̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Germany

Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Dr Martin Ruehl

zs332 — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 12:04:12 +0000

Dr Martin Reuhl is a Senior Lecturer in German Intellectual History in the Faculty of History and a ̽��ֱ�� Associate Professor in German History and Thought in the Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Exposing a Nazi: ̽��ֱ��exhibition destroying a myth

ta385 — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000

In 1941, the Nazis banned Emil Nolde from painting, for life. For the past 50 years, many Germans have viewed him as the persecuted artist but now a major exhibition in Berlin, co-curated by a Cambridge historian, has shattered this myth and sent shock waves through the country.

How Churchill Waged War

sjr81 — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 09:24:05 +0000

Read our full Shorthand story here.

A newly-published book by Churchill Archives Centre Director Allen Packwood illuminates the agonising decisions faced by the Prime Minister during some of the darkest and most uncertain moments of the Second World War.

Imperial War Museum

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How 9,000 lists written over 300 years are helping to test theories of economic growth

lw355 — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 10:59:23 +0000

In 1752, Juliana Schweickherdt, a 50-year-old spinster living in the small Black Forest community of Wildberg, was reprimanded by the local weavers’ guild for “weaving cloth and combing wool, counter to the guild ordinance”.

When Juliana continued taking jobs reserved for male guild members she was summoned before the guild court and fined the equivalent of one third of a maidservant’s annual wages. ̽��ֱ��entire affair was then recorded neatly in a ledger.

It was a small act of defiance by today’s standards, but it reflects a time when laws in Germany, and elsewhere, regulated people’s access to labour markets. ̽��ֱ��dominance of guilds not only prevented people from using their skills, as in Juliana’s case, but also held back even the simplest of industrial innovations.

What makes this detail of Juliana’s life so interesting is that it is one among a vast number of observations in a huge database on the lives of southwest German villagers between 1600 and 1900. Built by a team led by Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's Faculty of Economics, the database includes court records, guild ledgers, parish registers, village censuses, tax lists and – the most recent addition – 9,000 handwritten inventories listing over a million personal possessions belonging to ordinary women and men across three centuries.

Ogilvie, who discovered the inventories in the archives of two German communities 30 years ago, believes they may hold the answer to a conundrum that has long puzzled economists: the lack of evidence for a causal link between education and a country’s growth and development.

“It might sound as if this is a no-brainer,” explains Ogilvie. “Education helps us to work more productively, invent better technology, earn more, have fewer children and invest more in them – surely it must be critical for economic growth? But, if you look back through history, there’s no evidence that having a high literacy rate made a country industrialise earlier.”

She explains that between 1600 and 1900, England had only mediocre literacy rates by European standards, yet its economy grew fast and it was the first country to industrialise. Germany and Scandinavia had excellent literacy rates, but their economies grew slowly and they industrialised late.

“Modern cross-country analyses have also struggled to find evidence that education causes economic growth, even though there is plenty of evidence that growth increases education,” she adds.

̽��ֱ��inventories Ogilvie is analysing listed the belongings of women and men at marriage, remarriage and death. From badger skins to Bibles, dung barrows to dried apple slices, sewing machines to scarlet bodices – the villagers’ entire worldly goods were listed. Inventories of agricultural equipment and craft tools revealed economic activities; ownership of books and education-related objects like pens and slates suggested how people learned.

In addition, tax lists recorded the value of farms, workshops, assets and debts; signatures and people’s estimates of their age indicated literacy and numeracy levels; and court records revealed obstacles that stifled industry, like Juliana and her wool-combing.

“Previous studies usually had just one proxy for linking education with economic growth – the presence of schools and printing presses, perhaps, or school enrolment, or the ability to sign names.
This database gives us multiple indicators for the same individuals,” she explains. “I began to realise that, for the first time ever, it was possible to link literacy, numeracy, wealth, industriousness, innovative behaviour and participation in the cash economy and credit markets – for individual women and men, rich and poor, over the very long term.”

Since 2009, Ogilvie and her team have been building the vast database of material possessions on top of their full demographic reconstruction of the people who lived in these two communities. “We can follow the same people – and their descendants – across 300 years of educational and economic change,” she says.

