̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Department of German and Dutch

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library stages first public play in its 600-year history

sjr81 — Wed, 01 May 2019 14:45:53 +0000

Performance marked the launch of digital edition of Arthur Schnitzler's works and archive.

Arthur Schnitzler Digital Edition

sjr81 — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:15:45 +0000

Arthur Schnitzler digital: Digital Critical Edition (Works from 1905 to 1931

Opinion: Angela Merkel to run again: why she's the antithesis of Donald Trump in a post-truth world

ljm67 — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 10:33:56 +0000

Angela Merkel has finally confirmed that she will run for reappointment as German chancellor in the country’s 2017 parliamentary elections. Many have hoped for this moment, despite the setbacks of the past few years. There is a strong sense that the world needs Merkel now more than ever. She has made some unpopular decisions in her 11 years as chancellor but she is, to many, the antithesis of Donald Trump.

Tough times

Chancellorship has been no walk in the park for Merkel of late. In 2015, she upset many supporters of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), by opening German borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees. To curb the influx, Merkel had to commit to a dirty deal with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offering generous EU visa terms for his citizens in exchange for stopping millions of refugees from entering Europe.

̽��ֱ��pressure intensified in 2016, when a spate of sexual assaults, apparently committed by migrants, stirred up a significant backlash against the new arrivals.

Merkel’s CDU went on to suffer bitter setbacks in federal elections. And an Islamic State-inspired axe attack by a young man from Afghanistan in Bavaria in July 2016 was seen as evidence that Merkel’s open door refugee policy had failed.

In September 2016, Merkel’s popularity reached a five-year low. No more than 45% of German people were satisfied with her performance. During a public speech on German Unity Day in Dresden, angry protesters drew on Nazi language and called Merkel a “traitor of the people” and demanded her resignation.

On the international stage, the Brexit vote was a huge blow to Merkel and her pro-European course. She now needs to negotiate an exit for Britain without also triggering the demise of the entire EU project.

And as if all of this wasn’t enough, Merkel will have to deal with Donald Trump as president of the United States. After Trump’s election victory, Merkel gave a remarkable speech, offering him close collaboration on the basis that the new American president would respect freedom, democracy and the dignity and worth of all people.

While most other world leaders gave bland statements of half-hearted hope that the president-elect would not see through on his more controversial promises, the German leader was sending a strong signal – and even a challenge.

After the open sexism and racism that characterised Trump’s campaign, it looks like close collaboration is an extremely unlikely scenario. Merkel was effectively saying that standing up to such prejudice was more important to her than relations with the US – although whether she remains true to her principles should she be re-elected is another question.

A sense of responsibility

Given the overwhelming number of problems facing whoever wins in 2017, the easiest decision would have been to let someone else do the job of chancellor. But Merkel isn’t one for easy solutions.

There was little enthusiasm or excitement in her voice as she announced her candidacy, and she openly admitted that standing had been a difficult decision. Although Merkel didn’t mention any names, it was obvious that she wanted to send a message to Trump and right-wing populists in Europe. She emphasised that political decisions need to be based on the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, respect for the law, and the dignity of every human being.

Merkel responds to Trump’s victory.

Following her announcement, Merkel appeared on a talk show and left no doubt that she expected difficult times and an “exhausting and challenging” election campaign. Yet, she added that she felt confident that she could defend these values that hold our society together.

Merkel openly challenges Trump because there is a lot more at stake than Anglo-German relations. Fears grow that in 2017 the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen could become the next French president, and that Europe’s far right will grow further. Against this background, Merkel sees an urgent need to oppose the populism, racism and gender ideology of the extreme right, and this feeling is shared by many Germans.

Can she win?

Merkel’s statement was a manifestation of everything that people love and hate about her. She carefully assesses situations before taking decisions, she is stubbornly committed to Christian values and the European project, she seeks consensus rather than victory, and she displays a striking lack of charisma.

̽��ֱ��New York Times has called Merkel “the liberal west’s last defender” and while she is too smart to get excited about such headlines, she knows that her approach and personality traits have become a rare commodity in the post-truth era of global politics.

Merkel has described herself as a “chancellor for turbulent times” and there is good reason to believe that she could act as an important counterbalance to the charismatic, impulsive, erratic, and polemical President Trump.

Recent polls suggest Merkel’s popularity scores are slowly recovering. Although it is to be expected that some CDU voters will switch to vote for the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AFD), she has a good chance of re-election. She may not win an outright majority, but her party would be able to form a coalition with various other parties, which would leave the CDU in a strong position to push through their candidate for the chancellorship.

