Sponsor(s): Institute of European Studies, Center for German and European Studies, UC Berkeley Department of History, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley, UC Berkeley Department of German, DAAD, Center for Jewish Studies The conceptual couple of majority/minority is viewed as a harmless way of identifying an arithmetic relationship. The idea of a dichotomy between majority and (Jewish) minority as a short hand to describe relations between ethnic or religious groups, however, is recent. In fact, as it did not exist before 1919 when in the wake of World War I the idea of democracy and the idea of the homogeneous nation-state triumphed simultaneously. Prior to…

Sponsor(s): Institute of European Studies, Center for German and European Studies, UC Berkeley Department of History, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley Can public art museums transform society? Those who answer yes have often drawn on an early nineteenth century German aesthetic tradition which identified art as a source of personal and collective liberation in an age of revolutionary conflict. Drawing on Goff’s forthcoming book, The God Behind the Marble (University of Chicago Press, 2023), this talk charts the material struggles that accompanied the philosophical faith in art’s transformative powers in a time of looting, secularization, and war. It argues that these struggles– between…

Sponsor(s): Institute of European Studies, Center for German and European Studies, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley, UC Berkeley Department of German, UC Berkeley Department of History, Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, UC Berkeley Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender As West Germans discussed “difference” after 1945, they sought out a self-consciously “Western” and liberal way to discuss difference. The talk examines different examples of how US social science on race shaped policies on migration in West Germany, including how invoking “Harlem” as a racialized space shaped urban housing policy for migrants in…

Outrageous Comparisons in Modern History and Contemporary Politics Lecture | March 14 | 5-6:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall Speaker: Willibald Steinmetz, Bielefeld University Moderator: Akasemi Newsome, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, German Historica Insitute Washington (Pacific Office, Berkeley), Department of History Professor Willibald Steinmetz will give a work-in-progress report on a book he is currently writing about ‘outrageous comparisons’, i.e. comparisons that create public outrage or other strong emotional outbursts such as hatred, disgust, or long-lasting resentment. Polemical equations of someone with Hitler or the Nazis, or analogies to the Holocaust, are the most salient cases in point, but by…

Unequal Re-education Schooling and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1955 Lecture | March 6 | 11 a.m.-12 p.m. | 201 Moses Hall Speaker: Phillip Wagner, University of Halle Moderator: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, UC Berkeley Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley Zoom Link Available It is not only since the global rise of populism that the German public debates whether democracy needs to be more inclusive. Whereas some policy-makers and intellectuals argue for more programs to empower long marginalized communities, others argue that liberal democracies have to accept social injustice. Going back to the attempts of Allied and German policy-makers and educators…

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Sponsors:  Institute of European Studies, Flanders in the USA, BENELUX Studies Program, Dutch Studies Between 1914 and 1918, Belgium was the de facto testing ground for large-scale industrial armed conflict. From the brutal German invasion in August 1914 to the armistice in November 1918, the neutral, small state was the scene of some of the bloodiest innovations in technological warfare such as the introduction of aerial attacks on civilians, chemical weapons, rapid innovation in artillery systems and tanks. With the country split between active frontline and occupied territory, it saw four years of close civil-military interactions, propaganda wars and civilian coping strategies under occupation.…