Der Mythos vom ‚anderen Deutschland‘

Dieser Beitrag verfolgt Curt Geyers Weg vom Neuen Vorwärts (Paris 1938/40) zu ‚Fight for Freedom‘ (London 1942/44). Der Politiker Geyer (1891-1967) hatte eine schillernde Karriere, die von seiner Mitgliedschaft in USPD, KPD und SPD in den 1920er sowie seiner Rolle als Vordenker und Chefideologe der SOPADE im Prager und Pariser Exil in den 1930er Jahren bis zur Mitarbeit an der von Vansittart beeinflussten rechtsradikalen Organisation ‚Fight for Freedom‘ in London in den frühen 1940er Jahren reichte. Bzgl. der Mitte 1939 hoch aktuellen Frage, ob es ein ‚anderes Deutschland‘ gäbe, machte Geyer in etwas über zwei Jahren eine entscheidende Kehrtwende vom Bejaher zum Verneiner und leistete damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zu der Frage, ob dieses „andere“ Deutschland lediglich ein Mythos war oder ob es effektiv existiert hat.Cette contribution se propose de retracer le parcours de Curt Geyer depuis sa collaboration au journal Neuer Vorwärts (Paris 1938/40) jusqu’à son ralliement à l’organisation “Fight for Freedom” (Londres 1942/44). Geyer eut une carrière politique sinueuse. Membre du USPD, du KPD et du SPD dans les années 1920, il fut, dans l’exil, un maître à penser du SOPADE à Prague et à Paris dans les années 1930 avant de rejoindre l’organisation vansittartiste d’extrême droite “Fight for Freedom” à Londres, au début des années 1940. Défenseur de la thèse de l’existence d’une “autre Allemagne”, question âprement débattue en France en 1939, Geyer, dans une volte-face décisive, se mua ensuite en contradicteur de cette même thèse en l’espace d’à peine plus de deux ans, enrichissant ainsi le débat sur la question de savoir si cette “autre” Allemagne n’était qu’un mythe ou si elle existait réellement.This contribution sketches Curt Geyer’s path from Neues Vorwärts (Paris 1938/40) to ‘Fight for Freedom’ (London 1942/44). The politician Geyer (1891-1967) had a checkered career, stretching from membership in USPD, KPD and SPD in the 1920s, as well as pioneer and chief ideologist of SOPADE in exile in Prague and Paris in the 1930s, to collaboration in the right-wing Vansittartist organisation ‘Fight for Freedom’ in London in the early 1940s. Concerning the highly topical question in mid-1939 whether an ‘other Germany’ existed, Geyer, in the course of just over two years, did a crucial volte‑face from affirmation to denial and thereby made an important contribution to the question of whether an “other” Germany was just a myth or actually existed

Mária Szucsich’s Socio-critical Collection of Fairy Tales Silavus (1924)

Vorliegender Beitrag liefert sowohl einen inhaltlichen Überblick als auch eine kritische Analyse von Mária Szucsichs Märchensammlung Silavus, 1924 im Berliner Malik-Verlag erschienen, verfasst in der Tradition von Hermynia Zur Mühlens Märchen der 1920er Jahre und in der Übertragung aus dem Ungarischen von Stefan Klein.This contribution gives an overview of the contents of Mária Szucsich’s collection of fairy tales, Silavus, published 1924 by Malik-Verlag in Berlin, written in the tradition of Herymnia Zur Mühlens fairy tales of the 1920s, and translated from Hungarian by Stefan Klein

The Effects of Tax Competition on Consumption Taxation, Corporate Investment, and Property Taxes

