924, President Ebert pursued a defamation case against a Saxon anti-Semitic publisher who had accused him of treasonable behaviour during the January 1918 strike. In 1925, Paul Cossmann, the Jewish nationalist editor of two volumes of inflammatory essays on the Stab-in-the-Back myth, took action against the editor of the Munich social democratic newspaper who had accused him of falsifying the historical record. Ebert won his case in that the court concluded that his antagonist had intended to libel the president but, perversely, the judge also found that, from a legal point of view, Ebert had indeed been guilty of treason. Cossmann (who later died in Theresienstadt) also won, showing that the socialist narrative had little popular appeal. The trials generated more public interest that the publication of the fourth sub-committee’s report two years later. The debates occasioned by the economic and political crisis after 1929, however, showed just how deeply the myth had become embedded in the politics of the republic. Vascik and Sadler present a mass of fascinating printed and visual evidence. Their own text links the documents in an exemplary way and each chapter concludes with a series of ‘thought questions’ and a note on further reading. They also append an extensive bibliography of printed sources and of secondary works in English and German. The book would lend itself well to use in class discussions at school level and university seminars. It sheds light on a central issue in German politics after the First World War. It also has considerable contemporary relevance: the Stab-in-the-Back myth was essentially just fake news which its inventors used to destabilize and delegitimize the republic. Their success ultimately led to a disaster infinitely greater that the one they sought to blame on their opponents.

Book Review: Lisa Pine: Hitler’s ‘National Community’: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany, 2nd ednHitler’s ‘National Community’: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany, 2nd edn. By PineLisa. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Pp. xiv + 365. £19.99 (pbk).

Lisa Pine’s excellent new book is advertised as a second edition but it is much more than that. It is true that she published a book with the same title in 2007. The present work, however, is over 80 pages longer: a new section has been added, significant sections of the original text have been re-written and extended and the whole text has been up-dated throughout. Pine’s particular expertise on the family in Nazi Germany and on education, the subject of two highly regarded books published in 1997 and 2010 respectively, is well reflected in the present volume. It also incorporates the themes of the very stimulating contributions she edited in a 2016 volume published by Bloomsbury and entitled Life and Times in Nazi Germany. Following in the footsteps of Richard Grunberger’s Social History of the Third Reich (1971), Pine explores the experience of ordinary Germans in Nazi Germany. She excludes politics and economics, though these aspects of the history of Nazi Germany inform her analysis at every point. What preoccupies her is rather the question of to what extent and how the regime penetrated daily life and the impact of the Nazi experience on the life of individuals. She wants to explain how ordinary Germans responded to the regime and its myriad initiatives. More broadly, she seeks to explain just what the much invoked ‘national community’ really was and what it meant in practical terms. The book is divided into four parts. The first is devoted to ‘Creating the National Community’ with a survey of the rise of Nazism, reflections on consensus and conformity, coercion and terror, and surveys of education and the Nazi youth groups. The second part explores the interior of the ‘National Community’, focusing on men and masculinity, women and womanhood, the family, and on the churches and religion. The third section considers the fate of those who were excluded from the ‘National Community’: the Jews and the Gypsies, the ‘asocial’ and the disabled, sexual outsiders as well as dissenters and resisters. The final section explores the role of culture in the ‘National Community’, with chapters on radio and the press, cinema and theatre, art and architecture, music and literature. Overall Pine emphasizes the closeness of the aims and aspirations of Nazism to the ideals of many Germans. The regime did not succeed in every respect but, broadly speaking, it operated with the approval of most ordinary Germans. The Nazi ‘national community’ was sufficiently close to German society, Pine notes, for its consequences still to be felt by those German today who ‘still continue to experience a need to come to terms with the Nazi past’ (p. 287). Pine’s analysis is balanced and lucid throughout. One of the characteristics of her approach is her meticulous attention at every stage to the arguments of previous scholars. This makes her book ideal for students at every level and indeed for anyone involved in teaching. It is difficult to think of a better text to recommend on this subject. Libraries and individuals who own the first edition will simply have to buy the second. They will be richly rewarded with a superb survey of German social history under National Socialism. It is without doubt by far the best book of its kind for over 40 years.

