Zwischen „Erinnerungen“ und „dem Vergessen“ Ernest Renan Reloaded.: Miroslav Hroch zum 75. Geburtstag

The founding father of comparative research on nationalism, Ernest Renan, has recently been re-discovered by a culturalist mainstream dealing with identity and memory. And indeed can his famous Sorbonne lecture of 1882 “What is a nation?“ be read as an answer to the question of “What is memory?”. The article exemplifies Renan’s influence as a theoretician of ‘memories’ (souvenirs) and ‘oblivion’ (l’oubli) by three recent texts. These are the revised and extended edition of 1991 of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, an essay by Jakob Tanner on Renan in the context of on ‘nation’, ‘communication’ and ‘memory’, published in 2001, as well as Aleida Assmann’s book of 2006 on cultures of remembrance and politics of history. As in the case of the ‘nation’ also concerning ‘memory’ Renan turns out to be an original though not systematic thinker well ahead of his time

Ethnonationale Homogenisierungspolitik zwischen Vertreibung und Zwangsassimilierung.: Schweden und Bulgarien als europäische Prototypen

In their inherent strive for ethnic purification, nation-state actors have two means at their disposal: On the one hand the expulsion of citizens not belonging to the titular nation and on the other assimilation either by incentive or, more frequently, by force. Also territorial losses can contribute to ethnic homogenization—a side effect not intended, of course, by nation-state actors. The modern history of the Principality (later Kingdom, People’s Republic and Republic) of Bulgaria, founded in 1878 is shaped by all three phenomena: expulsion, forced assimilation of non-Bulgarian(speaker)s and territorial changes. 19th and 20th century Sweden on the other hand did not turn to expulsions, since the losses of Finland and Norway homogenized the population considerably. Still, until the 1970s the Swedish state pursued a policy to assimilate minor ethnic and social groups applying even forced sterilization

Macedonian Historiography on the Holocaust in Macedonia under Bulgarian Occupation

The article shows how the industrial annihilation of the Jews of Macedonia is reflected in Macedonian historiography

Makedonien als Lebensthema:: Henry Noël Brailsford

The British journalist and Labour politician Henry Noël Brailsford was probably the most knowledgeable member of the Carnegie Commission to the Balkans of 1913. Between 1897 and 1904, he had spent several months in Greece as well as in Ottoman Macedonia, and in 1906 he published his widely read book Macedonia. Its Races and Their Future. Accordingly, a substantial part of the commission’s report of 1914 was written by him. In Serbia and Greece, he was accused of pro-Bulgarian leanings, and indeed in World War I he opted for an incorporation of the Macedonian region into the Kingdom of Bulgaria. During World War II, however, Brailsford developed sympathies for Tito and supported his post-war project of founding a new Macedonian nation.&nbsp

Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas

1. Wozu Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas? 2. Was sind Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropa? 3. Ostmitteleuropa – le mot et la chose 4. Kulturstudien Ost(mittel)europas in Forschung und Lehre 5. Berufsfelder für Absolventen des Faches Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas 6. Zitierte Literatu

Vorwort

Since the so-called “spatial turn”, historians have been intensively dealing with concepts of space and macro-regions. While Eastern Europe has received considerable attention, fewer studies have examined Western Europe and its heterogeneities during the Cold War era, especially beyond the examples of Great Britain, France, or Germany. The current issue analyses the internal differences in Western Europe from the 1940s until the end of the 1970s. It explores in particular the contrast between the geopolitical discourse of a homogeneous “Western bloc” and competing concepts that stressed the internal differences between the countries and regions considered to belong to the geopolitical “West”, such as the idea of industrialized “Northern” and agrarian “Southern” countries and regions. By focusing on the role of experts in national and transnational spheres, their discourses, as well as approaches to economic, political, and cultural differences, it demonstrates, via implicit and explicit concepts of a “North” and a “South”, how the idea of the “West” was negotiated and discussed