Individual lives have unfolded before their eyes. Stories like that of the man who wanted to grow a new crop – turnips – but was forbidden by the village council because it meant driving his cart to the fields at a different time, threatening others’ crops in the communal rotation system.

Or the young weaver’s wife Magdalena Schöttlin fined 11 days’ wages for wearing an “excessively large neckerchief ... above her station”. Or the 24-year-olds Ana Regina and Magdalena Riethmüllerin who were chastised in 1707 for reading books instead of listening to the pastor’s sermon. “This tells us that they were continuing to develop their reading skills at least a decade after leaving school,” explains Ogilvie.

It would be easy to focus on these stories – the aspirations and tragedies, the societal norms and individual rebellions, the possessions precious and prosaic – but, says Ogilvie, now that the data-gathering phase of the project is complete, “it’s time to ask the big questions”.

One way to look at whether education causes economic growth is to “hold wealth constant” and follow the lives of people of a certain level, rich or poor, she explains. “Do we find education positively linked to the cultivation of new crops, or to the adoption of industrial innovations like knitting frames or sewing machines? Or to the acquisition of ‘contemporary’ goods such as cottons or coffee cups? Or to female labour force participation or involvement in the credit market?”

̽��ֱ��team will also ask whether more highly educated women had fewer children – enabling them to invest more in those they had – as well as what aspect of education helped people engage more with productive and innovative activities. Was it, for instance, literacy, numeracy, book ownership, years of schooling? Was there a threshold level – a tipping point – that needed to be reached to affect economic performance?

Ogilvie hopes to start finding answers to these questions over the next two years. One thing is already clear, she says: the relationship between education and economic growth is far from straightforward.

“German-speaking central Europe is an excellent laboratory for testing theories of economic growth,” she explains. “We know that literacy rates and book ownership were high and yet the region remained poor. We also know that local guilds and merchant associations were powerful and resisted changes that threatened their monopolies. Entrenched village oligarchies opposed disruptive innovations and blocked labour migration.

“Early findings suggest that the potential benefits of education for the economy can be held back by other barriers, and this has implications for today,” she says. “Huge amounts are spent improving education in developing countries but this spending can fail to deliver economic growth if restrictions block people – especially women and the poor – from using their education in economically productive ways. If economic institutions are poorly set up, for instance, education can’t lead to growth.”

Ogilvie also hopes to dig deeper into which aspects of education matter. “We feel intuitively that the answer to the famous question posed by Tolstoy – ‘Can there be two opinions on the advantage of education?’ – is the one that Tolstoy gives: ‘If it’s a good thing for you, it’s a good thing for everyone’.

“But while some types of schooling just benefit the providers or the authorities, other types make kids happier, increase their productivity, maximise impact on people’s wellbeing and benefit the wider society.”

Ogilvie believes the data will contain answers, and says: “I look at what we’ve amassed and I realise that I’m going to be working on these inventories for the rest of my life… I can think of much worse fates.”

Research funded by the British Academy, the Wolfson Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust.

Inset image: read more about our research on the topic of work in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

̽��ֱ��handwritten inventories had lain largely untouched for centuries. Sand used to dry the ink still lay between the pages. Written neatly inside were thousands of lists that might hold the key to an enduring puzzle in economics – does education fuel economic growth?

Education helps us to work more productively, invent better technology, earn more, have fewer children and invest more in them – surely it must be critical for economic growth? But, if you look back through history, there’s no evidence that having a high literacy rate made a country industrialise earlier

Original and Reproduction: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart. HStAS A573 Bü. 4923

Death inventory for Michael Planckh of Wildberg, 30 Oct. 1676

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Cambridge and LMU announce plans for strategic partnership

sjr81 — Tue, 29 May 2018 12:21:47 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) put pen to paper on a memorandum of understanding that will see the two institutions forge ever-closer links in education and research across a broad range of disciplines in the Sciences, Humanities and Medicine.

Senior leaders from Cambridge and LMU – which boast nearly 150 Nobel Laureates between them – came together over two days in Cambridge for meetings led by both the President of LMU, Professor Bernd Huber, and Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope.

At the conclusion of the visit, officials from Cambridge and LMU signed the memorandum of understanding, which indicates the desire to develop a joint programme of strategic importance to both institutions. A full programme will be formulated by the end of the year, with a formal launch expected to take place in early 2019.

