The National-Socialist-led German school in Stockholm 1941-1945: an institution of cultural propaganda (original) (raw)
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European Review of History / revue européenne d'histoire, 2013
This paper explores the tensions which arose when Schulpforta, Germany's leading humanistic boarding school, was forcibly turned into a Nazi elite school (a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt, or Napola). The time-honoured traditions of Christianity and enlightened humanism previously cultivated at the erstwhile Landesschule zur Pforta (alma mater of Fichte, Ranke and Nietzsche) were swiftly subordinated to the demands of National Socialist ideology. Schulpforta, a former monastic foundation, was radically dechristianised, and the school's Classical curriculum soon served only to emphasise those aspects of Greco-Roman Antiquity which could ‘help the Third Reich achieve its destiny’, portraying the Greeks and Romans as proto-National Socialists, pure Aryan ancestors of the modern German race. The Napola curriculum focused on sport and pre-military training over academic excellence, and contemporary documentary evidence, memoirs and newly obtained eyewitness testimony all suggest that the Napola administration wished to assimilate Pforta with any other Napola. This idea is borne out by comparing the case of Napola Ilfeld, a former Klosterschule (monastery school) with a similar history. By the mid-1940s, Ilfeld had lost almost all connection with its humanistic past. Ultimately, we can see the erosion and Nazification of these schools' Christian and humanistic traditions as exemplifying in microcosm tendencies which were prevalent throughout the Third Reich.
Theatre Journal, 2007
has published in numerous scholarly journals and books. His most recent book is Schikaneders heroisch-komische Oper Der Stein der Weisen (2002, with Manuela Jahrmärker). In 1998 he was named UNI Distinguished Scholar and received the Donald N. McKay Research Award. Hana Worthen is a PhD candidate in theatre research at the University of Helsinki and a fellow in the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Theatre and Drama at the University of Michigan. She works on modern dance, racial ideologies, and performative culture in the Third Reich. We wish to thank W. B. Worthen for valuable advice and illuminating conversation on a late draft of this article, and Frank-Manuel Peter for his help in locating the program materials and useful comments. We would also like to thank Stephan Dörschel from the Archiv Darstellende Kunst of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, for his invaluable assistance in tracking down photographic permissions. All translations are made by the authors; although Theatre Journal style does not permit us to provide the original version of all translated passages, the editors have graciously allowed us to provide them for comparison when it seemed particularly essential. 1 On the RMVP, its cultural divisions and policies, see Alan E. Steinweiss, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 2 "The German Theatre and its Tasks" was delivered before a group of German stage directors and published in part as "Das deutsche Theater und seine Aufgaben,"
Ideology in Movement and a Movement in Ideology: The Deutsche Tanzfestspiele 1934
BRILL eBooks, 2007
has published in numerous scholarly journals and books. His most recent book is Schikaneders heroisch-komische Oper Der Stein der Weisen (2002, with Manuela Jahrmärker). In 1998 he was named UNI Distinguished Scholar and received the Donald N. McKay Research Award. Hana Worthen is a PhD candidate in theatre research at the University of Helsinki and a fellow in the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Theatre and Drama at the University of Michigan. She works on modern dance, racial ideologies, and performative culture in the Third Reich. We wish to thank W. B. Worthen for valuable advice and illuminating conversation on a late draft of this article, and Frank-Manuel Peter for his help in locating the program materials and useful comments. We would also like to thank Stephan Dörschel from the Archiv Darstellende Kunst of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, for his invaluable assistance in tracking down photographic permissions. All translations are made by the authors; although Theatre Journal style does not permit us to provide the original version of all translated passages, the editors have graciously allowed us to provide them for comparison when it seemed particularly essential. 1 On the RMVP, its cultural divisions and policies, see Alan E. Steinweiss, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 2 "The German Theatre and its Tasks" was delivered before a group of German stage directors and published in part as "Das deutsche Theater und seine Aufgaben,"
Central European History, 2014
Even more significant was the struggle over the interpretation of the National Socialist past. Bill Niven addresses this issue in one of the collection's standout chapters. This debate over the past was hardly an "academic" affair: at stake was the issue of the legitimacy of one regime and the illegitimacy of the other. Each side sought to associate itself with the antifascist traditions and actors of Germany's recent past. Each sought to "mire the other in allegations that it embodied the bad German traditions" (49-50) that had brought about the Nazi dictatorship, and was thus illegitimate. Niven speaks of the "sideways gaze" with which Germans on both sides of the divide looked at the Nazi past during the period he investigates. Looking "East or West respectively for the guilty party" (59) was much less difficult, he argues, than looking backward. If looking backward presented problems, looking forward was no less fraught with challenges, especially in the East. Patrick Major's fascinating chapter on the precensorship of science fiction literature in East Germany portrays a complicated relationship among official censors, writers, publishers, and an international community of science fiction authors and readers. Out of this came, over time, a surprising degree of latitude for sci-fi authors in the East. Also surprising was the extent to which West German film became a staple in the East German market, as demonstrated in Rosemary Stott's chapter on West German film import in the GDR. After all, as she notes, "at an official level, the FRG was (with the possible exception of the United States) the most mistrusted of all the western film-producing nations" (164). The West Germans did not, it seems, have the same appetite for film from the East-a clear instance of the symmetrical entanglement that is the main focus of most, if not all, of the contributions in this collection of essays that originated at a symposium.
2016
This paper discerns and describes how two dictatorships-Nazi German and Soviet-used schools and classroom culture, to propagandize its political ideology and agenda. It reveals those elements of classroom culture (symbols, rituals, traditions, a/o) that are emotionally most sensitive and, thus, most appropriate for the purposes of political propaganda. This case study focuses on the Latvian experience from 1940 to 1956 when political regimes in this country changed three times. Classroom culture in Latvia was questioned through the focus of propaganda following such questions: 1) What does a totalitarian power find to be important in classroom culture for the development of propaganda policies? Who are the main heroes and who are the second ones in propaganda? 2) Did propaganda really penetrate into daily life as it was expected by authorities? How was the classroom adapted to the interests of political power in reality? 3) How can we assess effectiveness of propaganda over the cour...
in «Glocalism», 2, 2021
This essay aims to investigate the connection between a local archive and global history, with a glocal perspective in a school environment. The work will deal with the archive of a high school in Milan, Italy, and examine how this community, with its principal, teachers and students, looked at (and was involved with) international events between 1935 and 1945. This was the period when fascist Italy declared war on Ethiopia and took part in the Second World War in its quest for an Empire and, later, for a new role in a Nazi-ruled Europe. Fascist foreign policy, which meant "war policy" in that period, and the way the Italian schools dealt with it became part of the totalitarian design of the regime. Changes in the local perspective regarding international events reflect changes in the regime's political agenda.