Abstracts

Isabel Heinemann, The “Hereditarily Healthy” Family as a Transatlantic Project. Paul B. Popenoe, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer and the Continuities of Eugenics, 1920 to 1970

 

The author investigates eugenic marriage and family counselling as a transatlantic history of entanglement using the example of two social experts, the US eugenics pioneer and family counsellor Paul B. Popenoe and the leading Nazi race hygienist and later full professor for Human Genetics in Münster, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. In a longer perspective from the 1920s to the 1970s, the Nazi period does not mark a caesura. Rather, knowledge was mobilised on both sides of the Atlantic in order to protect the family as the foundation of the nation from the impositions of modernity. The primary sources the article is based on encompass scientific texts, guidebooks, correspondence, institutional files and a hitherto unused archival collection of patient and counselling files.

 

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Gunnar Take, Corruption, Patronage and Justice in the Adenauer Era. The “Loan Car Affair”, 1958 to 1960

 

In the young Federal Republic, the course was set as to which practices would hitherto be considered as corrupt. The “loan car affair” as both bribery and judicial scandal contributed to this development. It involved central actors of the “Chancellor Democracy”, Konrad Adenauer and his personal aide Hans Kilb, as well as Daimler-Benz, a symbol of the “economic miracle”, as the car lender. The granted and received benefits exemplified at the centre of power were defended with elaborate PR. This led to social acceptance for practices which strongly deviated from the wording of pertinent laws and regulations. It became possible not least because of political interventions in the judicial process.

 

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Bodo Mrozek/Doubravka Olšáková, The “Cat Droppings Stench Affair”. Cross-Border Conflicts about Smell between the Federal Republic, the ČSSR and the GDR, 1976 to 1989

 

While the recent sensory turn of contemporary history has increasingly dealt with images and sounds, smells so far play a minor role. However, foul odours connected with industrial and agricultural immissions repeatedly led to political conflicts. Using the so-called Katzendreckgestank or “cat droppings stench”, which was first recorded in the 1970s, the article shows how conflicts regarding smell could result in cross-border complications. For more than ten years this affair strained relations between the ČSSR, the Federal Republic and the GDR. Bodo Mrozek and Doubravka Olšáková analyse how smells were technically measured, how they were politicised against the background of the Cold War and finally how they were practically tackled with by international cooperation in view of détente.

 

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Thorsten Holzhauser/Paul Treffenfeldt, Democratisation by Electoral Exclusion? The Debate about the Electoral Rights of Former National Socialists in the West German Parliamentary Council

 

In 1948/49 the Parliamentary Council was not only charged with writing a new constitution, but also enacted the electoral law for the first election of the Bundestag. One of the most contentious topics among the deputies was the question whether persons incriminated by association with National Socialism should receive full voting rights or be excluded from the vote. The discussions about the electoral exclusion of former National Socialists have hitherto hardly been covered by research. The present article intends to demonstrate how these debates reveal fundamental questions regarding the understanding of democracy at the time. They show how discourses concerning guilt, responsibility and incrimination related to questions about democracy and equality during the post-war period.

 

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Daniel Siemens, Justification and Self-Elevation after the “Night of the Long Knives”. The Notes of SA Chief of Staff Viktor Lutze, 1934 to 1943

 

After the murder of Ernst Röhm on 1 July 1934, Adolf Hitler named Viktor Lutze as new Chief of Staff of the Sturmabteilung (SA), a position which he held until his accidental death in 1943. Already in the summer of 1934 he set about recording political notes, which – depending on the entry and period – fluctuate between diary, monthly review and autobiography. Excerpts of this important autobiographical source by a high-ranking Nazi politician are published here for the first time. They are contextualised in an extensive introduction. The document reveals the strategic considerations of the Chief of Staff and highlights the problems of the organisation in the framework of the polycratic Nazi state. Lutze’s description of events between late June and mid-July 1934 is also one of the most important sources for the history of the Röhmaktion.