Abstracts

Elke Seefried, A Trailblazer for Environmental Policy. The Foreign Policy of Unified Germany and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992

 

The image of Germany as a trailblazer for environmental policy was established at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Using newly accessible sources, Elke Seefried demonstrates how Germany’s conceptions of itself and its approaches to foreign, environmental and developmental policy changed during the early 1990s. Not only Environment Minister Klaus Töpfer, but also civil society activists contributed to making sustainable development a trademark of German policy. Sustainable development had multiple meanings, but it came to stand for global responsibility and multilateral agreement. For Germany, leadership in this realm offered a strategic advantage: its growing reputation as a green pioneer helped deflect questions about the country’s involvement in military interventions. The Rio Conference thus was a motor for a new German role in world affairs.

 

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Oksana Nagornaia, Occupied Environment. Nature and Space during the First World War – Galicia and Bukovina

 

The article investigates the connection between space, the environment and war using the example of the repeated occupations of (Eastern) Galicia by Russian troops during the First World War. The tensions between trying to integrate the occupied regions into the Czarist Empire on the one hand and accommodating war-related military necessities on the other hand are of particular importance in this regard. By necessity, the environment was militarised under the conditions of industrial warfare: Forests were felled and river valleys flooded for operational reasons; additionally, the soil was contaminated by chemical warfare agents, corpses and cadavers. Fear of epidemics quickly led to the medicalisation of the occupied areas. In the process, the practice of occupation became increasingly radical, up to and including a scorched earth policy.

 

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Nikolas Dörr, Learning from Clinton? The Reception of US Social and Labor Market Policy in the Social Democratic Party of Germany

 

Hartz IV and Agenda 2010 have changed the German welfare state and triggered a two-decade-long debate about social equity. The article examines the influence of the American workfare approach during the presidency of Bill Clinton (1992–2000) on the formation and development of the new paradigm of the activating welfare state within the SPD. Nikolas Dörr shows that Clinton’s electoral successes and labor market record set an example for centre-left parties in Europe, which was ultimately reflected in the Third Way approach prominently propagated by Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Gerhard Schröder and Bodo Hombach in particular called for alignment with the US example, which led to disputes within the SPD. Even if there were ultimately only few concrete policy transfers, the article argues that the philosophy of the activating welfare state was influenced by Clinton’s social policy.

 

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Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Resilience. On the History of an Omnipresent Term – Theses on the Challenges of a Modern Contemporary History

 

Introducing the concept of resilience as a probe into contemporary history allows for its redefinition based on processes of academisation, the analytical confrontation with complex interrelations and the development of innovative research questions. Starting in the 1970s the term diffused internationally from physics to other fields, initially psychology and ecology; since the turn of the millennium, it has joined natural and life sciences as well as social and cultural studies as an interdisciplinary hinge. The term resilience also penetrated from academia into the thinking of politics, the military, the economy and child rearing. Resilience is strongly tied to a perception of multiple crises or even imminent disasters and connected with the expectation that the tipping point may be used for innovation and renewal on a scientific basis.

 

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Rainer Volk, “A Pretty Strong Piece”. Klaus Harpprecht’s Unpublished Essay on the 25th Anniversary of the 20 July 1944 Coup Attempt

 

In March 1969, an ad hoc initiative of prominent persons commissioned an essay by Klaus Harpprecht on the 25th anniversary of the 20 July 1944 coup attempt. The aim was to start a broad public debate on the resistance against Hitler. The text by the well-known publicist proved to be linguistically, historically and politically incisive. He connected topical issues such as the student revolt and German partition with the spectrum of aims and characters of those involved in the attempted coup against Hitler. However, the initiators of the project did not succeed in overcoming the scepticism of the survivors and descendants of the military resistance; the essay remained unpublished. Rainer Volk analyses the genesis and failure of Harpprecht’s text and places it in its historical context.

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