Data meets History

Posted on 2021-07-11 by Johannes Paulmann

New Essay on Research Data Management for History (online)

Data Meets History: A Research Data Management Strategy for the Historically Oriented Humanities by Fabian Cremer, Silvia Daniel, Marina Lemaire, Katrin Moeller, Matthias Razum, and Arnošt Štanzel

Example of a digital historical research workflow

The growing relevance of research data to practices, methodology and policies poses challenges for the historically oriented humanities in developing their own concept of research data management. A broader definition of research data is derived from recent discussions and an examination of the historical research workflow reveals its ongoing digital transformation. Based on current developments in Germany, this article provides an outline for a strategic approach towards a domain-specific research data management strategy including applicable metadata concepts, cultural conditions for data sharing and initial suggestions regarding the specification of the FAIR principles for the historically oriented humanities. The essay is the collaborative work of scholars engaged in NFDI4Memory, a consortium for the historically oriented humanities.

Fabian Cremer, Silvia Daniel, Marina Lemaire, Katrin Moeller, Matthias Razum, and Arnošt Štanzel are members of NFDI4Memory, a consortium for the historically oriented humanities.

https://4memory.de/

The Path of Escape in the Age of Touristic Reproduction

Posted on 2019-12-16 by anneieg

Phil Kuehlthau

Walter Benjamin’s last resort for escaping the National Socialists in the autumn of 1940 was a path across the Pyrenees, which led from the French village of Banyuls-sur-Mer to Portbou in Spain. However, this path ended in a “situation with no way out” (Brodersen, p. 245). After Benjamin arrived in Portbou and was forced to return to France by Spanish authorities, he committed suicide.

Since 2007, Benjamin’s escape route has been marked as the Chemin Walter Benjamin. It invites those interested in cultural history to follow the path. But what exactly is marked by the Chemin Walter Benjamin?

The source material is problematic. Our knowledge depends on the memories of Lisa Fittko, Walter Benjamin’s escape agent, who described the path they took together in her memoirs. Her autobiography was written 40 years later, based on blurred and overlain memories, after her innumerable ascents of the Pyrenees. In historical science, one has to treat such a record as a questionable source. Continue reading →

Pursuing the Past on the Spot as a Historiographical Method?

Posted on 2019-12-09 by anneieg

Alexander Milešević

It is difficult, almost impossible, to experience the past in the present, and this might be one of the reasons why historical methods usually do not include the after-perception of previous experiences. Sometimes, people try to experience the past via the method of re-enactment. Re-enactment is a social practice through which people attempt to recreate aspects of historical events. One the one hand, this practice enables one to experience and retrace the past. On the other hand, it is problematic because of the limited awareness about differences between the actual past and its faithful reproduction through re-enactment. Can empathizing thus lead to a better understanding of the past and of the decisions people took in their lifetime? Should we use such methods even in historical research to understand the past in a better way? The case of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin is a good example for discussing these questions. His flight from France to Spain across the Pyrenees in 1940 can be experienced by hiking from the French village Banyuls-sur-Mer to Portbou on the Spanish side of the border. Continue reading →

Escape Assistance in the Course of Time: From Lisa Fittko to Carola Rackete

Posted on 2019-12-02 by anneieg

Julian Kaiser/Marieke Wist

“We couldn’t judge anymore how people would react. For example, from the beginning there were people who said that they would go on hunger strike. Or we had people who, after there was a partial evacuation, asked if they would all have to get sick first or jump overboard to be rescued. And then you have to ask yourself if this could become real. No one can think clearly in such a situation.”

Sea-Watch Captain Carola Rackete

By recounting this emergency situation, the captain Carola Rackete justified her decision to call at the port of Lampedusa and bring 43 remaining refugees ashore on the night of 29 June 2019, after 17 days on board the “Sea Watch 3.”Rackete’s solo efforts created a media and political storm: Italy’s Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, described her as an “accomplice of human traffickers” as well as a “rich and spoiled German communist” and a “criminal captain.” Right-wing populist parties in Europe, like the Lega Nord and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), did not hold back harsh criticism of Rackete and the refugee phenomenon itself. Different attempts were made to delegitimize her actions.