It is intended that the partnership will include joint research activities, the exchange of academic staff, postdoctoral and PhD candidates, as well as masters and undergraduate students, joint teaching initiatives, and training for the next generation of scholars. ̽��ֱ��partnership will be cross-disciplinary, covering broad areas in the Humanities and Cultural Studies, Law, Economics and Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, as well as Medicine, and will develop over the course of an initial five-year funding period.

Professor Chris Young, Head Elect of the School of Arts and Humanities, and Cambridge’s academic lead for the strategic partnership, said: “ ̽��ֱ��LMU is Germany's leading university in Germany's leading city.

“Its outstanding scholarship and rich network of associated institutes and industrial partnerships make it the perfect bridge to Bavaria, Germany and Europe. There are already myriad collaborations between colleagues at both universities, and this exciting new partnership will intensify and augment these for years to come.”

Professor Thomas Ackermann, Dean of the Faculty of Law and LMU’s Director for the strategic partnership, said: “ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is one of the world’s leading institutions in education, learning, and research. ̽��ֱ��strategic partnership between our universities will pave the way towards a new level of cooperation. Together with my colleague, Chris Young, we will explore an interesting array of activities to ensure the program will be a great success for both universities.”

Cambridge Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, said: “No single institution can provide, on its own, the answers to the great challenges of these turbulent times. Collaboration and openness to the world are essential to achieving our academic and civic missions. Our partnership with LMU, one of Europe’s finest universities, creates exciting opportunities to work together to address tough issues and provide our students with a richer education.”

“ ̽��ֱ��strategic partnership with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, one of the leading universities in Europe and the world, will bring an exciting stimulus to research and learning at LMU,” said LMU President Professor Bernd Huber. “Our new partnership ensures that collaboration and exchange which are vital for academic innovation can continue to be pursued regardless of Brexit.”

Two of Europe’s leading research universities have announced the first step towards plans for a unique ‘strategic partnership’ – underlining the vital and ongoing relationship between British universities and their peer institutions across the EU in a post-Brexit landscape.

Collaboration and openness to the world are essential to achieving our academic and civic missions.

Stephen Toope

Nick Saffell/ ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

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Exhibition highlights the untold story of Nazi victims in the Channel Islands

sjr81 — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:18:26 +0000

On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands, opens today at the Wiener Library for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide, London, and seeks to highlight the stories often omitted from the British narrative of ‘standing alone’ against Nazism and celebrations of the British victory over the Germans.

̽��ֱ��exhibition draws upon the Library’s wealth of archival material, recently-released files from the National Archives, personal items belonging to the victims themselves and current research from Dr Carr.

“For anyone who wants to come and learn about the last untold story of the German occupation of the Channel Islands, this is the exhibition to visit,” said Carr, a senior lecturer in archaeology at St Catherine’s College and the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE).

“ ̽��ֱ��Islands were the only part of British territory to be occupied and the victims of Nazism are almost entirely overlooked by those who prefer (incorrectly) to see the islands as a hotbed of collaboration. There are so many heart-breaking stories. We think of the Holocaust or Nazi persecution as something that happened only on the continent – but it happened on British soil. British citizens experienced the most horrific concentration camps, and Jews were deported from British territory to Auschwitz.”

From the experiences of a young Jewish woman living quietly on a farm in Guernsey and later deported to Auschwitz and murdered, to those of a Spanish forced labourer in Alderney, and the story of a man from Guernsey whose death in a German prison camp remained unknown to his family for over 70 years, the exhibition highlights the lives of the persecuted, and the post-war struggle to obtain recognition of their suffering.

Other exhibits going on display in London include a Christmas card made by a little girl and given to Frank Tuck from Guernsey as he suffered in Neuoffingen hard labour camp and a key of a prison cell from the notorious Cherche-Midi prison in Paris, belonging to Henry Marquand, deported for his role in sheltering two British commandos to Guernsey.

“ ̽��ֱ��search for these unknown stories continues,” added Carr. “ ̽��ֱ��exhibition coincides with the launching of a new website https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/ which is dedicated to finding and reconstructing the full journey of all deported Channel Islanders through various Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Theirs is the last untold story of the German occupation of the Channel Islands.”

