Dirk Schumann – författare

Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich.

The 20th century, declared at its start to be the “Century of the Child” by Swedish author Ellen Key, saw an unprecedented expansion of state activity in and expert knowledge on child-rearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Children were seen as a crucial national resource whose care could not be left to families alone. However, the exact scope and degree of state intervention and expert influence as well as the rights and roles of mothers and fathers remained subjects of heated debates throughout the century. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of childhood, research in the field remains focused on national narratives. This volume compares the impact of state intervention and expert influence on theories and practices of raising children in the U.S. and German Central Europe. In particular, the contributors focus on institutions such as kindergartens and schools where the private and the public spheres intersected, on notions of “race” and “ethnicity,” “normality” and “deviance,” and on the impact of wars and changes in political regimes.

"Die Weimarer Republik" von Eberhard Kolb ist seit vielen Jahren als Standardwerk für Studium und Forschung anerkannt und als Arbeitsbuch unentbehrlich geworden. Das Werk stellt die drei Phasen der Geschichte der Republik im Überblick dar, führt detailliert ein in die Forschungsdebatten zur Innen- und Außenpolitik und zur Entwicklung von Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft und enthält eine ausführliche Bibliographie zu diesen Themenkomplexen. Für die zusammen mit Dirk Schumann vorgenommene Neuauflage wurde der Forschungsteil überarbeitet und um ein Kapitel zur Kultur ergänzt, die Bibliographie wurde auf den neuesten Stand gebracht.