Others expressed support for Rackete’s decision by providing financial support in the form of massive donations (a total of almost 1.4 million euros was raised by 9 July in Germany and Italy alone). NGOs like “Sea Watch” were recognized as necessary in maintaining a minimum of humanity when dealing with refugees. Thus, effective publicity campaigns questioned European laws and procedures and worked to legitimize Rackete’s actions. Continue reading →

Escape Assistance: An Enterprise with Varying Risks

Posted on 2019-11-25 by anneieg

Filip Schuffert

What in the photograph looks like a beautiful landscape today, used to be a dangerous border crossing zone between France and Spain in the first half of the 20^th century, which many people crossed in flight.

Flight refers to escape by way of physical movement. However, people are not always able to flee by relying only on themselves. In some cases, people are locked up, as in the case of prison inmates, and perhaps hope for the aid of guards. Others stand in front of seemingly insurmountable seas, mountains or rivers and depend on the help of people who know the landscape and its secret pathways. One such example is Walter Benjamin, who fled across the Pyrenees, this beautiful landscape depicted above, in September 1940 with the help of Lisa Fittko. Others are confronted with “closed” borders and need the support of border guards. People who flee with the help of others take risks. They have to trust others out of necessity, and thus put their destiny in their hands.

Escape assistance can take various forms. Those who provide aid can furnish provisions and hide refugees, they can also issue new passports or lead refugees across a mountain range – as Lisa Fittko did. She not only helped Walter Benjamin but also numerous other refugees to cross the Pyrenees. Escape aid is any action that is carried out to help those escaping risk of death by persecution, torture or death. Escape assistance should not be considered as lugging (Schlepperei), which is motivated by enrichment, in principle. It can be an act of resistance against a political regime, but can also be carried out for humanitarian or altruistic reasons without material motivation (even today, human trafficking without intent to enrich goes largely unpunished). Continue reading →

Memory-Work in Process? The Internment Camp in Gurs

Posted on 2019-11-18 by anneieg

Sarah Noske

Memorial site in Gurs (photo: Dennis Riemann)

In 1939, around 100 internment camps were created in France, among them the one in Gurs at the bottom of the Pyrenees. Originally, this camp was built for refugees leaving Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Under the Vichy Regime, the camp was used primarily for the internment of German Jews, fighters of the Résistance, and so-called hostile foreigners. During this time, the camp consisted of 428 huts, which were composed of little “ilôts” (islands), each “ilôt” separated from others by barbed wire. In 1944, the camp was used for the internment of fleeing Spanish refugees and about 300 members of the Wehrmacht. Because of the bad hygienic conditions, more than 3000 humans died in the internment camp in Gurs.

Gate of the cemetery (photo: Sarah Noske)

The “memory work” at the camp in Gurs began very early, shortly after the end of the Second World War. In 1945, the Jewish communities of the Basses-Pyrénées set up a monument to remember the Jews who had suffered or died in Gurs. In 1957, the mayor of Karlsruhe became aware of the dilapidation of the cemetery in Gurs. As 6504 Jews from Baden had been deported to Gurs in October 1940, he pleaded for the reconstruction of the cemetery. The rebuilt cemetery was officially opened in March 1963. Other communities of Baden were also involved in the renovation of the cemetery. Furthermore, two steles were erected on the grounds of the cemetery: one in the middle of the cemetery in order to commemorate the Jewish victims and another one in the entrance area. It remembers the victims of the International Brigades.

Continue reading →

The “Chemin Walter Benjamin” in the Competition of Remembrance

Posted on 2019-11-11 by anneieg

Sarah Noske

“Passages” by Dani Karavan (photo: Dennis Riemann)

“Schwerer ist es, das Gedächtnis der Namenlosen zu ehren als das der Berühmten. Dem Gedächtnis der Namenlosen ist die historische Konstruktion geweiht.“

(“It is harder to honour the memory of the nameless than that of the famous. Historical construction is dedicated to the memory of the nameless.”)

