Der Band enthält eine Sammlung von deutsch- und englischsprachigen Aufsätzen, die sich mit der Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards befassen, und zwar am Leitfaden der Begriffe Aneignung und Reflexion. Der Doppelsinn im Genitiv des Untertitels ist dabei durchaus beabsichtigt: Denn es geht nicht nur um die (explizite) Aneignung sowie die (implizite) Reflexion des Kierkegaard'schen Denkens in ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte, sondern auch um Vorläufer und exemplarische Quellen seines eigenen Denkens. Der Schwerpunkt in der Rekonstruktion der Rezeptionsgeschichte liegt auf den sog. pseudonymen Werken und deren Wirkung in der - vornehmlich innerdeutschen - Philosophie und Theologie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, während der Rückgang auf die Quellen primär Kierkegaards Auseinandersetzung mit einigen Hauptvertretern des (post-)hegelianischen Denkens nachzeichnet. Beide Textgruppen fördern zahlreiche überraschende, bislang unbekannte oder aber zu Unrecht marginalisierte Zusammenhänge in der Genese wie in der komplexen Wirkungsgeschichte des Kierkegaard'schen Denkens zutage.

This book is a collection of essays by prominent North American and European experts in Austrian literature concerning the Austrian playwright and author Franz Grillparzer, his relationship to various literary traditions, and his reception from the nineteenth century to the present. The chapters originated at a symposium held in February of 2003 at the University of Alberta sponsored by the University of Alberta's Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies.

The essays collected in this volume highlight the narrative as a phenomenon inherent in human nature. They examine the likely purpose of artistic and literary expression and its contribution to survival in an early human environment. They also consider the developing interest in shaping experience through the narrative, and investigate the consequent significance of traits acquired throughout the ages for the production and reception of texts. In doing so, the book provides a highly diverse overview of the latest research and debates in this innovative field of research.

Upper Silesia, one of Central Europe’s most important industrial borderlands, was at the center of heated conflict between Germany and Poland and experienced annexations and border re-drawings in 1922, 1939, and 1945. This transnational history examines these episodes of territorial re-nationalization and their cumulative impacts on the region and nations involved, as well as their use by the Nazi and postwar communist regimes to legitimate violent ethnic cleansing. In their interaction with—and mutual influence on—one another, political and cultural actors from both nations developed a transnational culture of territorial rivalry. Architecture, spaces of memory, films, museums, folklore, language policy, mass rallies, and archeological digs were some of the means they used to give the borderland a “German”/“Polish” face. Representative of the wider politics of twentieth-century Europe, the situation in Upper Silesia played a critical role in the making of history’s most violent and uprooting eras, 1939–1950.

Impressive analytical essays on the transformation of historical studies in Europe. In four impressively researched essays Georg Iggers recounts the transformation of historical studies in Europe during the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the historiography of the past fifteen years. Although the book does survey a broad area of contemporary historical thought, it is primarily a careful analytical examination of the methodological and theoretical reorientation of certain influential European historians. The first essay discusses the emergence at German Universities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the concept of history as a scientific discipline, distinct from the classical tradition of literary history, and the later broad acceptance of this mode of Enquiry in the Western world. Against this background Mr. Iggers then considers the challenge to this mode of the political, social, and intellectual upheavals of the twentieth century, especially after World War II. The three essays following examine important attempts to develop alternate paradigms for historical study: the French historians of the Annales tradition; the German political historians of the 1960s; the various Marxist historians of France, Poland, East Germany, and Great Britain. In despite of the frequent insistence by philosophers and theorists of history that history is not a science in contemporary terms, historians themselves have striven in recent years to strengthen the quantitative aspects of historical study, moving away from traditional patterns of writing and adopting methods and concepts from the systematic social sciences. Mr. Iggers' book is an excellent introduction to these contemporary changes in historiography, and in its comparative analyses itself makes a contribution to historical studies.

To reclaim a sense of hope for the future, German activists in the late twentieth century engaged ordinary citizens in innovative projects that resisted alienation and disenfranchisement. By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of crisis after the 1973 global oil shock appeared to doom dreams of a better world. The eventual victory of capitalism and, seemingly, liberal democracy relieved some fears but exchanged them for complacency and cynicism. Not, however, in West Germany. Jennifer Allen showcases grassroots activism of the 1980s and 1990s that envisioned a radically different society based on community-centered politicsÑa society in which the democratization of culture and power ameliorated alienation and resisted the impotence of end-of-history narratives. BerlinÕs History Workshop liberated research from university confines by providing opportunities for ordinary people to write and debate the story of the nation. The Green Party made the politics of direct democracy central to its program. Artists changed the way people viewed and acted in public spaces by installing objects in unexpected environments, including the Stolpersteine: paving stones, embedded in residential sidewalks, bearing the names of Nazi victims. These activists went beyond just trafficking in ideas. They forged new infrastructures, spaces, and behaviors that gave everyday people real agency in their communities. Undergirding this activism was the environmentalist concept of sustainability, which demanded that any alternative to existing society be both enduring and adaptable. A rigorous but inspiring tale of hope in action, Sustainable Utopias makes the case that it is still worth believing in human creativity and the labor of citizenship.