Anson Rabinbach | Princeton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Anson Rabinbach

Raphael Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide, 2017

Persoz's and Brockmeier and Rotman's articles both touch on resources and coordination as key cha... more Persoz's and Brockmeier and Rotman's articles both touch on resources and coordination as key challenges. Ed Luck, in his "Why the United Nations Underperforms at Preventing Mass Atrocities" and Ekkehard Strauss in "The UN Secretary General's Human Rights Up Front Initiative and the Prevention of Genocide: Impact, Potential, Limitations" highlight those issues as well. Luck insists that many of the UN's shortcomings arise from conceptual misunderstandings and institutional dysfunction along with capacity deficits. He also notes that the UN's emphasis on "maintaining impartiality and presence, humanitarian space and access may (sometimes) entail prioritizing the cultivation of good relations with the very regimes that may be committing or planning to commit… atrocities against their populations." He concludes with an important reminder that we are still very early in the process of learning how to curb atrocities. In one of the most far-reaching looks at the UN's Human Rights Up Front Initiative to date, Strauss traces the evolution of UN thinking about various failures to deal effectively with atrocities, touching on Bosnia and Rwanda and more recently the Sri Lanka Panel's report on UN missteps. He characterizes the Human Rights Up Front Initiative as an internal UN action plan aimed at introducing "a cultural change within the UN, an operational change to bring the three pillars of the UN Charter (i.e. development, peace, and security, human rights) closer together, and a change to UN engagement with its member states." Strauss stresses that the Initiative is primarily a prevention tool that "aims to strengthen the link between early-warning and early-action." It is based on "a general recognition that human rights violations" can be "an early indicator of a deteriorating situation and that field presences can observe changing events and discuss them with their counterparts on the ground." To my knowledge, human rights has not heretofore figured prominently in most of the mainstream quantitative modeling efforts that aim to rank countries in terms of atrocity risk. Intuitively, this has never made sense to me. Regardless of whether the issue has been a data problem or a modeling issue, I suspect Strauss would agree that finding better ways to systematically and more dynamically integrate human rights information into our efforts at early warning of mass atrocities should yield important returns. David Frank in his "The Reduction of Mass Atrocity Crimes in East Asia: The Evolving Norms of ASEAN's Prevention Mechanisms" and Matthew Levinger in "Forging Consensus For Atrocity Prevention, Assessing the Record of the OSCE" shed renewed light on the value and importance of norms at a time when so many of what have long been considered established rules of international relations are being cast in doubt. While highlighting Myanmar's treatment of its Rohingya population as a bright red exception, Frank notes the dramatic reduction in the incidence of mass atrocity crimes in East Asia over the past forty years. He argues that some of the change can be attributed to such "structural developments" as a decrease in the use of mass atrocities as a tool of war, rising incomes, and the spread of democracy, but his main focus is on the impact of the global community's development of new norms like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and their surprisingly rapid adoption by ASEAN and its member states. Matthew Levinger's essay on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) provides something of a more cautionary tale in comparison to Frank's ASEAN piece. Levinger traces the evolution of the CSCE to what is now the OSCE along with its rules and institutions. He rightly lauds the accomplishments attributable to the generally quiet efforts of parts of the organization like the office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM), but notes the impact that the evolution of NATO and the EU, and most importantly the strained relations between Russia and the US, have had on the OSCE's ability to play the type of role that originally was envisaged. He concludes that for OSCE to get back on track and "play a more robust role in enhancing human security in Eurasia," the organization will need to find a way to begin "rebuilding the normative consensus between its Eastern and Western participating states." Finally, in their essay entitled "Improving Intervention Decisions To Prevent Genocide: Less Muddle, More Structure," decision scientists Robin Gregory, Michael Harstone, and Paul Slovic draw on multidisciplinary research in decision analysis and psychology to offer "a general approach to assessing genocide prevention decisions" that they believe could provide decision makers with insight into how to construct more defensible intervention policies, linking proposed actions to national values in a manner that is both consistent and efficient. The authors readily concede that no decision-aiding framework can or should "make" the tough choices required of

The American Historical Review, 1995

... Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Macrakis, Kristie. Surviving the swastika ... more ... Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Macrakis, Kristie. Surviving the swastika : scientific research in Nazi Germany / Kristie Macrakis. ... I am also grateful to the director Eckart Henning, to Marion Kazemi, Klaus Schulz, Dagmar Klenke, and Andreas K. Walther. ...

