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The “Bellification” of Everyday Life. Northern Germany and Europe in the early stage of the First World War
| Location: | Germany |
| Call for Papers Date: | 2012-07-08 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2012-06-01 |
| Announcement ID: |
194916 |
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Conference Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Cornelia Rauh
Leibniz-Universität Hannover
Prof. Dr. Arnd Reitemeier
Institut für Historische Landesforschung
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Dirk Schumann
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte
Location and Date: Hanover, end of October 2013
In the summer of 2014, one hundred years will have passed since the outbreak of the First World War. At that time, Britain’s Foreign Minister remarked to a friend: “"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." These often-quoted phrase, used by Edward Grey to note the beginning of a long-lasting and gloomy “state of exception”, was both perceptive and extraordinary. In European publics of the time, outside of pacifist circles hardly anyone anticipated, as Grey did, the character of a war based on modern technology and conducted by nationalistic masses. In contrast to the fear of war and skepticism about the future, the prevalent mood – at least in European capitals – was marked by a “state of extraordinary and festive intoxication,“ that seven-year- old Sebastian Haffner experienced in Berlin and described as very much different from the ordinary everyday life at his summer resort.
Only gradually, by a progressing “bellification” that transformed economies, changed social relations, and gave rise to new perceptions and expectations, a specific “war culture” (Becker/Krumeich) emerged in each of the belligerent countries. Eventually, nearly all facets of life in all over Europe were geared towards war, making war or how it was perceived at the home front the point of reference for actions, thoughts, and work. This “war culture” took hold of different regions with a speed and to an extent that depended on their respective strategic importance, economic structures, and social profiles, as well as on their urban or rural character and it affected different age cohorts in ways specific to each.
The academic conference, to be held in Hanover prior to the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war, will examine the emergence, the change, and the effects of this “war culture” from an internationally comparative perspective that also includes the regional history of Northern Germany. By focusing on selected European regions and combining concepts of economic, social, and cultural history, it aims at problematizing the first stage of the war when, in part suddenly, in part gradually, the expectations and the reality of war changed the circumstances of life, thoughts and actions of people living far away from the front lines and in occupied territories.
The conference intends to advance research on the general and on the regional history of the First World War in three respects:
1) The transnational perspective is to provide for a comparative discussion of the emergence of a “war culture” in European societies and, in line with recent research, of interrelations between them, allowing for a meaningful examination of the effects of the rupture of networks of trade, transportation, and communication, which by 1913 already were global to a large extent, on a local level.
2) A culturally inspired perspective on the war is to be strengthened and intensified by the particular focus on its first year. Thus, the initial months of the war as a phase of the unravelling of “normality” become a distinct subject.
3) Northern Germany, which (except for Hamburg) has been rather neglected in relation to the South and Southwest of Germany, for the first time – along with other European regions - is be examined in depth and from a comparative perspective with respect to the emergence and importance of the “war culture” of the First World War.
The following topics may be relevant (the list is not meant to be comprehensive):
Rural Areas:
Economic effects for agriculture and trade, coast protection
Transportation and its networks
Community life: the beginning of the war from the perspective of women and children
Places and media of communications, opinion leaders (taverns, pulpits, schools, local messengers)
Recruitment of soldiers
Keeping and making use of animals under the conditions of war
Urban Society
Industry and businessmen
Bureaucracy
Social life: associations, seaside and other summer resorts (e.g. anti-Semitism at the seaside resorts)
Educated elites
Universities and war research (students, Kaiser-Wilhelm- Institutes)
Health system: physicians, hospitals
Garrison towns: Nobility and families of officers
Women (female workers, domestic servants, bourgeois women)
Children, schooling
Opinion makers
Media (newspapers and censorship agencies, propaganda)
Intellectuals
Teachers and schools, school authorities
Politicians
Churches and clergy, religion in war
We are preparing an application for funding. Publication of the papers (as revised essay manuscripts) is planned for the fall of 2014. All presenters will be asked to submit their revised manuscripts no later than 31 December 2013 to ensure that publication will not be delayed.
Please send proposals (500 words max., in PDF-format), which include a note on sources and a line of argument, along with a short CV, no later than 8 July 2012 to:
Prof. Dr. Dirk Schumann
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte
Humboldtallee 19
37073 Göttingen
E-Mail: dschuma@uni-goettingen.de
Homepage: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/110554.html
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Prof. Dr. Dirk Schumann
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte
Humboldtallee 19
37073 Göttingen
E-Mail: dschuma@uni-goettingen.de
Email: dschuma@uni-goettingen.de
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