Frank Falla, the Guernseyman after whom the archive is named, was a former prisoner and survivor of Frankfurt am Main-Preungesheim and Naumburg (Saale) prisons. In the mid-1960s, Frank took it upon himself to help his fellow former political prisoners in the Channel Islands get compensation for their suffering in Nazi prisons and camps.

In 2010, Frank’s daughter gave Gilly her father’s extensive archives – the most important resistance archives to ever come out of the Channel Islands – and the project was born. Falla’s briefcase, used to collect the testimony of those persecuted by the Nazis is also on display in London from today.

“I’ve been writing the background stories for the website of islanders deported to Nazi prison, concentration and labour camps,” added Carr. “So far I’ve written 75 out of 200 plus. Every story is a labour of love. I see each as a form of ‘rescue’. While I can never go back and rescue any of these people from their camps and prisons, I can rescue their story and experiences for their families and for the Channel Islands.”

Carr says the experience of researching these stories brings about a strangely bonding experience with her subject matter as she becomes a co-witness to the horrors they faced – and responsible for making their stories more widely known.

“Each person whose story I trace becomes a kind of ‘friend’ in a strange way. You get to know them so well and I have been lucky enough to meet many families of those deported. I feel I can be a link between the living and the dead and tell the living what the dead were never able to.

“I’m interested in hearing from anyone in the Channel Islands or further afield who had a family member sent to a Nazi prison or concentration camp from the Channel Islands to help supplement the journeys we have reconstructed from archival materials. Please contact me via the website with photos, documents and stories. I'd love to hear from you.”

On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands until 9 February 2018, has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

̽��ֱ��untold stories of slave labourers, political prisoners and Jews who were persecuted during the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War will be revealed from today at a new exhibition co-curated by Cambridge’s Dr Gilly Carr.

Each person whose story I trace becomes a kind of ‘friend’ in a strange way. You get to know them so well.

GIlly Carr

Marianne Grunfeld was born in Poland to a German-Jewish family before taking a farm job in Guernsey in 1939. She was deported in 1942 and was murdered in Auschwitz

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Boy, girl... or intersex? Law and gender

amb206 — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:15:13 +0000

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the birth of a child must, by law, be registered within 42 days of the baby being born. To register the birth, the parents (or parent) must provide various pieces of information including the sex of the baby. But what happens if the child has been born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t match the typical definitions of female or male?

Since 2013, it has been possible for children born in Germany to be legally recorded on their birth certificate (and later in life) as ‘indeterminate’. While this remains controversial, especially among intersex groups who see it adding to stigmatisation, it creates a legal gender status other than male or female.

Worldwide, a very small percentage of babies are born intersex – an umbrella term that covers a range of genetic variations that may be apparent at birth or emerge later in an individual’s development. But, argues lawyer Dr Jens Scherpe, their relatively low number doesn’t make these individuals any less important than those judged by society as ‘normal’ in terms of their physiology.

Scherpe carries out research within one of the most controversial and sensitive areas of family law – jurisprudence and gender. His introduction to the topic came when he was working at the Max Planck Institute in his native Germany and was asked to carry out research into nationality and change of legal gender for a case heard by the Constitutional Court. He began talking to transgender people and learning about their experiences.

“Once you meet people directly affected by laws which discriminate against them, you begin to feel differently and I’ve become a passionate advocate for change in the law in this area. I began to question the way in which we seek to categorise people and apply labels. What right does the state have to classify people as male or female in official documents such as birth certificates and passports – and do we actually need gender categories?”

After completing a comparative project on the legal status of transgender people, Scherpe focused attention on the law as it relates to intersex people, a group whose voices are beginning to be heard more forcefully. Because intersex people are a minority and frequently face discrimination, they are often bracketed together with other groups as LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex). Each of these groups, however, is differently affected by the law as it applies to sex and gender.

With funding from the DAAD- ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies (see panel), Scherpe organised a workshop in 2016 on ‘ ̽��ֱ��Legal Status of Intersex Persons’ as a forum to discuss some of the most pressing issues. It brought together participants from ten jurisdictions, including Germany which, as part of a wide-reaching human rights agenda, is making growing provision in the law for people who do not wish to be identified by the binary categories of male or female.