Book Review: Monica Black and Eric Kurlander (eds): Revisiting the ‘Nazi Occult’: Histories, Realities, LegaciesRevisiting the ‘Nazi Occult’: Histories, Realities, Legacies. Edited by BlackMonicaKurlanderEric. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. viii + 297. £60.00.

the inner emigrants reached only a narrow, bourgeois readership (p. 178) – though Klapper’s study provides ample evidence to suggest that inner emigration fiction sold well in the Third Reich. Klapper chooses to conclude his book by recalling this problematic literary history: ‘The wedge driven between inner and outer literary opponents of the National Socialist regime constitutes one of the most aberrant developments of postwar German literary history, muddying the waters of the humane legacy that was bequeathed to the country after the war’ (p. 382). These are strong words at the end of a meticulous, measured study. But Klapper’s detailed efforts to historicize the reception history of the inner emigration, and to expand the imaginative scope within which twenty-first-century readers might re-engage with it, offer a blueprint for enriching new departures in this area.

Book Review: Manuel Bragança and Peter Tame (eds): The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016. Edited by BragançaManuelTamePeter. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016. Pp. xvi + 388. £75.00.

repetitiveness by varying the order in which it is used. Milne is ever conscious of the wider historical picture against which she projects her analysis. All the journals were known, perhaps even better known, for their visual content – drawings and cartoons. Milne provides numerous insightful commentaries and decodings of this material and there are 18 black-and-white illustrations in text and a gallery of 32 coloured plates (between pp. 120 and 121) culled from the four journals that are vital both to the fullness of our appreciation of the impact they made and our own enjoyment. War and Laughter is in every way an original and fresh contribution to the abundant literature on the First World War, fully justifying Milne’s assertion that ‘laughter is revealed as a means of managing crisis that is beyond individual control and would otherwise threaten to overwhelm. A joke is indeed an amazing thing’ (p. 218).

Book Review: Norman Domeier: The Eulenburg Affair: A Cultural History of Politics in the German EmpireThe Eulenburg Affair: A Cultural History of Politics in the German Empire. By DomeierNorman. Translated by SchneiderDeborah Lucas. Woodbridge: Camden House, 2015. Pp. x + 428. £60.00 (hbk).

of schooling ... turned ethnic contact zones into colonial friction zones’, which divided some communities but unified others (p. 254). As a result of all these activities, Manz suggests, the ground was laid for the Germanophobia that German communities worldwide experienced in 1914. In the 1930s the Auslandsdeutsche were transformed into Volksdeutsche, a new variation on the theme of metropolitan extension of empire to Germans abroad, founded on race rather than on language and culture. After 1945 they simply became Auswanderer (emigrants) once more, as they had been up to the 1850s. Stefan Manz’s study of the relationship between Imperial Germany and its diaspora presents a mass of fascinating information and sheds new light on every topic it broaches. It is a major achievement.

Book Review: Stefan Manz: Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914. By ManzStefan. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Pp. xvi + 360. £85.00 (hbk).

first, or possibly second, essay in this section is by Ritchie Robertson and is of a more general sort than the others. With his characteristic lucidity and wide range of relevant information, Robertson argues that there are substantial similarities between the philosophical positions of Nietzsche and the those of the Scottish Enlightenment. In the final, or possibly penultimate, essay in this section (the same confusion occurs at the transition between this section and the next, on ‘Germany and Europe’), Rüdiger Görner offers a brief contribution on Richard Friedenthal, an exiled German biographer and author once more celebrated than he is now. Görner characterizes and compares Friedenthal’s various literary accounts of London. Eda Sagarra’s essay is a detailed description of how the Franco-Prussian War was reported in Irish newspapers in 1870–73. She offers her findings as evidence for the commercialization of journalism and the growing power of propaganda. Barbara Burns writes about Bertha von Suttner’s didactic novel Die Waffen nieder! This is very welcome because, although Suttner’s huge bestseller is not a very good book, it is really significant in the history of German letters, and deserves to be better known. Suttner was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 on the strength of it. Patricia Howe is perhaps the truest to the volume’s otherwise rather misleading title, Fontane and Cultural Mediation, examining as she does his reception of Zola: strange to imagine Fontane reading Zola: apparently with a mixture of admiration, envy and revulsion. Finally, Carol Tully presents a case study, in the figure of Victor Aimé Huber, of the nineteenth-century men of letters who were active in mediating between European literary and national cultures. The editors provide an introduction in which they make the unexpected claim that Fontane was the nineteenth-century German author with the greatest international resonance (E. T. A. Hoffmann? That great mediator between cultures Heine?). A list of contributors would have been welcome.

