Abstracts

Philipp Kröger, On the Production of Nature. Contours of a History of Shaping the Environment in Divided Germany

 

The article identifies a phenomenon which can be described as producing nature; this refers to the technical production of nature as nature. Nature was neither to be exclusively subjugated and used as a resource nor preserved from such technical access. Rather, a third form of access arose during the course of the 20th century. Using this phenomenon, Philipp Kröger traces the history of shaping nature in divided Germany and depicts how it consolidated into a program of industrialised societies after the Second World War. In this context, nature was also a social technology. By way of example, he investigates the recultivation of areas devastated by lignite mining in both German states. 

 

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Sarah Lias Ceide, Intelligence Service as a Family Affair. Johannes and Reinhard Gehlen in Italy during the Early Years of the Cold War

 

The history of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, Federal Intelligence Service) and its predecessor organisation, the Organisation Gehlen, seems to have been exhaustively researched. The same is true for the biography of Reinhard Gehlen. However, important aspects have remained underexposed during the course of the research debate about the BND founder and the establishment phase of the intelligence service, for instance the relationship between the individual and the institution. Using the example of the relationship between Reinhard Gehlen and his brother Johannes, head of the branch office of the organisation in Rome starting in 1946, Sarah Lias Ceide elucidates the interdependence of institutional and self-interest as well as that of the service and that of those serving it. She does so by pointing out the transnational dimensions of the implications of Reinhard Gehlen’s self-serving and partially nepotistic leadership style. 

 

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Fabian Weber, Armin Mohler, the New Right, and Antisemitism, 1950 to 1995

 

The West German New Right must be recognised as an intellectual stream of the extreme right which persistently attempted to connect with the conservative milieu. There were substantial points of contact in the aim of putting an end to investigations of National Socialist crimes. By way of the example of Armin Mohler and further actors, Fabian Weber shows that antisemitic topoi were at work behind the particularly aggressive deflection of guilt by this “bridge spectrum” (Armin Pfahl-Traughber) – topoi that were strategically hidden in the background. They were, however, also employed in a targeted manner when referring to individual Jews. 

 

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Christioph Nübel, “1968” and the Bundeswehr. Actions of the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition and the Crisis Management of the Federal Ministry of Defence

 

The noise of the “1968” protests reverberated in the halls of all ministries, but they were particularly audible in the West German Federal Ministry of Defence. The Außerparlamentarische Opposition (extra-parliamentary opposition) viewed the Bundeswehr as an instrument of the authoritarian state and made a concerted effort to destabilize it. The defence ministry saw a danger to the operational readiness of the forces and took countermeasures, including an initiative to reform Innere Führung (leadership development and civic education). This was controversial as it touched upon the basic pillar of the integration of the armed forces into the democratic state. The published documents highlight the beginning of the prehistory of the present, which has received limited investigation by research into the history of institutions before and after 1945. They point to differences of opinion within the ministry at a time when concepts of a state-centred democracy became less important. 

 

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