Germany has not been alone in making changes to the ways in which gender is recorded. Changes to the law have been mooted in several countries, including India and Nepal. In 2015, Malta took a lead in passing legislation allowing people to determine their own gender – and for parents, in certain cases, to postpone the marking of gender on a baby’s birth certificate until the child’s gender identity is confirmed.

While welcoming these changes, Scherpe says there is much more to be done to ensure that intersex individuals have the same rights, and are accorded the same respect, as the majority of the population.

One of the themes to emerge from the workshop is a growing concern that cosmetic (rather than medically necessary) surgery is carried out almost routinely. Intersex pressure groups argue that the medicalisation of intersex leads to violations of human rights and that corrective surgery can have devastating consequences.

“Most people strongly condemn the practice of female genital mutilation,” says Scherpe. “But children born with genitalia that don’t match what society regards to be male or female are routinely ‘corrected’ by invasive surgery, agreed by parents who fear the stigma attached to having a different child and who believe that their child will be seriously disadvantaged. Would we operate on a child who had red hair because we’d prefer them to have brown or fair hair – or change a child’s eye colour from brown to blue?”

At the core of this debate is the view, still held by many medical professionals, that intersex is a ‘disorder’ rather than a ‘difference’. Much of the argument surrounding intersex, and the issues it raises in a gendered world, centres on the use of language and how we choose to define ourselves. There is, for example, widespread debate about the definitions of the terms sex and gender in the highly competitive environment of world athletics.

“Because they’re so intertwined with sense of self, and can appear so threatening to our boy/girl view of the world, these questions are understandably super-sensitive. Even the terminology used will be perceived as discriminatory by some. And you can be certain of abuse from those who disagree with you for even investigating the issues concerned. But neither of those things should deter us from seeking to improve the law,” says Scherpe.

Not being part of the communities he writes about may be seen to add credibility to his work; he has no self-interest in pursuing changes in the law relating to any of the groups he works with. On the other hand, his lack of personal experience of the extra challenges faced by minority communities means that he needs to listen to a great many people to find out how their lives intersect with the law.

He adds: “What matters to me is that as a society we have a duty to ensure that all our members are provided with a legal framework, free from discrimination and stigmatisation, within which they can live happy and healthy lives.”

Boy or girl? This is one of the first questions all new parents are asked. In a small percentage of cases, the answer isn’t straightforward: the child is intersex. In a highly gendered society, how does the law apply to people whose physiology doesn’t fit the binary categories of male and female?

What right does the state have to classify people as male or female in official documents such as birth certificates and passports – and do we actually need gender categories?

Jens Scherpe

Jack Wright

Girl, boy

Studying Germany

Jens Scherpe’s work is one of over 30 projects that were funded last year through a research Hub in Cambridge which focuses on Germany.

Historian Dr Hanna Weibe and theologian Dr Ruth Jackson are fascinated by how politics and religion worked together in Germany after the political upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars; Dr Simon Stoddart is interested in urbanism in Iron Age Germany; Dr David Trippett in how Wagner arrived at his theory of melody as a means of communication; and Dr Ksenia Gerasimova in why Germany chooses organic agriculture.

These and over 30 other projects have been supported through the €1m DAAD- ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies, with funds from the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic. “This money was given in recognition of the fact that Cambridge arguably now has the largest number of scholars working on Germany and German culture in the world outside Germany itself,” says Professor Chris Young, who co-leads the Hub with Professor Chris Clark.

“Why study Germany?” asks Young. “Germany is widely regarded as a model economy that appears to be working when others are struggling. Understanding the country’s economic and political importance, especially given the implications and impact of Brexit, is a golden opportunity for us and for Europe. How, for instance, has Germany coped with immigration or austerity? What facets of its history, culture, politics and theology have influenced the way that Germany is today?”

Through the breadth and depth of the research it supports, the Hub hopes to create a German-focused interface between the ̽��ֱ�� and governmental bodies, both in the UK and in Germany, and be a nexus for the Anglo-German relationship.

“Germany has shaped the world in which we live and influenced the ways in which we think about, experience and seek to change it,” adds Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum, and patron of the Hub. “ ̽��ֱ��gains in knowledge that [the Hub] will bring can only enrich and strengthen the ties that bind Germany and the world.”