Book Review: Bronson Long: No Easy Occupation: French Control of the German Saar, 1944–1957No Easy Occupation: French Control of the German Saar, 1944–1957. By LongBronson. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. xii + 256. £60.00 (hbk).

Child forced labourers and those removed from their families for racial reasons (blond children from occupied Poland, for example) posed cruel dilemmas: how did one repatriate a child that had been ‘germanized’ in the knowledge that repatriation would almost certainly mean ostracism and marginalization for a German-speaking child in Poland or the Soviet Union? The last two essays focus on the longer term. J. E. Smyth shows how the memories of the 1942 Lidice massacre among the Allies, the anti-fascist resistance groups and the American public shaped the way that Czech orphans were presented in Hollywood and European cinema. Roger Hillman examines the ways in which children’s experiences of the Second World War are treated in Cate Shortland’s film Lore (2012), an adaptation of Rachel Seiffert’s three-volume novel The Dark Room (2001), and W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001), as it was remembered and recounted, transmitted through the generations, both in Germany and, in Shortland’s Lore, in Australian diasporic exile. It is difficult not to be moved when reading many of these essays. The testimony of survivors which so many of them draw on is frequently heart-rending. The sense of trauma and loss, and of being lost, that they convey is haunting. Gigliotti and Tempian, senior lecturers respectively in the History and German Departments at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, are to be congratulated on producing this fine volume. It makes a distinctive contribution to the growing literature on children in the Holocaust and the Second World War. It also provides food for thought, often in an unsettling way, for anyone interested in the refugee crisis of our own times.

Book Review: Lisa Pine (ed.): Life and Times in Nazi GermanyLife and Times in Nazi Germany. Edited by PineLisa. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Pp. xvi + 307. £22.99.

(2010). Gillian Pye’s analysis of the post-German-unification literature of Angela Krauß provides the chronological link between Webber’s and Cosgrove’s chapters. Pye offers a new take on literary representations of subjective time in terms of Krauß’s treatment of ‘contemporary technologies that are altering concepts of time and agency’. These analyses together present a contrapuntal reading of time as a theme of modern cultural expression and as a fundamental aspect of human experience undergoing continuous and often traumatic changes from 1900 to the present day. Although there have been many critical analyses of time in recent years, most concentrate heavily on works from the temporality canon. Fuchs and Long’s volume provides something new: the sheer range and depth afforded by the variety of contributions gives a unique insight into the age as well as its cultural responses. The contributors take often surprising focuses and compellingly demonstrate how these fit into a broader concern with slowness and acceleration in times of fluctuating change.

Book Review: Ben Novak: Hitler and Abductive Logic: The Strategy of a TyrantHitler and Abductive Logic: The Strategy of a Tyrant. By NovakBen. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014. Pp. viii + 248. £57.95 (hbk).

versatility, this ‘generic as well as thematic inconsistency’ (p. 292), that has caused Holland’s work to be marginalized, if not dismissed outright, both inside and outside Poland because of the threat it poses to the apparently secure bourgeois ideological system. Consequently, she concludes: ‘[Holland’s] films are not easily domesticated within dominant critical discourses on cinema. They are as homeless as their nomadic author’ (p. 307). So while Parts I and II of this ‘interesting and lively volume’ are more for the specialist who is equipped with a considerable amount of knowledge about Polish history and its filmic culture, Part III invites the interested non-specialist to venture further down what is clearly a fascinating and challenging road.