Examines the origins, outbreak and early campaigns of the First World War in Central and Eastern Europe to reconstruct the experiences, changes in minds, behaviour and habits of people, uniformed or not, males and females, from multiple nations located in an imagined triangle between Helsinki, Bucharest and Vienna.
This volume highlights the specific experiences and challenges of modernity in twentieth-century Eastern and Central Europe. Contributors ask how spatial and temporal conditions shaped the region’s transformation from a rural to an urban, industrialized society in this period and investigate the state’s role in the mastery of space, particularly in the context of state socialism. The volume also sheds light on the ruralization of cities and mutual perceptions of the rural and urban populations in this region.
Der Auftakt-Band der Reihe „Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert“ versammelt die Beiträge der gleichnamigen Tagung, mit der das Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena im Sommer 2011 seine Tätigkeit aufgenommen hat. Er diskutiert historische, politische, filmische und museale Zugänge zu den Erfahrungen des östlichen Europas im 20. Jahrhundert und fragt danach, welche geschichtskulturellen Herausforderungen sich daraus für eine gesamteuropäische Erinnerung ergeben. Die Bandbreite der internationalen Beiträger aus Wissenschaft, Museen, Publizistik, Kunst und Politik spiegelt die Relevanz der Forschungsthemen des Kollegs: Wlodzimierz Borodziej (Warschau/Jena), Jan Culík (Glasgow), Taja Vovk van Gaal/Constanze Itzel (Brüssel), Volkhard Knigge (Weimar), Pawel Machcewicz (Warschau/Danzig), Jiri Menzel (Prag), Adam Michnik (Warschau), Joachim von Puttkamer (Jena), Milan Ristovic (Belgrad), Irina Scherbakowa (Moskau), Maria Todorova (Urbana Champaign), Stefan Troebst (Leipzig)
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 dramatically tells the largely unknown story of the Warsaw resistance movement during World War II. Desperate to free themselves from German military oppression but also hoping to show the advancing Soviets that they could not impose easy rule upon the citizens of Warsaw, the Poles launched an almost hopeless attack against the Germans on August 1, 1944. Wlodzimierz Borodziej presents an evenhanded account of what is commonly considered the darkest chapter in Polish history during World War II. In only sixty-three days, the Germans razed Warsaw to the ground and 200,000 people, mostly civilians, lost their lives. The result—a heroic and historically pivotal turning point—meant that the Poles would lose both their capital and an entire generation. This concise account of the trauma—little known to English-speaking readers—will appeal to anyone interested in the history of World War II in general and is a must-read for students of Polish history in particular.