This dissertation investigates questions of the taxation of mobile versus immobile tax bases with a particular focus on (effective) corporate, consumption, and property tax rates. It consists of three self-contained chapters dealing with the effects of international tax competition on con-sumption taxation, the heterogeneous investment effects of effective corporate tax rates, and the spatial dimension of tax policy spillovers in German municipalities. Chapter 1 empirically investi-gates whether governments are substituting from corporate to consumption taxation due to tax competition using a novel self-collected data set of corporate and consumption tax regime infor-mation. I estimate the slope of the tax policy reaction function between corporate and consump-tion tax rates exploiting the cross-sectional interdependence of corporate tax rates for an instru-mental variable approach. Additionally, I analyze the rate-revenue relationship of both tax instru-ments to evaluate the overall revenue implications of corporate tax competition. I find that, on average, a one percentage point decrease in the corporate tax rate leads to a [0.35] percentage point increase in the consumption tax rate. The rate-revenue relationship of both corporate and consumption tax rates follows an inverted U-shape. Furthermore, governments can fully compen-sate for revenue losses from tax competition by substituting to consumption taxation. These re-sults indicate that the debate on corporate tax competition may overstate efficiency considera-tions and underestimate equity concerns. Chapter 2 develops a new approach to calculate coun-try-year-industry-specific forward-looking effective tax rates (FLETRs) based on a panel of 19 industries, 221 countries, and the years 2001 to 2020. Beside statutory tax rate and tax base in-formation, the FLETRs account for firms’ typical (i.e., industry specific) financing structures as well as asset compositions. We show that effective tax rates suffer from significant measurement error when the latter information is neglected, owing primarily to inappropriately assigned asset weights to statutory depreciation allowances. Our empirical analysis exploits the substantial var-iation in FLETRs over time to provide estimates of the tax semi-elasticity of corporate investment in tangible fixed assets. Based on [more than 24 million] firm-entity observations, our results sug-gest a semi-tax-elasticity of [-0.45], which is at the lower end of previous findings. We further show that different subgroups of firms respond very heterogeneously to tax incentives. For exam-ple, when focusing on firm-entities operating in the manufacturing sector, we find a substantially bigger semi-elasticity of [-1.29]. Chapter 3 studies tax policy interaction for both mobile and im-mobile tax bases using a large panel of German municipalities. We exploit a quasi-exogenous increase in local tax instruments from state debt reduction programs in Hesse and Northrhine-Westfalia to identify if governments engage in tax or yardstick competition. Additionally, we also analyze the spatial persistence of any spillovers. We find evidence that municipalities located in the same state but not directly affected by the debt reduction program show strong and significant tax policy responses both in corporate and property tax rates. Furthermore, the policy spillovers from property tax rates are highly localized indicating that municipalities engage in yardstick competition

Unraveling the Early Events of Amyloid-β Protein (Aβ) Aggregation: Techniques for the Determination of Aβ Aggregate Size

The aggregation of proteins into insoluble amyloid fibrils coincides with the onset of numerous diseases. An array of techniques is available to study the different stages of the amyloid aggregation process. Recently, emphasis has been placed upon the analysis of oligomeric amyloid species, which have been hypothesized to play a key role in disease progression. This paper reviews techniques utilized to study aggregation of the amyloid-β protein (Aβ) associated with Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, the review focuses on techniques that provide information about the size or quantity of oligomeric Aβ species formed during the early stages of aggregation, including native-PAGE, SDS-PAGE, Western blotting, capillary electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, light scattering, size exclusion chromatography, centrifugation, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and dot blotting

“Poetry, in a mysterious way, can simultaneously impart deepest impotence and ultimate power”. Rudolf Hagelstange‘s cycle of sonnets “Venezianisches Credo” (1945)

The origin of Rudolf Hagelstange’s (1912–1984) cycle of sonnets "Venezianisches Credo" was Venice, while he was temporarily stationed in northern Italy in 1944 as a soldier. Twenty-four sonnets were written in the lagoon city, four more in Breganze, the remainder in Verona, where a limited edition was published in spring 1945, after some of the sonnets had already been distributed in military circles over some months. This contribution attempts on the one hand to analyze Hagelstange’s choice of the sonnet–form – a classical type of lyric poetry, guaranteeing tradition and continuity –, claiming that at that time sonnets had become a fashionable form of oppositional poetry; on the other hand, the content of the three dozen sonnets will be analyzed, in which, over long stretches discordance prevails. For the author initially presents a damning indictment of the criminal activities of the NS-regime, until he eventually proclaims – with reference to Schiller – that the contemporary spiritual and moral crisis can yet be overcome by an ‚other Germany‘. In the final analysis, Hagelstange brilliantly succeeded – by means of an interaction of continuity and dissonance – to merge aesthetic and ethical aspects and thereby managed to create one of the most outstanding lyrical documents near the end of World War II