Katharina Karcher, Sutasoma Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

In this article, Katharina Karcher from the Department of German and Dutch discusses the election prospects of the self-described “chancellor for turbulent times”.

European People's Party

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Saved from the Nazis in 1938: Schnitzler archive to remain in Cambridge

sjr81 — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 09:00:27 +0000

Now, more than 75 years after it was spirited out of Austria under the noses of Nazis intent on burning and destroying Jewish cultural works, the papers of the man who inspired Freud, Kubrick and many others have been officially signed over into the care of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Following several months of discussions with the writer’s grandsons and surviving heirs to his estate, Michael and Peter Schnitzler, the agreement concludes a handover process that began in the 1930s before being interrupted by the onset of the Second World War.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has always been proud of the role it played in saving the Schnitzler archive from certain destruction – and we are delighted to have reached agreement with the family to ensure that this unique collection remains in Cambridge and continues to benefit from the expert care and conservation it has received over the last eight decades.

“Arthur Schnitzler’s unique legacy continues to resonate and inspire, just as it has over the last 75 years. As one of the world’s great research libraries we are committed to making this fascinating archive available to as many people as possible.”

̽��ֱ��archive is currently being opened up to scholars and other interested readers by major edition projects in Austria, Germany and the UK. ̽��ֱ��German and UK projects will result in cutting-edge digital editions of works from 1905–1931, to be hosted, with open access, by the ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Andrew Webber, Professor of Modern German and Comparative Culture at the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of German and Dutch, leads the UK editorial team, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He said: “We are delighted that this agreement has been reached. In the Schnitzler papers, Cambridge has custody of a treasure of Modernist literary culture. ̽��ֱ��edition projects are already making remarkable discoveries as the teams of scholars decipher and analyse drafts and notes recorded in Schnitzler’s idiosyncratic handwriting. They promise an exciting new view of the works and the creative processes of this key figure.”

̽��ֱ��story of how Schnitzler’s archive came to Cambridge is a remarkable and complex one. Upon Arthur Schnitzler’s death in 1931, his estate remained in his Vienna house with his ex-wife Olga, who was considered his widow even though the couple had divorced in 1921.

By 1933, the works of Schnitzler and other Jewish artists were regularly being consigned to the flames of the Nazis’ book burning rallies across Germany. In March 1938, Germany invaded Austria and many prominent Jews were arrested and dispossessed.

Worried that they would come for Schnitzler’s papers, Olga Schnitzler asked an acquaintance in Vienna, a student from Cambridge called Eric Blackall, if he might be able to help save them.

On March 19, 1938, at her request, Blackall sent an urgent message to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library to ask whether they would accept the more than 40,000 pages of Schnitzler’s literary archive. They agreed immediately, and a diplomatic seal was placed on the material before Blackall organised its shipment from Nazi-occupied Austria. More than a dozen cases and cupboards of manuscripts, sketches, notes, correspondence and even Schnitzler’s death mask made their way across Europe to Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��communications between Blackall and Cambridge, preserved in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, have the character of a spy novel, with Blackall referring to the urgent need to see that ‘mother’ (Olga) and ‘child’ (the archive) are safely dispatched to England.

Once both were safe in Cambridge, a legal document was drawn up and agreed between Olga and the Library in 1939, giving the archive to the ̽��ֱ��. However, Olga had neglected to notify the Library that she was not Arthur’s legal heir according to his last will. When her son, Heinrich, who was the sole heir and had emigrated to the United States, asked for the archive to be returned to him, the ̽��ֱ�� Librarian let him know that the papers had been given to the library by Olga and must remain there.

Olga herself left for the United States, taking some of the most personal artefacts (such as diaries and family letters) with her, with the blessing of the ̽��ֱ�� Librarian at the time.

Due to the outbreak of World War II, no further negotiations took place and Heinrich Schnitzler agreed to leave the archive in the custody of the Library, provided that he be given access to the archive and that microfilm copies of the papers were made.

Over the course of the following decades, the Library maintained a correspondence with Heinrich, who worked on his father’s papers, but the Schnitzler family remained owner of the archive. ̽��ֱ��agreement between CUL and Arthur Schnitzler’s grandsons puts to an end a legally awkward situation.

Schnitzler’s works provided the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, David Hare’s ̽��ֱ��Blue Room as well as plays penned by Tom Stoppard. Taking love, death and human sexuality as frequent themes for exploration, Schnitzler’s works were controversial and were even denounced by Hitler as examples of ‘Jewish filth’.

