Following World War II, German antifascists and nationalists in Buenos Aires believed theater was crucial to their highly politicized efforts at community-building, and each population devoted considerable resources to competing against its rival onstage. Competing Germanies tracks the paths of several stage actors from European theaters to Buenos Aires and explores how two of Argentina's most influential immigrant groups, German nationalists and antifascists (Jewish and non-Jewish), clashed on the city's stages. Covered widely in German- and Spanish-language media, theatrical performances articulated strident Nazi, antifascist, and Zionist platforms. Meanwhile, as their thespian representatives grappled onstage for political leverage among emigrants and Argentines, behind the curtain, conflicts simmered within partisan institutions and among theatergoers. Publicly they projected unity, but offstage nationalist, antifascist, and Zionist populations were rife with infighting on issues of political allegiance, cultural identity and, especially, integration with their Argentine hosts. Competing Germanies reveals interchange and even mimicry between antifascist and nationalist German cultural institutions. Furthermore, performances at both theaters also fit into contemporary invocations of diasporas, including taboos and postponements of return to the native country, connections among multiple communities, and forms of longing, memory, and (dis)identification. Sharply divergent at first glance, their shared condition as cultural institutions of emigrant populations caused the antifascist Free German Stage and the nationalist German Theater to adopt parallel tactics in community-building, intercultural relationships, and dramatic performance. Its cross-cultural, polyglot blend of German, Jewish, and Latin American studies gives Competing Germanies a wide, interdisciplinary academic appeal and offers a novel intervention in Exile studies through the lens of theater, in which both victims of Nazism and its adherents remain in focus.

News from Germany traces why Germans became interested in international communications around 1900 and how they sought to control it for the next 45 years. They used new communications technologies, like wireless and radio, and they used the central businesses of news supply - news agencies. An astonishing array of German politicians, industrialists, military generals, and journalists became obsessed with news. At home, a news agency helped to start the Weimar Republic; competition over news agencies helped to usher in the Weimar Republic's demise. Abroad, news from Germany reached around the world and was surprisingly successful in places as far-flung as China and Chile. Although news is often seen as part of soft power, Germans used it to achieve hard power aims. Communications infrastructure and information became crucial parts of power politics. The Nazis seemed to be the master propagandists, but their efforts built on decades of German obsessions with news.--

The German banking system is characterized by high fragmentation, low profitability and low foreign ownership. Main reason for this is its particular structure that can best be described as forced segmentation. This structure produces local banking markets. The book argues that local bank competition is not as pronounced as national concentration ratios predict and presents a bank pricing study which indicates that local banks, banks located in less densely populated areas and less productive banks tend to charge higher prices for retail bank services than banks that operate nationally. These results as well as lessons drawn from international reforms suggest that the German banking system could benefit from cross-pillar consolidation which promises to export competition from the national to local banking markets. Last but not least, the book analyzes political economy implications of banking reforms and provides suggestions on status quo resolution by identifying ways to facilitate reform implementation in the German banking system.

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Within the last few years, dramatic changes took and still take place in the retail banking business. On the supply-side competition for cooperative banks is increasing due to various reasons. New competitors with different business models have entered the market. There is no doubt that they pose a serious threat to cooperative universal banks (which were the focus of this dissertation) and whose market share is declining constantly. Furthermore, non-banks and near-banks have to be considered in this respect, too, as these entities' business models are increasingly targeting customers of universal banks. On the demand side, changing customer behavior has accelerated transformation processes in recent years. An increased willingness to change suppliers can be noticed as consumers are placing more and more importance on price. A strong price awareness is changing market conditions in many business sectors in Germany. Decreasing customer loyalty forces universal banks to push sales activities and to intensify their personal relationship with the customer. The main objectives of this dissertation are the following: Work out a strategy within today s typical structure as a universal bank. Identify key success factors and evaluate this strategy for its chances for success. Derive the consequences for the future business model of a cooperative bank. Determine the change steps necessary to strengthen the competitiveness. Furthermore, the prerequisites of such a change process will have to be worked out. An inductive approach was chosen to achieve the aims of this thesis (Gill & Johnson). Firstly, an in-depth analysis of existing literature was carried out in order to gain an overview on current developments such as a) customer behaviour, and b) the competitive situation of the financial services sector. The results were to produce not only an explanation for current trends but also allow the prediction of future trends over the course of the next years. The environment in which cooperative banks are operating was described in detail. This approach provides a good basis to identify the relevant factors and to work out the necessary consequences for cooperative banks. In order to examine possible conclusions, interviews with 12 experts in the field were conducted. The target groups were CEOs of cooperative banks and representatives of cooperative bank associations. It is those people who are confronted with new challenges [...]

The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century presents a wide ranging comparison of American and German societies during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The two countries - the world's leading "rising powers" of the time - were both more similar and more different than is widely understood. Above all, their dual encounter with modernity brings out the richness of both societies as they faced unprecedented internal and external challenges, sometimes in isolation, but more often in combination or in parallel with one another.