Christoph Cornelissen – författare

In diesem Buch wird die Beziehung zwischen verschiedenen sozialen Bewegungen und marxistischen Geschichtskulturen in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Westeuropa untersucht, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Italien liegt. Während des Kalten Krieges prägten marxistische Ideen und Geschichtsauffassungen nicht nur die traditionellen kommunistischen Parteien in Westeuropa, sondern beeinflussten auch eine Reihe neuer sozialer Bewegungen, die in den 1970er Jahren im Gefolge der Studentenrevolte von 1968 aufkamen. Die 68er-Generation war stark von neomarxistischen Ideen geprägt, die sie später in die neuen sozialen Bewegungen trug. Der Band geht der Frage nach, wie marxistische Geschichtskulturen die Bewegungen der Dritten Welt, die antifaschistischen Bewegungen, die Friedensbewegung und eine ganze Reihe anderer neuer sozialer Bewegungen beeinflusst haben, die ab den 1970er Jahren eine neue Lebendigkeit der Zivilgesellschaft in Westeuropa signalisierten.

During the First World War, mass media achieved an enormous and continuously growing importance in all belligerent countries. Newspaper, illustrated magazines, comics, pamphlets, and instant books, fi ctional works, photography, and the new-born “theater of imagery”, the cinema, were crucial in order to create a heroic vision of the events, to mobilize and maintain the consensus on the war. But their role was pivotal also in creating the image of the war’s end and fi nally, together with a widespread, new literary genre, the war memoirs, to shape the collective memory of the confl ict for the next generations. Even before November 1918, the media raised high expectations for a multifaceted peace: a new global order, the beginning of a peaceful era, the occasion for a regenerating apocalypse. Likewise, in the following decades, particularly war literature and cinema were pivotal to reverse the icon of the Great War as an epic crusade and a glorious chapter of the national history and to create the hegemonic image of a senseless carnage. The Mediatization of War and Peace focalizes on the central role played by mass media in the tortuous transition to the post-war period as well as on the profound disenchantment generated by their prophesies.

During the First World War, mass media achieved an enormous and continuously growing importance in all belligerent countries. Newspaper, illustrated magazines, comics, pamphlets, and instant books, fi ctional works, photography, and the new-born “theater of imagery”, the cinema, were crucial in order to create a heroic vision of the events, to mobilize and maintain the consensus on the war. But their role was pivotal also in creating the image of the war’s end and fi nally, together with a widespread, new literary genre, the war memoirs, to shape the collective memory of the confl ict for the next generations. Even before November 1918, the media raised high expectations for a multifaceted peace: a new global order, the beginning of a peaceful era, the occasion for a regenerating apocalypse. Likewise, in the following decades, particularly war literature and cinema were pivotal to reverse the icon of the Great War as an epic crusade and a glorious chapter of the national history and to create the hegemonic image of a senseless carnage. The Mediatization of War and Peace focalizes on the central role played by mass media in the tortuous transition to the post-war period as well as on the profound disenchantment generated by their prophesies.