̽��ֱ��archive in Cambridge also contains Schnitzler’s only surviving letter to friend and admirer Sigmund Freud as well as his correspondence with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and other leading artists and writers of the era – such as Henrik Ibsen, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler.

Saved from destruction by the Nazis and smuggled in secret to Cambridge, the rescue of author Arthur Schnitzler’s archive is as dramatic as any fiction he committed to paper.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has always been proud of the role it played in saving the Schnitzler archive from certain destruction.

Anne Jarvis

Ferdinand Schmutzer

Arthur Schnitzler, 1912

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̽��ֱ��British Academy welcomes new Fellows for 2015

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 14:38:53 +0000

They are among 42 highly distinguished UK academics from 18 universities welcomed as Fellows by the Academy, taking the total number of living Fellows to over one thousand for the first time.

̽��ֱ��Fellows elected from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge are:

Professor Cyprian Broodbank – John Disney Professor of Archaeology, Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

Professor Garth Fowden – Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse.

Professor Robert Gordon – Serena Professor of Italian and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

Professor Sanjeev Goyal – Professor of Economics and Fellow of Christ’s College.

Professor Peter Mandler – Professor of Modern Cultural History and Bailey Lecturer in History at Gonville & Caius College.

Professor Joachim Whaley – Professor of German History and Thought and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College.

Also receiving a fellowship is Professor Michael Mann, Honorary Professor at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Los Angeles.

Lord Stern, President of the British Academy, said: “This year we have the honour of once again welcoming the finest researchers and scholars into our Fellowship. Elected from across the UK and world for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences, they represent an unrivalled resource of expertise and knowledge.

“Our Fellows play a vital role in the work of the Academy; encouraging younger researchers, engaging in public discussion of the great issues and ideas of our time, and contributing to policy reports. Their collective work and expertise are testament to why research in the humanities and social sciences is vital for our understanding of the world and humanity.”

̽��ֱ��British Academy is the UK's expert body that supports and speaks for the humanities and social sciences. It funds research across the UK and in other parts of the world, in disciplines ranging from archaeology to economics, from psychology to history, and from literature to law.

View the full list of British Academy Fellows.

Seven Cambridge academics have been elected to the fellowship of the British Academy in recognition of their outstanding research.

Their collective work and expertise are testament to why research in the humanities and social sciences is vital for our understanding of the world and humanity

Lord Stern, President of the British Academy

̽��ֱ��British Academy

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GCSE students discover the wonders of German

ta385 — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:32:27 +0000

This goes down well with the assembled crowd, 115 GCSE and A-level students, accompanied by 37 teachers, representing 30 schools from across the UK.

̽��ֱ��event (held on 13 June at Murray Edwards College) is part of the Cambridge Online German for Schools (COGS) programme run by the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of German and Dutch.

Other highlights of the day include a talk by Mike Mitchell, an award-winning translator of German literature into English; workshops and a panel discussion on the merits of translation.

Among the distinguished panelists is Dr Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and himself a translator of German poetry. Dr Williams describes growing up in a bilingual household and how this continues to inform his love of and respect for translation. Yet more inspiration comes from Duncan Large, Director of the British Centre of Literary Translation, Paul Kaye from the European Commission and Fiona Rintoul, a writer and translator.

During the course of the day, speakers, students and teachers exchange views about the joys and frustrations of translation, but are unanimous about the cultural importance of learning languages.

̽��ֱ��day ends with Cambridge’s Dr John Guthrie giving a talk to launch 'Germans in Britain', a touring exhibition from the Migration Museum Project, which is currently on display at Murray Edwards College, followed by a Q&A about studying German at the ̽��ֱ�� today.

̽��ֱ��event was generously supported by the Schröder Fund, Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge German Network is part of the wider Think German Network initiative across the UK. ̽��ֱ��aim of the network is to support the teaching and learning of the German language, to facilitate contacts between institutions interested in German culture and to promote the collaboration of academic and business partners.

COGS is a forum developed by the Department of German and Dutch at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge for teachers of German at all levels to share user-reviewed classroom materials.

“A human translator will beat any machine any day” proclaims Klaus Fritz, the translator of the Harry Potter books into German.

“A human translator will beat any machine any day”

Klaus Fritz, translator of Harry Potter into German

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̽��ֱ��Impact of Idealism

bjb42 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:15:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��culmination of an international project which aims to trace the legacy of German Idealism - an explosion of philosophical ideas which emerged from Germany during the 19th century - begins in Cambridge today (Thursday, 6 September).

Over the past three years, more than 40 researchers from Britain, Germany and the United States have been involved in the “Impact of Idealism” project, examining how the idealist movement, perhaps the most influential force in philosophy over the past two centuries, shaped the way in which we see the world and ourselves today.

