Bücher der Reihe Making Sense of History

History has always been more than just the past. It involves a relationship between past and present, perceived, on the one hand, as a temporal chain of events and, on the other, symbolically as an interpretation that gives meaning to these events through varying cultural orientations, charging it with norms and values, hopes and fears.

First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl's memoir Man's Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author's philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust. This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl's life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the "e;third Viennese school"e; amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed. Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life.

Bohemia and Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic, was the first territory with a majority of non-German speakers occupied by Hitler's Third Reich on the eve of the World War II. Tens of thousands of Jewish inhabitants in the so called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia soon felt the tragic consequences of Nazi racial politics. Not all Czechs, however, remained passive bystanders during the genocide. After the destruction of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, Slovakia became a formally independent but fully subordinate satellite of Germany. Despite the fact it was not occupied until 1944, Slovakia paid Germany to deport its own Jewish citizens to extermination camps. About 270,000 out of the 360,000 Czech and Slovak casualties of World War II were victims of the Holocaust. Despite these statistics, the Holocaust vanished almost entirely from post-war Czechoslovak, and later Czech and Slovak, historical cultures. The communist dictatorship carried the main responsibility for this disappearance, yet the situation has not changed much since the fall of the communist regime. The main questions of this study are how and why the Holocaust was excluded from the Czech and Slovak history.

In design history, globalization is deeply intertwined with a long-held bias towards Western, industrialized nations. By reassessing the role of regional and national design histories and challenging the claim that nation states are obsolete in identity construction, Designing Worlds reflects on new national narratives from around the world.

This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation.

The cultural borders of Europe are today more visible than ever, creating uncertainty for liberal democratic traditions, and questions of legitimacy, political representation, and the legal bases for citizenship. This book provides a wide-ranging exploration of these lines of demarcation in a variety of European regions and historical eras.

Draws on three decades of applied research to tease out what has been learned from the field. Leading scholars from around the world reflect on their practice as historians, ethnographers, social scientists and demographers in order to explore the possibilities and limitations of research into historical consciousness.

The relationship between historical studies and psychoanalysis remains an open debate that is full of tension, in both a positive and negative sense. In particular the following question has not been answered satisfactorily: what distinguishes a psychoanalytical-oriented study of historical realities from a historical psychoanalysis?

The History and Function of Empathy in Historical Studies is the first comprehensive account of empathy's place in historical scholarship, history pedagogy, and the philosophy of history. It explains how empathy became central to teaching history in schools, and traces its roots in nineteenth-century German historicism.

A vast amount of literature-both scholarly and popular-now exists on the subject of historical memory, but there is remarkably little available that is written from an African perspective. This volume explores the inner dynamics of memory in all its variations, from its most destructive and divisive impact to its remarkable potential to heal...

In Europe, love has been given a prominent place in European self-representations from the Enlightenment onwards. The category of love, stemming from private and personal spheres, was given a public function and used to distinguish European civilization from others.

This volume explores the inner dynamics of memory in all its variations, from its most destructive and divisive impact to its remarkable potential to heal and reconcile. It addresses issues on both the conceptual and the pragmatic level and its theoretical observations and reflections are informed by first-hand experiences...

Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity...

After the breakdown of socialist and communist systems in the East, it had become fashionable to declare the so-called "end of utopia". This collection of essays enable the reader to reconstruct scholarly paradigms and strategies of utopian, complex and holistic thinking in modern cosmology, philosophy, sociology, and political sciences.

In Postwar Soldiers, Joerg Echternkamp analyzes three themes in the early history of West Germany: interpretations of the war during its conclusion and the occupation period; military veteran communities' self-perceptions; and the public rehabilitation of the image of the German soldier.

Over the past decade, the "e;German Model"e; of industrial organization has been the subject of vigorous debate among social scientists and historians, especially in comparison to the American one. Is a "e;Rhenish capitalism"e; still viable at the beginning of the 21st century and does it offer a road to the New Economy different from the one, in which the standards are set by the U.S.? The author, one of Germany's leading economic historians, analyzes the special features of the German path to the New Economy as it faces the American challenge. He paints a fascinating picture of Germany Inc. and looks at the durability of some of its structures and the mentalities that undergird it. He sees a "e;culture clash"e; and argues against an underestimation of the dynamics of the German industrial system. A provocative book for all interested in comparative economics and those who have been inclined to dismiss the German Model as outmoded and weak.

What is history - a question historians have been asking themselves time and again. Does "history" as an academic discipline, as it has evolved in the West over the centuries, represent a specific mode of historical thinking that can bedefined in contrast to other forms of historical consciousness?

Although not a professional historian, the author raises several issues pertinent to the state of history today. Qualifying the 'non-historian' as an 'able' interventionist in historical studies, the author explores the relationship between history and theory within the current epistemological configurations and refigurations. He asks how history transcends the obsessive 'linguistic' turn, which has been hegemonizing literary/discourse analysis, and focuses greater attention on historical experience and where history stands in relation to our understanding of ethics, religion and the current state of global politics that underlines the manipulation and abuse of history.

This volume argues that reflection on the historical process of (re)constructing the past is as important for understanding the Holocaust - and, by extension, any past event - as is archival research. It aims to go beyond the dominant paradigm of political history and describe the emergence of methods now being used...

This book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.

Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain.Helga Nowotny, who has a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna and a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University, New York, was Professor of Social Studies of Science at ETH Zurich since and Director of Collegium Helveticum. Currently she is Chair of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) of the European Commission and Director of the post-doctorate Branco Weiss Fellowship. She was Executive Director of the European Center in Vienna, which she founded, and for seven years Chairperson of the Standing Committee for the Social Sciences of the European Science Foundation.

A sustained and systematic study of the construction, erosion and reconstruction of national histories across a wide variety of states is highly topical and extremely relevant in the context of the accelerating processes of Europeanization and globalization.

By broadening the perspectives of utopian studies, these essays enable the reader to reconstruct scholarly paradigms and strategies of utopian, complex and holistic thinking in modern cosmology, philosophy, sociology, in literary, historical and political sciences, and to compare traditions and ways of Western utopian.

For many years, histories of the Holocaust focused on its perpetrators, & only recently have more scholars begun to consider in detail the experiences of victims & survivors, as well as the documents they left behind. This title provides an introduction and overview of Jewish narratives of the Holocaust.

In the last two decades our empirical knowledge of the Holocaust has been vastly expanded. Yet this empirical blossoming has not been accompanied by much theoretical reflection on the historiography. This volume argues that reflection on the historical process of (re)constructing the past is as important for understanding the Holocaust...

Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization.

The Weimar era in Germany is often characterized as a time of significant change. Such periods of rupture transform the way people envision the past, present, and future. This book traces the conceptions of time and history in the Germany of the early 20th century. By focusing on both the discourse and practices of the youth movement, the author shows how it reinterpreted and revived the past to overthrow the premises of modern historical thought. In so doing, this book provides insight into the social implications of the ideological de-historicization of the past.

For many years, histories of the Holocaust focused on its perpetrators, and only recently have more scholars begun to consider in detail the experiences of victims and survivors, as well as the documents they left behind.

In Evidence and Meaning, Rusen surveys the seismic changes that have shaped the historical profession over the last half-century, while offering a clear, economical account of his theory of history.