Forum

The editors are pleased to announce an upcoming forum that will take as a starting point a discussion of Margarethe von Trotta’s 2003 film, Rosenstraße.  Although the subject of this film, the 1943 protest by non-Jewish German women on behalf of their Jewish husbands interned by the Nazis, is likely familiar to most H-German members, the cinematic representation of this particular event raise a variety of issues that merit discussion on the list.  Continuing some of the intellectual themes raised in our fall forum on the German experience of bombing during World War II, this discussion offers the opportunity to explore the broader implications of efforts to engage (il)legitimate memory in the context of current German politics.  Similarly, while we are clearly interested in examining the historical implications of everyday acts of resistance and their significance for our evolving understanding of Nazi Germany, the editors also view this as an opportunity to continue H-German’s efforts to explore the place of German history and its scholars in a broader public intellectual arena.

This forum thus takes its place in a number of H-German initiatives that seek to wrestle with those issues:  our recently established series of Messages from Germany (MfG) brings a historical sensibility to current cultural and political discussions; this fall, H-German will be supporting a GSA roundtable (“Making It Real: Intellectual Exchange, Virtual Space, and the Public Sphere”; see the GSA website for more program information) in an effort both to develop intellectual spaces to address these questions but also to seek out ways to promote a nexus between virtual and “real-world” scholarly activity.  In the spirit of this sort of “multi-media” work, we encourage you to participate in the Rosenstraße forum.

The forum will launch on

MONDAY, JULY 26, 2004

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