“Passages” by Dani Karavan (photo: Phil Kuehlthau)

These two phrases are written on the monument “Passages” created by the artist Dani Karavan in front of the Mediterranean Sea in the bay of Portbou in memory of Walter Benjamin. They are drawn from Benjamin’s last essay “On the Concept of History,” written in 1939, one year before he committed suicide in Portbou, Spain. Both phrases give an idea of what historical work should be dedicated to according to Benjamin: to the remembrance of the nameless, whose memory is more difficult to honour than that of the famous.

Memory is closely linked to oblivion: According to Aleida Assmann, oblivion is, in contrast to memory, the norm. In communities such as societies, not everything can be remembered, and that is the reason why such communities need to decide what (events, experiences, acts etc.) and who (individual persons or collective groups) to remember. But who are the agents of remembrance? Continue reading →

A View from the Past of the Flight across the Mediterranean Sea: Walking the “Chemin Walter Benjamin”

Posted on 2019-11-04 by anneieg

Phil Kuehlthau

Walking the Chemin Walter Benjamin means commemorating both the escape of Walter Benjamin from National Socialist Germany and further movements of flight and migration in the 20th century. Besides, connecting the chemin to our present day can hardly be avoided. The view of the Mediterranean Sea, which slips constantly into the visual field while one hikes to Portbou, provides access to Benjamin’s notion of the relationship between past and present.

Why do we hike along the Chemin Walter Benjamin just at a time when there is a lot of migration and movements of escape towards Europe? At a time when people put their lives at risk at sea? At a time when there is a contentious debate about the legitimacy of sea rescue?

According to Benjamin, interest in historical events is fed by a feeling of recognizing oneself and one’s own fate in the past. Only in specific ages are specific historical knowledge and perceptions intelligible. Any historical knowledge refers to its origin in time. Our 2019 view on German Unification, for example, differs from that of twenty years ago. Awareness of a phenomenon like the success of a right-wing extremist party – not only, but especially – in the eastern Federal States of Germany, has led us to think differently about politics and its possible failures in the last decades, or the social and cultural legacy of the German Democratic Republic. Without the appearance of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), we would not have thought of those aspects. Continue reading →

Following the Fugitive: Reflections on the Concept of Memorial Routes and the Possibilities of Representing Escape

Posted on 2019-10-27 by anneieg

Anne Friedrichs & Bettina Severin-Barboutie

Multilingual remembrance of the escape situation in Portbou, Spain (photo: Anne Friedrichs)

As recently as 2015, travellers to Turin and eight other south and west European cities (Milan, Genoa, Florence and Rome, Paris and Marseille, Valencia as well as Lisbon) could take advantage of a special offer: a city tour provided by migrant residents. This initiative, co-funded by the European Union, aimed to allow visitors to experience the city “through different eyes.” The tourists took on the role of migrants whereas the latter functioned as locals. Thus, different forms of mobility – such as migration and travel – and their appendant overlaps and effects could be explored conjointly.

But the question arises: Can we indeed trace the historical experiences of heterogeneous migrants through such participatory tourist practices? Can we apply the public enactments and shared personal experiences of guided tours likewise to forms of mobility such as escape, which are associated with existential threat and which have been controversially discussed and managed, for instance since 2015? What can historians contribute in view of recent disputes in Europe and elsewhere, particularly given the necessity of balancing different historical experiences, interpretations and memories?

Following a frequently used refugee route

In some regions, refugee movements form part of public commemorative culture. Among numerous other memories, histories of flight and escape are thus immediately visible there. As part of a curricular excursion, we travelled to such a region, namely the French-Spanish Pyrenees, along with students of the Justus Liebig University Giessen in the summer term of 2019. Our focus was a 15 km trail that cuts through the mountains. This trail follows the refugee route taken by Walter Benjamin in his attempted escape from French Banyuls-sur-Mer to Portbou in Spain. Continue reading →

European History Across Boundaries: PhD Workshop Oxford – Mainz

Posted on 2019-03-15 by Johannes Paulmann

From 13 – 15 March 2019, the graduate workshop “European History Across Boundaries” took place for the first time in Oxford. The event was jointly organised by the Faculty of History at Oxford University and the Leibniz Institute of European HistoryLeibniz Institute of European History at Mainz.

