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While I was compiling this blog series, we as a global population have left a pandemic behind us, triggered by the Covid 19 virus, and are continuing to experience the threat of the effects of climate change, which are becoming more apparent day by day. The war in the Ukraine and the war in Gaza…

In the last blogs we discussed how the human tendency to experience ourselves as connected to one another can be disrupted by traumatic memories and how this disruption leads to a distorted view that legitimizes violence based on fear. We also observed how this view has become established within European history and has enabled oppression,…

As we saw in the second part of this blog series, the violence of German National Socialism was made possible by the fact that a loss of connection existed on many levels and increased over a long period of time. The emotional needs that arose as a result could be ideologically seized upon and politically…

‘We need future-oriented perspectives, which do not deny the traumas of the past but transform them into possibilities for the present’ Braidotti 2006 In the first part of this blog series, we examined trauma and trauma-like experiences by referring to neurobiological, psychotherapeutic and sociological studies to illustrate how violence is made possible by a person’s…

‘Anyone who claims that Germany was “unprepared” for Hitler’s rise to power is resisting attempts to see this event as the logical climax of German history’  (Wer behauptet, Deutschland sei auf Hitlers Machtübernahme „nicht vorbereitet” gewesen, wehrt sich gegen Versuche, in diesem Ereignis den logischen Höhepunkt der deutschen Geschichte zu sehen) (Mosse, 1979) In previous…

Still from the film Das Vermächtnis Socio-political background According to Pulzer, the rapid growth of the German economy, the empire’s competition with other European states for colonies, the development of an aggressive program of military expansion, and a series of diplomatic crises had led to a tense international atmosphere in 1914. When Germany became involved…

Socio-political background Following Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the German Confederation was formed, a loose association of 39 states, of which the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire were the largest. Pulzer describes how the emergence of an organised liberal movement demanding constitutional reform and greater national cohesion led to revolutions in 1848, which were…

Watercolour by Denis Dighton, 1815 Socio-political background The Thirty Years’ War left the German-speaking principalities under the influence and control of France, which promoted the sovereignty of the German princes and their establishment of autocratic regimes (Reinhardt, 1950). The ideas of princely absolutism, which built on the concept of inequality formulated by Aristotle several hundred…

Die Schlacht am Weissen Berg, 1620 Socio-political background The split in the religious unity of Europe initiated by Luther in 1517 led to a local uprising of Bohemian Calvinists against the Catholic Habsburgs in 1618, which turned into a European war with religious and imperial motivations. Reinhardt describes how rivaling principalities of different denominations called…

Painting by Max Lingner 1951-1955 The Peasant War 1524-1525 In this part of the blog series I will refer to events in German history that can be described as social crises because they had a negative impact on the sense of social and societal belonging. To do this, I will first outline the socio-historical background…