Even though we may not realise it, the concepts which emerged as a result of the idealist movement have influenced subjects as varied as politics, biology, literature and psychology. In spite of this, how those ideas seeped into so many different areas of life has never really been studied - until now.

Researchers involved in the “Impact of Idealism” project have been studying the way in which the outpouring of new ideas changed fields far beyond the realm of philosophy itself, as well as the way in which the same concepts were then developed and passed down through generations. Their conclusions will be presented in the form of a series of papers at the three-day conference, which is taking place at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Among those speaking will be the Archbishop of Canterbury and new Master of Magdalene, Rowan Williams, and the writer and philosopher, Roger Scruton. A four-volume book compiling all of the contributors’ work will be published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press next year.

“ ̽��ֱ��questions and issues that dominate German idealism did not just concern the idealists themselves, they had a lasting impact on the way we think now.” Professor Nick Boyle, principal investigator on the project, said. “Two centuries later, we are still preoccupied by many of the same problems.”

German Idealism began in the late 18th-century, against the turbulent backdrop of the French Revolution. Its first major figure was Immanuel Kant, whose idea of “transcendental idealism” revolved around the notion that the mind was key to the way in which we perceive the world, and that the world was filtered by perception.

Kant argued that we can only understand or make judgements about the world around us (or anything else) by experiencing it through our senses, then applying a framework of concepts to those experiences. This was a new theory of the mind, and pointed out the limits of human cognition by claiming that what we see is a world of appearances processed by our minds, and that it is impossible to understand it independently of ourselves.

̽��ֱ��philosophical movement which sprang from this has been the focus of the “Impact of Idealism” project. Thinkers like Fichte, Schelling and (most famously) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel developed and challenged Kant’s ideas, providing new and sometimes contentious sets of theories on the nature of the human mind and what shapes our self-consciousness and perception of the world, and our engagement with it.

Importantly, however, these ideas did not get lost in a vacuum. Later nineteenth-century figures we naturally recognise as shaping the way we think now, such as Darwin, Marx and Freud, were themselves profoundly influenced by the world view created by the Idealist generation of German philosophers. In the 20^th century concepts and issues first formulated by Kant and the post-Kantians preoccupied and inspired both Anglo-American thinkers and French existentialists, post-structuralists, and post-modernists.

̽��ֱ��researchers behind the “Impact of Idealism” project argue that this process continues to affect some of the biggest questions of the 21st century. Theories of the mind and human society derived from Idealism define and shape fields as varied as neuroscience - in which researchers are explicitly trying to understand the relationship between mind and brain - inter-faith relations, or postmodern literature and art.

“If we want to understand why we are concerned about these problems and why we are approaching them in the way we are, we need to understand that they are closely related to a set of philosophical ideas that began 200 years ago,” Boyle said. “In its most influential form, German idealism was the backdrop against which many of our current ideas about politics, society and culture emerged. It is not the case that these people had certain ideas and we have had the same ones in the 21st century. They contributed directly to the way in which we think about the world now.”

German Idealism changed the world and influenced politics, science, art and numerous other fields. ̽��ֱ��ways in which it shaped the modern world have been the subject of a three-year research project, which reaches its conclusion in Cambridge this week.

Two centuries later, we are still preoccupied by many of the same problems.

Nick Boyle

Wikimedia Commons.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the leading figures in the German Idealist movement.

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̽��ֱ��1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany

bjb42 — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��staging of an Olympic Games is both a formidable task and an exciting opportunity, not least because it firmly places the host nation on the world stage. Take the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada – an event that was viewed by some 3.5 billion people, more than half the world’s population. In effect, the event is a chance for the host country to promote itself globally.

Perhaps one Games above all others in the last century was imbued by a particular eagerness to present a national identity afresh to the world and to erase past memories: the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. As events transpired, it is almost exclusively remembered for a very different reason – the murder of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team by the terrorist group Black September. Yet, this tragedy is only part of the story of the Munich Games.

Although some aspects of the 1972 Games have received academic attention, most notably from scholars of terrorism, there has been a major gap in research that uses the Games as a case study to highlight broader historical currents in Germany. As a topic, the Munich Games lies neatly at the intersection between my research interests in Germany and in sports history and so, a few years ago, I set out with historian Dr Kay Schiller from the ̽��ֱ�� of Durham to provide the first cultural and political history of the Munich Olympics. ̽��ֱ��resulting book, ̽��ֱ��1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, seeks not only to explain the significance of the event in modern German history, but also to ask why such great store was set on hopes for its success.