Outstanding young researchers from universities all over Europe, the USA and Israel discussed their research projects. Topics ranged from Early Modern to Contemporary History. Participants analysed a variety of European boundary crossings, including imperial and colonial, gender, disciplinary and religious borders. Geographically, the projects dealt with connections, for example, in Brazil during the Hispanic monarchy, port cities like Hamburg, Switzerland and the Dutch colonial empire, St. Peterburg and Paris, the Soviet Union and Congo, Germany and Afghanistan as well as Tirol and Tuscany. The projects illustrated the challenges as well as the benefits of researching history across boundaries. It was fascinating to learn that this kind of scholarship attracts and creates early career scholars who are in practical terms as cosmopolitan as the historical subjects they are studying. For full programm click here.

Visit to Oriel College library by partiticpants of PhD workshop European History Across Boundaries

Call for Application GHRA 2019

Posted on 2018-11-09 by Johannes Paulmann

Academy Conveners:

Johannes Paulmann (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)

Andrew Thompson (University of Exeter)

in co-operation with the International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva)

Venues:

Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz & Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva

Dates: 8-19 July 2019

Deadline: 31 December 2018

Information at: http://ghra.ieg-mainz.de/, http://hhr.hypotheses.org/ and http://imperialglobalexeter.com/

The international Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy (GHRA) offers research training to PhD candidates and early postdocs. It combines academic sessions at the Imperial and Global History Centre at the University of Exeter and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz with archival sessions at the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. The Research Academy is for early career researchers who are working in the related fields of humanitarianism, international humanitarian law, peace and conflict studies, human rights covering the period from the 18^th to the 20^th century as well as the institutional history of the ICRC and the development of its fundamental principles. It supports scholarship on the ideas and practices of humanitarianism in the context of international, imperial and global history thus advancing our understanding of global governance in humanitarian crises of the present.

In July 2019, the Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy will first meet for one week in Mainz for academic sessions of lectures, class meetings and discussions, including study time (the academic meetings rotate annually between Mainz and Exeter; in the previous year this meeting took place in Exeter). PhD students will have the chance to sharpen the methodological and theoretical focus of their thesis through an intense exchange with peers, postdocs, and established scholars working in the same or related field of humanitarianism. The postdocs will benefit from discussing their research design and publication strategy with established scholars.

The academic session at Exeter or Mainz is each year followed by a one week archival session at Geneva. Here the archives of the ICRC offer a unique insight into humanitarian action during the past 150 years. The holdings provide rich material, including visual material, for the history of international affairs in the ages of nation states, empires and global governance, particularly the study of humanitarianism, humanitarian law, conflicts studies as well as related issues such as human rights. Under the guidance of experienced archive staff, the members of the Research Academy will study primary sources related to the previous discussions at Exeter as well as to their own research projects if applicable. Opportunities may also be provided for intensive discussions with active members of the ICRC staff and other Geneva based humanitarian organisations.

Each selected academy fellow receives the cost of travel to Mainz and accommodation in Mainz and Geneva. Academy fellows will be asked to purchase their travel to Geneva as proof of their commitment to attending the Academy.

The Research Academy invites applications for the 2019 Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy (GHRA) from PhD students and early postdocs. The Steering Committee will select up to 12 participants. Applicants must be able to certify that they are fluent in both written and spoken English, the Academy’s working language. Participants of the international Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy will be chosen by the Steering Committee on the basis of

a cover letter (maximum 350 words) setting out the applicant’s motivation for participating in the academy and indicating the anticipated outcome of their research;
a statement (maximum 1,000 words) summarizing their research project;
a brief curriculum vitae (maximum 2 pages);
two supporting letters from appropriate referees.

This application should be compiled by the applicant and the whole set of papers including reference letters should be submitted as a single PDF, with the file saved as ‘LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME.PDF’. To apply, please send your application consisting of one pdf-document with the Subject “Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy” to the organisers at ghra@ieg-mainz.de by December 31, 2018.

