Abstracts

Katharina Stengel, A Jewish Voice in Court. International Jewish Organisations and the Establishment of Private Accessory Prosecutions in Trials for Nazi Crimes

 

The possibilities of victims of the National Socialist reign of terror to influence West German criminal proceedings against Nazi perpetrators were very limited, as they had to comply with the strictly formalised requirements of the criminal justice system in their role as witnesses. Since the 1950s, Jewish organisations thus tried to gain more influence in the trials via private accessory prosecutions and thereby to clearly articulate their demands. Katharina Stengel traces the at times controversial discussions within the international Jewish organisations, investigates the importance of the accessory prosecution in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial and a number of other Nazi trials and discusses the important but little known support of Jewish organisations in the preparation of trials.

 

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Conrad Lay, A Nazi Ideologue as a “Particular Stroke of Luck”. The Long Continuities of Karl Epting

 

Karl Epting was one of the most important leaders of intellectual collaboration in occupied Paris between 1940 and 1944. Like his friend, ambassador Otto Abetz, Epting, who was seen as the éminence grise of German-French cultural relations, also transformed from a seemingly harmless Francophile to a racist Nazi ideologue. Epting’s life is marked by a double continuity: first the integration of a Pietistic missionary’s son into the Nazi regime and subsequently the effortless integration of a convinced National Socialist and aggressive anti-Semite into post-war society. During the 1960s, Epting’s employment, by then as director of a classical grammar school (humanistisches Gymnasium), was even considered a “particular stroke of luck”.

 

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Robert Wolff, Blind Spots, Stories, Myths. New Perspectives on the Entebbe Aircraft Hijacking of 1976

 

Next to the attempted attack on the Jewish community building in West-Berlin on 9 November 1969, the aircraft hijacking to Entebbe in the summer of 1976 is often considered as the worst act of anti-Semitic violence by West German left-wing terrorists. Robert Wolff argues for a critical re-assessment of the whole Entebbe complex in light of perspectives and sources which have been neglected despite their importance for an overall understanding of the event. On the basis of hitherto mostly unknown documents, he analyses the prehistory of the airplane hijacking as well as the events in Entebbe between 27 June and 4 July 1976.

 

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Craig Griffiths, “Gay Equals Left?” Conservatism in Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany and the United States

 

The history of gay liberation in the 1970s has primarily been told through the prism of radical or left-alternative activists, focusing on groups like the Gay Liberation Front in New York or the Homosexual Action West Berlin. Complicating this narrative, this article analyses cultures of conservatism in male homosexual politics, comparing the Federal Republic with the United States in the 1970s. Craig Griffiths zooms in on discourses of responsibility and caution while focusing on the identifications of some gay men as ordinary and sensible and their rejection of confrontation and flamboyance. In doing so, he shows that concepts such as liberation, emancipation or even gay power have no fixed meanings, far less meanings that are inherently radical or conservative.

 

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Maximilian Kutzner, The Institute for Contemporary History and the Forged Hitler Diaries Affair of 1982/83

 

The publication of the forged Hitler diaries in April 1983 resulted in intense discussions among West German historians. Could the diaries actually be genuine? Even before publication, the In­stitut für Zeitgeschichte (IfZ) was in touch with leading protagonists of the subsequent scan­dal. In the phase between the announcement of the find and the uncovering of the forgery, complex processes of self-localisation occurred within the Instituteʼs leadership. Documents from the IfZ archive reveal that the forged diaries also were a touchstone for the social role of contemporary history and its leading representatives.