Archives and oral histories

With funding from the British Academy, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), I was able to delve into documents, most of which had only recently become available, held in archives around the world.

̽��ֱ��research reached from the federal archives in Koblenz and Berlin to the Bavarian State Archives and the city archive in Munich, from the research libraries at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne to the Amateur Athletics Foundation in Los Angeles, and even to the archive held at the ̽��ֱ�� of Illinois relating to Avery Brundage, the IOC President who controversially decided to continue the Munich Games following the terrorist attack.

Supplementing the investigations was an array of oral history sources gained from interviews of political and societal figures involved with the planning and staging of the Games. These included Hans-Jochen Vogel, the Mayor of Munich at the time, members of the Organizing Committee for the Games, participating athletes, an Israeli survivor of the terrorist attack and the now deceased Markus Wolf, formerly the head of foreign operations at the East German Stasi security service.

Showcasing a modern Germany

Much of the research focused on the years leading up to the ’72 Games. ̽��ֱ��Federal Republic of Germany was at a crossroads in the mid-1960s, still under the shadow of World War II but viewing the future with optimism. In the seven years between being chosen as host and staging the event itself, Germany experienced favourable economic conditions and a belief in technocratic optimism, but was equally marked by national and international debate and dispute.

Against this background, the symbolic potential of the Games did not escape the organisers of the Munich Olympics, who took just one month in 1965 to secure promises of funding from the city of Munich, the Bavarian State and the Federal Government. Hosting the Games was deemed to be of immense importance. As Chancellor Willy Brandt put it succinctly, Munich 1972 was to serve as a ‘showcase of modern Germany’, a chance to replace memories of the Third Reich with images of a thriving and prosperous Federal Republic, an opportunity to present an optimistic Germany to the world through its ‘Happy Games’ – its official motto.

In the end, the hopes were shattered by the horrific terrorist attack in the early hours of 5 September. As on 11 September 2001, the world had been caught off-guard and unawares, and the Munich organisers, from the chief committee members down to the hundreds of stadium hostesses who had welcomed the international community to Germany, saw the life seep out of their Games overnight. Years of effort now left a dubious legacy and, more immediately, the Federal Republic was plunged into months of diplomatic firefighting with Israel and the Arab world.

Into the melting pot

It’s impossible to write such a book without combining perspectives of political, social, cultural and urban history. As a result, ̽��ֱ��1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany is really about a nation’s handling of a melting pot of issues: Germany’s urban, regional and national identity; intergenerational conflict and social transformation; ideologies of the past; political and diplomatic disputes; architectural visions and ceremonial imaginations; terrorism and security; East and West Germany; and Israeli–Arab relations.

At the same time, however, it’s a book about sport or, more accurately, about sport’s slippery nature as a phenomenon that is both apolitical and deeply rooted in political discourse. To take one example: even for an event that claimed its legitimacy through an Olympic tradition reaching back to antiquity, it was impossible to make a complete break with the political past – ‘Hitler’s Games’ of 1936 loomed large over the ’72 Games.

A question of sport

Until this research project, apart from the extensively studied inaugural Athens Games of 1896 and the Nazi-influenced Berlin Games of 1936, there had been virtually no attempt within sports historiography to write comprehensively about the impact of individual Games on their respective host nations. Remarkably, there has also been no general account of the modern history of European sport from a comparative and international perspective. This is the case despite sport being such a central cultural feature of European life, both as a participant activity and as a spectator entertainment.

To remedy this situation, an AHRC-funded Network entitled Sport in Modern Europe has begun the first comprehensive historical analysis in this area. ̽��ֱ��overarching aim of the research network, which is led by Cambridge, together with academic partners at the ̽��ֱ�� of Brighton and De Montfort ̽��ֱ��, is to establish the central themes for the writing of a history of modern European sport. At a series of three international workshops, colleagues from around the world have been looking both comparatively and chronologically at sport, encompassing the elite diffusion of British sport in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as its modern-day democratisation, and exploring the problems associated with defining a distinctive European model of sport.

For me, moving from an in-depth analysis of the Munich Games to a broader outlook on European sport has been an enrichingtour d’horizon– and the work is only just beginning.

For more information, please contact the author Dr Chris Young (cjy1000@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of German and Dutch, or visit the Sport in Modern Europe Network.

A new analysis of the Munich Games of 1972 places the event at the very centre of modern German history, as Dr Chris Young explains.

Public conflicts arose over political ideology, culture and the legacy of the German past, and foreign policy shifts impacted in intricate ways on East–West German relations.

Alexandra Young

1972 Munich Olympic Stadium

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