Abstracts

Thorsten Loch, Between the Culture of Memory and Politics of History. Naming Military Barracks in the Federal Republic of Germany

 

Starting from developments during the 19th century, the author turns to the phenomenon of naming military barracks. It was only during the ideological age of the 20th century that they received the names of persons, places or regions. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the naming of barracks was always connected to debates about the culture of memory in the Bundeswehr. Critics mostly disagreed with military bases named after Wehrmacht officers, as these seem to stand for continuities motivated by domestic policy concerns and a pre-democratic ethos. Against the background of this still virulent debate in the general public as well as in contemporary historiography, the article covers the period from the 19th century to 1995 and shows for the first time that the naming of barracks also needs to be seen within the context of the state politics of the Federal Republic of Germany.

 

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Federico Goddi, The Italian Occupation in Montenegro, 1941 to 1943

 

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the relationship between the Italian occupation system and Montenegrin society during the Second World War. Italian Fascism prioritized practical measures aimed above all else at establishing a new Mediterranean order. The military units that can best help to gain insight into the repressive system are the Italian “Venezia” and “Pusteria” divisions. The strategies employed by these large military units illustrate the pervasive nature of conflict within the Italian power structure. Consequently, Federico Goddi delves into various aspects of everyday life during the occupation, examining them also in the context of military repression and economic exploitation.

 

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Sabine Mecking, A Learning Police Force? Protest Policing and the Anti-Nuclear Movement in the Federal Republic of Germany

 

The anti-nuclear movement was one of the most important protest movements in West Germany, both from a social as well as a policing point of view. Even though the New Social Movements of the 20th century have already been discussed intensively, there are still open questions, especially regarding the interactions between protesters and the police as well as police reactions to social upheaval and the sometimes accompanying riots. Recent studies in the sociology of violence proceed from the assumption that concrete situations have a high degree of relevancy. Thus Sabine Mecking takes a closer look at the specific protest space and the actors present at the construction sites of nuclear facilities. This comparative analysis of police protest management at the large-scale demonstrations of the anti-nuclear movement during the 1970s and 1980s is a contribution to the histories of protest, violence and democracy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

 

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Eva Oberloskamp, Does Environmental Policy Damage the Economy? The Environmental Retreat at Castle Gymnich in 1975 and Early Ideas of Ecological Modernization in the Federal Republic of Germany

 

In 1975 Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt assembled representatives of the economy, the Federal Government and the ministerial bureaucracy for an environmental retreat at Castle Gymnich. Five years after the start of an ambitious environmental reform program, at the climax of the 1970s Energy Crisis, the aim was to discuss whether environmental policy was damaging to the economy. The article interprets the meeting as a focal point of debates on environmental policy in the Federal Republic. The concept of a positive correlation between protecting the environment and economic growth was prominently formulated here and subsequently introduced into the political discourse. On this basis, a highly influential concept of ecological modernization was established.

 

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Moritz Fischer/Thomas Schlemmer, Against the Establishment. The Zeitgeschichtliche For­schungsstelle Ingolstadt between Apologia and Research – from the Files of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History and the Federal Archives

 

The Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt (Contemporary History Research Center Ingolstadt, ZFI) is mostly forgotten, even though it continues to serve as an important trendsetter in the field of apologetic historical revisionism. Founded in 1981 under the lead of Alfred Schickel and Hellmut Diwald, the ZFI understood itself as the counter-project to the Institute for Contemporary History Munich (IfZ), which as a bastion of supposedly politically motivated historiography stood in the way of a German identity unencumbered by the shadows of the Nazi past. On the basis of sources analyzed for the first time, Moritz Fi­scher and Thomas Schlemmer provide insights into the inner workings of the ZFI, trace its conflicts with established institutions like the IfZ or the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives) and explain why the ZFI could even become a cornerstone of the “spectrum bridging conservatism and right-wing extremism” (Armin Pfahl-Traughber) during the 1980s.