German Ideologies Since 1945, 2003

In March 1944, Allied bombers destroyed the house of Johann Wolfgang Goethe in the Hirschgraben i... more In March 1944, Allied bombers destroyed the house of Johann Wolfgang Goethe in the Hirschgraben in Frankfurt am Main along with most of the city. Shortly after the German surrender on May 8, 1945, at a time when one might expect other concerns to take precedence, a heated and protracted debate over what to do about the venerable site was already in full swing. On one side of the controversy were the noted architects of the German Werkbund who saw the loss of the original house as an opportunity for a new building in a more appropriately modern style. On the other were the city fathers and Goethe enthusiasts who believed that the house should be rebuilt exactly as it had been. The year 1949 was soon approaching, the two-hundredth anniversary of Goethe’s birth, and the city fathers feared that the historic edifice would not be ready in time for the celebration. As the left-wing Catholic intellectual Walter Dirks wrote at the time: “The enthusiasm of the friends of this honorable site and their concern over the rescue and restoration of this until then long-preserved piece of memory pressed for a rapid decision.” So it was decided: The Goethe house would be rebuilt unchanged according to the original architectural plans on the old site. On the fifth of July 1947, the cornerstone was laid. For Dirks the decision to reconstruct the old Goethe house was an event not of local but of national significance. Like post-war Germany, Dirks bitterly observed, it was to be rebuilt “as if nothing had occurred.”1

In 1940 Walter Benjamin - prophetically - imagined history as an apocalyptic tempest roaring towa... more In 1940 Walter Benjamin - prophetically - imagined history as an apocalyptic tempest roaring towards the present. In his most famous allegory, Benjamin invoked an angel whose glance is directed backwards towards "one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage." Where we perceive only continuity, a chain of events, Benjamin's angel envisaged a "storm blowing from paradise."' Many years later, Adorno compared the impact of Auschwitz on philosophy in the nineteenth century to that of the Lisbon earthquake two hundred years earlier. The first catastrophe of nature called into question the theodicy of Leibniz, the second, the catastrophe of history, the theodicy of Hegel.2 For the first time perhaps, the catastrophic political event becomes the insurmountable horizon of philosophical reflection against which any account of Western thought would have to be measured. The wreckage, as Benjamin foresaw, required more than a mop-up operation. At t...

Critique of the German Intelligentsia, 1993

Critique of the German Intelligentsia is simultaneously a historical document and a provocation. ... more Critique of the German Intelligentsia is simultaneously a historical document and a provocation. A passionate indictment of the German intelligentsia for its chauvinism in the First World War, the Critique is also an extraordinary instance of the messianic politics that inaugurated our epoch. Above all, it is the consummate performance of an extraordinary career that, in only a few years, took Ball from Munich's expressionist avant-garde to the founding of Dada in Zurich, to theological anarchism and antiwar politics in Bern, and, only a year and a half later, to the spiritual refuge of the Catholic faith. First published in January 1919, the Critique is on one level a historical account of how German religion and philosophy conspired with dynastic absolutism and militarism to produce the disastrous betrayal of August 1914. But in esoteric counterpoint to this prosaic and critical dimension is Ball's theological politics. On this level the book culminates in an apocalyptic vision in which Bakuninist anarchism, French romantic poetry, and chiliastic revolt all combine to restore the originary ideal of Christian justice sacrificed to throne and altar. Catastrophe and anticipation thus fuel the Critique's mood of rhetorical urgency and its ultimate desire for a final conflagration of the German "spirit" that would usher in a new order of things. Reading it from the perspective of German unification and the

Political Symbolism in Modern Europe, 2020

Revue d�Histoire de la Shoah, 2008

Raphael Lemkin and the concept of genocide“Genocide” is a word coined in 1943 to describe what Wi... more Raphael Lemkin and the concept of genocide“Genocide” is a word coined in 1943 to describe what Winston Churchill famously called a “crime without a name”. Its emergence and reception is historically specific to the last years of the World War. The often contested term “genocide” was created by Raphael Lemkin on the basis of his personal and intellectual experiences in the Holocaust and his flight from Warsaw where he served as State Prosecutor until 1939. Consequently he meant the term to bridge both the murder of European Jewry and the destruction of the Polish nation. His influential book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), where the word first appeared, describes the events of 1933-1943, and reveals how Lemkin’s attempt to find “one generic concept” to legally criminalize mass murder derived from the events of those years proved difficult to generalize later. This article also explains why the United States government feared ratifying the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Crime of Genocide because of its use in American racial politics during the Cold War.

New German Critique, 2017

In early 2012 German officials investigating violations of tax law discovered a trove of mainly n... more In early 2012 German officials investigating violations of tax law discovered a trove of mainly nineteenth-and early twentieth-century European paintings and drawings in the Munich apartment and Salzburg house of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of the prominent art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. The elder Gurlitt had worked for the Nazis but also counted a number of artists despised by them among his friends. Since then, the story of the Gurlitt collection has made headlines worldwide. Beyond the bizarre obsession of the aging son, who lived with and for his artworks hidden from public view, the case raises fundamental questions about the role of art dealers during and after the Third Reich, the mechanics of a largely secretive and insufficiently documented market in looted art, the complicity of art historians and business associations, the shortcomings of postwar denazification, the failure of courts and governments to adjudicate claims, and the unwillingness of museums to determine the provenance not just of Cornelius Gurlitt's holdings but of