Humanitarianism: New Research Field in European History

Posted on 2018-06-09 by Johannes Paulmann

Atelier de recherche à Sorbonne Université

The international workshop discusses recent historiography on humanitarianism, concepts and issues. It is organised by LabEx Ecrire une histoire nouvelle de l’Europe (EHNE), the Laboratoire Temps, Mondes, Sociétés (TEMOS), the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), and the international network “Engaging Europe in the Arab World” (Leiden University, NWO).

Programme: Affiche_Atelier_Humanitaire 2018-06-09

Inscription: labex.ehne2@gmail.com

Wednesday, 13 June, 14-18.30

Venue: Maison de la Recherche de Sorbonne Université, 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris

Clothes Make the (Wo)man – Dress and Cultural Difference in Early Modern Europe

Posted on 2018-01-31 by Johannes Paulmann

Conference Report by Cornelia Aust, Denise Klein, and Thomas Weller, Leibniz Institute of European History

Cross-posted from http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7527

Dress is a key marker of difference. It is closely attached to the body, part of the daily routine, and an unavoidable means of communication. The clothes people wear tell stories about their allegiances and identities but also about their exclusion and stigmatization. They allow for the display of wealth and can mercilessly display poverty and indigence. Clothes also enable people to play with identities and affinities: for instance, individuals can claim higher social status via their clothes. In many ways, dress is thus open to manipulation by the wearer and misinterpretation by the observer.

Authorities—whether religious or secular, local or regional—have always aimed at imposing order on this potential muddle. This is particularly true for the early modern era, when the world became ever more complex. In Europe, the composition of societies diversified with the emergence of new social groups and increasing migration and travel. Thanks to intensified long-distance trade and technological developments, new fashionable clothes and accessories entered the market. With the emergence of a consumer culture, it was now the case that not only the extremely wealthy could afford at least the occasional indulgence in luxury items and accessories.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APedro_de_Barberana.jpg

Diego Velázquez, Don Pedro de Barberana y Aparregui, with Calatrava Cross, 1632, commons. wikimedia.org

Over recent years, research has focused on a variety of areas related to dress and appearance in the context of early-modern political, socio-economic, and cultural transformations both within Europe and related to its entanglement with other parts of the world. Nevertheless, a significant compartmentalization in the research on dress and appearance remains: research is often organized around particular cities and territories, and much research is still framed by modern national boundaries. Thus, the conference on dress and cultural difference in early modern Europe at the Leibniz Institute of European History aimed to cross some of these boundaries. It sought to look at dress and its perception in Europe from a transcultural perspective and to highlight the many differences that clothing can express.

In her keynote lecture “The Right to Dress,” ULINKA RUBLACK (Cambridge) provided a broad overview of sumptuary laws, dress practices, and the related political changes in the early modern world. She emphasized that innovations in fashion, even before the eighteenth century, were not reserved to aristocratic elites. Small luxury items or imitations of precious fabrics allowed fashion to spread across different social groups. Rublack argued that sumptuary laws did not necessarily enshrine a new mode of ‘governmentality’ and mark a step towards modernity: instead, those protagonists interested in spreading new fashionable clothes and accessories – merchants, manufacturers, artisans, and their customers – fought for, and slowly won, their “right to dress.”

Continue reading →

European History Across Boundaries from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century

Posted on 2018-01-24 by Johannes Paulmann

PhD Workshop starts today at Mainz

The Leibniz Institute of European History has convened international PhD students to a workshop on European history across boundaries from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including Europe’s relations with the world. The Graduate Workshop 2017/18 starting today takes place in cooperation with Lyndal Roper, Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford. Early career researches working in this field present their dissertation projects and discuss the transcultural and transnational scope of their findings.