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World War II bombing associated with resilience, not ‘German Angst’

cjb250 — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 16:00:25 +0000

Germans have been stereotyped as being industrious and punctual, but also as being more likely to be anxious and worried, a phenomenon described as ‘German Angst’. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, widely regarded as one of Germany’s leading post-war intellectuals, once claimed, “ ̽��ֱ��Germans have a tendency to be afraid. This has been part of their consciousness since the end of the Nazi period and the war”.

This personality type is characterised by high levels of neurotic personality traits (more likely to be in a negative emotional state), as opposed to traits of openness, agreeableness, extraversion, or conscientiousness, which together make up the ‘Big Five’ personality traits. It has been suggested that the heavy bombing of German cities in World War II, and the resulting destruction and trauma experienced by residents, may have been a contributory factor in this proposed higher incidence of neurotic traits.

In a study published this week in European Journal of Personality, an international team of researchers from the UK, Germany, USA, and Australia, analysed the neurotic personality traits and mental health of over 33,500 individuals across 89 regional German cities that experienced wartime bombing, and investigated whether people in cities that experienced higher levels of bombing were more likely to display neurotic traits. ̽��ֱ��researchers measured neurotic traits using the Big Five Inventory personality test as part of an online questionnaire, and focused on measures of neuroticism, anxiety, and depression.

“If the idea of ‘German Angst’ is true, then we’d expect people from cities that were heavily bombed during the war to be more anxious and less resilient to new stresses such as economic hardship,” says study author Dr Jason Rentfrow from the Department of Psychology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “Ours is the first study to investigate this link.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that in fact, residents of heavily bombed cities were less likely to display neurotic traits, suggesting that wartime bombing is not a factor in German Angst. ̽��ֱ��results indicate that residents of heavily bombed German cities instead recorded higher levels of mental resilience and were better able to cope in times of stress.

“We’ve seen from other studies that when people experience difficulties in life, these can provide them with a broader perspective on things and perhaps make more trivial stresses seem unimportant,” explains Dr Rentfrow. “It’s possible that this is what we are seeing here.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also looked at how Germany compared to 107 other countries for neurotic traits, to see whether there really was evidence of ‘German Angst’. They found that Germany ranks 20th, 31st, and 53rd for depression, anxiety, and neuroticism respectively. Additionally, other countries that have experienced significant trauma due to warfare, such as Japan, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, also did not score highly for neurotic traits, further suggesting that such traumatic events are not associated with increased neuroticism.

“Germany didn’t stand out as high in anything resembling angst compared with other countries, which suggests that maybe this stereotype of ‘German Angst’ isn’t entirely valid,” says Dr Rentfrow. “Clearly we need to be careful about national stereotypes.”

̽��ֱ��researchers emphasise that their findings show only an association, and that this data does not show whether more severe bombing caused greater mental resilience, or whether other factors were at play.

Although this research may have implications for other war-torn countries, including the current situation in Syria cities, the study did not investigate potential neuroticism or resilience in these countries, so no wider conclusions can be drawn from this data.

Study participants filled out online questionnaires provided by the global Gosling-Potter Internet Project, including 44 questions to assess their personality and mental state. Of the sample, just under 60% were female and the mean age was 30 years old. Almost all (96%) of the respondents were White/Caucasian while just under one in three (30%) had a bachelor’s degree or higher, and overall the sample was broadly representative of the populations of the cities assessed. Although the researchers tried to control for the movement of people between different cities, there were limitations with the data available from the online survey and so this movement may have affected the results.

̽��ֱ��data also could not tell whether increased resilience was associated with a recent event, or whether it was associated with an event from many years or even decades ago. However, there is broader literature to support the notion of traumas increasing resilience in individuals, and more research in this area would shed further light on the relationship and potential mechanisms at play.

Experiencing traumatic events may be associated with greater mental resilience among residents rather than causing widespread angst, suggests a study published this week that investigated the effect of World War II bombing on the mental health of citizens in German cities.

Maybe this stereotype of ‘German Angst’ isn’t entirely valid

Jason Rentfrow

Imperial War Museum

A house in Darmstadt destroyed by an Allied bombing raid.

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