impossible, though the extant manuscripts establish the main lines of responsibility for the book... more impossible, though the extant manuscripts establish the main lines of responsibility for the book's distinct sections. According to Schmid Noerr, drafts found in either Horkheimer's or Adorno's papers make it reasonably certain that the Introduction, "The Concept of Enlightenment," "Excursus IL" or "Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality" were largely drafted by Horkheimer, while the Excursus I on "Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment," and chapter on "The Culture Industry" were Adorno's responsibility. ' The "Notes and Drafts" are exclusively Horkheimer's while the "Elements of Anti-Semitism" can be attributed to Adorno, with the collaboration of Leo Liiwenthal, though thesis "VII" which was written solely for the 1947 edition, was principally ~orkheimer's.~ Despite the reliability of this archival evidence, there is still considerable controversy over the authorship of the first chapter. Robert Hullot-Kentor, for example, "casts doubt on Horkheimer's primacy in its composition. With few edceptions, there are no comparable lines in the rest of Horkheimer's work' neither before nor after did he formulate such compelling idea^."^ Though obviously partisan to Adorno, his assertion is not entirely inconsistent with Rolf Tiedemann's account, attributed to Adorno himself, that both authors dictated "The Concept of Enlightenment."' Oral testimony and stylistic clues must, as Schmid Noerr acknowledges, also be taken into account and joint authorship is further attested to by the fact that the recorded discussions between Horkheimer and Adomo in early 1939 bear most heavily on this chapter.' At the time, Horkheimer described his work-habits to Paul Tillich as follows: "in the morning a short walk with Pollock, then directly after, based on rather methodical study, I write notes and drafts, and in the afternoon I see (at least) Teddie, in order to finalize the finished text."9

New German Critique, 2008

The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror, published in Paris in August 1933, was mo... more The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror, published in Paris in August 1933, was more than a book. It was a staged event and the center of an international campaign that convinced much of the world that the Nazis had conspired to burn the Reichstag as the pretext to establishing a dictatorship. The campaign around the Brown Book and the trial of Georgi Dimitrov and the other defendants in Leipzig from September to December 1933 was so skillfully managed that it persuaded many observers outside Germany as well as reputable historians until the 1960s that the fire was the work of a Nazi conspiracy. 1 Not until 1959-60, when the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel published a five-part series based on the research of the nonacademic historian Fritz Tobias, were the Brown Book's falsifications and misrepresentations exposed. A few years later most professional historians were persuaded that Tobias's research was sound-the Brown Book had been discredited (at least in the Federal Republic of Germany), and the thesis of a "lone" arsonist widely accepted. During the past three decades a number of challenges to the details presented in Tobias's research have been mounted, though

New German Critique, 1988

Bitburg and the Historikerstreit are the most recent reminders that the Nazi past continues to re... more Bitburg and the Historikerstreit are the most recent reminders that the Nazi past continues to resonate in contemporary West German poli- tics. The topos of the "singularity" of the Holocaust in these highly public confrontations with the past demonstrates, moreover, that the ...

Le Mouvement social, 1980

For those of us who knew him, Georges Haupt's most enduring legacy will be his extraordinary... more For those of us who knew him, Georges Haupt's most enduring legacy will be his extraordinary personal warmth, his energy and his excitement. He had a remarkable ability to spark, to fertilize and to create links across the globe. For him the history of the labor movement was never ...

The Journal of Modern History, 2005

Journal of Contemporary History, 1978

... DOI: 10.1177/002200947801300209 1978; 13; 337 Journal of Contemporary History Anson Rabinbach... more ... DOI: 10.1177/002200947801300209 1978; 13; 337 Journal of Contemporary History Anson Rabinbach Movement 1931-32 Politics and Pedagogy: The Austrian Social Democratic Youth http://jch.sagepub.com The online version of this article can be found at: ... Anson Rabinbach ...

International Labor and Working-Class History, 1993

In the beginning was the Theory. Even before the collapse of Soviet communism, the glow of Marxis... more In the beginning was the Theory. Even before the collapse of Soviet communism, the glow of Marxism in American (and European) universities was beginning to dim. Now we look back on our own investment in Marxism, not always with satisfaction. At best, the theory did not so much fail historians, as historians, in their efforts to redress the lacunae in the theory, wrote around it to the extent that theory ultimately became marginal to their enterprise. This is hardly surprising since Marxism, having given up pretense to science by the mid-1960s, became largely a critical theory in the sense that its main sources were European thinkers – Gramsci, Adorno, Foucault, Althusser – who sought to repair the crumbling walls and beams remaining from the wreckage of Stalinism.

International Labor and Working-Class History, 1990

International Labor and Working-Class History, 1984

International Labor and Working-Class History, 1994

Ira's paper begins with an apparent paradox: He agrees with William Sewell's statement th... more Ira's paper begins with an apparent paradox: He agrees with William Sewell's statement that labor history is not in crisis, and yet, the remarkable historical occurrences and the powerful methodological and epistemological challenges of the past decade have produced nothing less than “labor history's loss of élan, directionality, and intellectual purpose.” These developments are so serious that labor historians are encouraged to undertake a dramatic departure from the well-trod methodological and thematic pathways of labor history.Marxism, which in varying guises was hegemonic in our discipline for at least two decades, has all but collapsed under the double pressure of events and theoretical challenges. Its political project is undermined by a disappearing working class, a declining welfare state, and the end of European communism, its theoretical preeminence shaken by new deconstructive and Foucauldian approaches. These approaches have questioned the timelessness and s...