Leibniz Institute of European History: Fellowship Programme http://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/fellowships

The programm covers a range of topics that aim to cross and reflect boundaries and borders from early modern to contemporary history. Participants are:

Desiree E. Krikken (Groningen), My plot, your plat, our inhabited landscape: Early modern land surveyors and the record of European physical space
Alberto Rodríguez Martínez (Seville), Local politics and cross-border negotiations in the Low Countries (1598–1621)

Valerio Zanetti (Cambridge), Embodied Feminity in Renaissance Europe
Julia Maclachlan (Manchester),Male Homosexuality 1945–70: Transnational Scientific and Social Knowledge in British and West European contexts

Betto van Waarden (Leuven), Political Visibility: Celebrity leaders and the emerging mass press in Europe, 1895–1908
Joana Duyster Borreda (Oxford), Towards an International History of Nationalism: Performing, Remembering and Disseminating Catalan Culture Abroad

Carlos Domper Lasús (LUISS Rome), Polls without Democracy: Elections under European dictatorships during the Cold War: Spain and Portugal in a comparative framework
Mari Hauge (EUI), Another third standpoint? Scandinavian left-wing intellectuals and their Cold War

Christian Wiesner (Innsbruck), Reception and regulation of the Tridentine reforms: The Roman curia of the 16th and 17th Century and the implementation of the residential obligation of priests and bishops
Tanja Zakrzewski (Potsdam), Conversos and Moriscos: Identity and violence in Early Modern Spain

Iris Busschers (Groningen), Making Missionary Lives: Collective biography, missionary memory, and Dutch self-fashioning in the context of Reformed Missions to Dutch New Guinea and East Java, c. 1900–1949
Norman Aselmeyer (EUI), Fractured Spaces: East Africa, the Uganda railway, and patterns of disintegration, c. 1890–1914

Conveners: Gregor Feindt, Johannes Paulmann (Mainz) and Lyndal Roper (Oxford)
Venue: Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Germany
Date: 24 – 26 January 2018

The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), an independent research institution in Mainz (Germany), contributes to the history of Europe across boundaries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It fosters research on the social, political, cultural and religious dynamics in Europe from the early modern period into the twentieth century and focusses on processes of establishing, coping with and enabling difference. The IEG has a fellowship programme for PhD students, PostDoc researches and Senior Research Fellows. For further details see here.

Helsinki 1975: Détente and Human Rights in the CSCE Process

Posted on 2017-12-12 by Johannes Paulmann

New IEG open access publication “On site, in time” – Bernhard Gißibl’s entry on the CSCE process.

“On site, in time” takes a look at events that took place in European locations and that exemplify how difference and inequality were negotiated in Europe.The 60 articles depict strategies that were developed to promote, present, preserve, mitigate or abolish difference. Such strategies may include discussions, peaceful solutions and aid as well migration, mission and protest or even exclusion, war and destruction.

Cross-posted from: http://en.ieg-differences.eu/on-site-in-time/bernhard-gissibl-helsinki/

Conference diplomacy and the CSCE process (constellations)

In the history of international conference diplomacy, Helsinki symbolizes détente, cooperation, and human rights during the Cold War. The reason for this is the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), whose Final Act was signed in Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall on August 1st, 1975 by the leaders of 33 European states, the USA, and Canada.

Helmut Schmidt, Erich Honecker, Gerald Ford and Bruno Kreisky at the CSCE Summit in 1975 in Helsinki, Finland.

This initiated a dialogue and negotiation process on confidence-building measures and principles between the blocs of the Cold War, which was designated the CSCE or “Helsinki process”. At the same time, the conference location signifies the role that neutral and non-aligned countries played as catalysts, facilitators and – in the case of Finland – as intermediaries of the security conference.

Cold War and détente in Europe (differences)

The CSCE conference had its roots in the superpowers’ efforts to ease tensions in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. By the early 1970s, conditions had changed: NATO had adopted a new strategy of easing tensions (“détente”), while the Federal Republic of Germany had concluded the Eastern treaties and recognized the GDR. In July 1973, the foreign ministers of all 33 European countries (with the exception Albania), as well as the USA and Canada, were able to begin with preliminary negotiations on security and cooperation in Europe. Continue reading →

Europe Across Borders

Blog on European History, c. 1500 to the Present

Category Archives: Research Notes