Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

Poison envy

Tuesday 22 November, 2011

Read the first English excerpt from historian Goetz Aly's new book "Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Equality, Envy and Racial Hatred 1800 - 1933". In response to this question that has been hanging in the air since the end of WWII, Goetz Aly points to the lack of education and fear of progress in so many German Christians at the turn of the century - and to the contrasting readiness of the Jewish population to embrace the new opportunities and education as the ticket to social mobility. Shamed by their shortcomings, the Germans soon turned to racial theory to conceal their envy and resentment.
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Mass murderers of conviction

Monday 18 April, 2011

TeaserPicThe trial of SS officer Adolf Eichmann began fifty years ago. Research continues to show that many of the perpetrators were not just bureaucrats and cretins but educated men who acted out of intellectual conviction - Eichmann, contrary to what Hannah Arendt said, included. An interview with Holocaust historian Ulrich Herbert by Stefan Reinecke and Christian Semler. (Photo: Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Jerusalem)
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A very different sort of banker

Monday 4 October, 2010

An exhibition in the Amsterdam Verzetsmuseum celebrates Wally van Hall, the banker who used his financial connections to fund the Dutch Resistance movement during WWII. By Dragan Klaic
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Musicology and mass execution

Wednesday 6 January, 2010

Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht was one of Germany's most influential musicologists. His magnum opus "Music in the Occident" sits on the shelves of many a music lover. Ten years after his death, historian Boris von Haken has now revealed that Eggebrecht was involved in mass shootings of Jews during the Second World War.
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Beyond the war hero

Tuesday 17 February, 2009

TeaserPicBernard-Henri Levy looks at some of the problems posed by the film "Valkyrie" which are too complex and delicate to be resolved within Hollywood logic. First on the list: the Scientology question.
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Unmasking the July 20 plot

Friday 13 February, 2009

To deny Stauffenberg and the other conspirators any moral and cultural relevance is blinkered and consitutes intellectual bigotry. Even if their ideas seem politically anachronistic today, these men showed the sort of noblesse and strength of character of which today’s politicians and other bureaucratic elites can only dream. Karl Heinz Bohrer responds to the thesis of British historian Richard J. Evans.
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Why did Stauffenberg plant the bomb?

Tuesday 10 February, 2009

TeaserPicWas it because Hitler was losing the war? Was it to put an end to the mass murder of the Jews. Or was it to save Germany's honour? Whatever his motives, he was no role model for future generations, says British historian Richard Evans. (Photo: Deutsches Historisches Museum)
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Evil and the upright citizen

Monday 4 February, 2008

A large-scale and long-overdue project has begun. German historians are documenting the persecution and extermination of the Jews in 16 volumes of primary source texts where metal merchants and budgie lovers all have their say - with no recourse to hindsight. By Eckhard Fuhr
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Waking a Polish demon

Monday 21 January, 2008

"Fear" is the punchy title of book about Polish anti-Semitism whose recent publication in Poland has sparked an emotional debate. Very few people have come to the defence of its author, Jan Tomasz Gross, who has taken on the difficult task of making uncomfortable facts known to a wider audience and removing blind spots in Polish history. By Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz
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Good comrades

Monday 29 October, 2007

Last week the 1945 Rechnitz massacre hit the headlines after British journalist David Litchfield maintained that Countess Margit von Batthyany, partial heir to the Thyssen industrial family, had taken part in the atrocity. But such speculations belong to the boulevard press. The real issue is the scandalous role of the German postwar criminal justice system in letting the perpetrators escape Germany unharmed. By Stefan Klemp
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The distance of victims

Thursday August 9, 2007

Raul Hilberg, the father of Holocaust research, died on August 5th. The sobriety of tone and relentness precision with which he exposed the administrative machine behind what he termed "The Destruction of the European Jews" contributed to the book's failure to receive recognition for decades. His portrayal of facelessness spells out a chilling lesson for the future. By Gustav Seibt
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Historicising the historians

Monday 8 January, 2006

Historian Norbert Frei invited specialists of the National Socialist era to Jena for a kind of family reunion. At debate was the history of the historians of National Socialism and the question of when, and if, the notion of objectivity begins to apply. By Stefan Reinecke
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The Years of Extermination

Monday 23 October, 2006

Some people will think: "Not another book on the Holocaust!" But historian Saul Friedländer depicts the "Years of Extermination" with tremendous power and drama. His narrative style is much like that of a film director, elegantly combining individual stories with world events. By Dan Diner
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The logic of horror

Monday 12 June, 2006

20 years after the "Historikerstreit" there is a new lesson to learn in contemporary history: the repugnant aspects of the twentieth century can not be reduced to the major totalitarian dictatorships and they can not be cleanly distinguished from all that we now view as progress and success. By Götz Aly
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A German farewell

Monday 12 December, 2005

The debate over a memorial for the expelled persons from World War Two continues to rage in Berlin. Meanwhile, an exhibition in Bonn takes a refreshingly balanced look at this difficult chapter in German history. By Jörg Lau
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