Machteld Venken - Böcker

This book addresses practices of bordering, debordering and rebordering on the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after state borders had been remapped on the negotiation tables of the Paris Peace Treaties following the First World War. As life in borderlands did not correspond to the peaceful Europe articulated in the Paris Treaties, a multitude of (un)foreseen complications followed the drawing of borders and states. The chapters in this book include new case studies on the creation, centralization or peripheralization of border regions, such as Subcarpathian Rus, Vojvodina, Banat and the Carpathian Mountains; on border zones such as the Czechoslovakian harbour in Germany; and on cross-border activities. The book shows how disputes over national identities and ethnic minorities, as well as other factors such as the economic consequences of the new state borders, appeared on the interwar political agenda and coloured the lives of borderland inhabitants. The contributions demonstrate the practices of borderland inhabitants in the establishment, functioning, disorganization or ultimate breakdown of some of the newly created interwar nation-states.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, European Review of History.

This book addresses practices of bordering, debordering and rebordering on the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after state borders had been remapped on the negotiation tables of the Paris Peace Treaties following the First World War. As life in borderlands did not correspond to the peaceful Europe articulated in the Paris Treaties, a multitude of (un)foreseen complications followed the drawing of borders and states. The chapters in this book include new case studies on the creation, centralization or peripheralization of border regions, such as Subcarpathian Rus, Vojvodina, Banat and the Carpathian Mountains; on border zones such as the Czechoslovakian harbour in Germany; and on cross-border activities. The book shows how disputes over national identities and ethnic minorities, as well as other factors such as the economic consequences of the new state borders, appeared on the interwar political agenda and coloured the lives of borderland inhabitants. The contributions demonstrate the practices of borderland inhabitants in the establishment, functioning, disorganization or ultimate breakdown of some of the newly created interwar nation-states.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, European Review of History.

This edited volume increases knowledge about children and young people living in borderlands, passing through borders and (de)constructing borders, as well as highlights the potential of studying how children and young people imagine, act, cross, and inhabit symbolic and material borders.The study of borders and borderlands is growing extensively, but the experiences of children and young people in the turmoil of border changes and border crossings remain under-researched. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this edited volume has a twofold objective: to increase knowledge about children and young people living in borderlands, passing through borders and (de)constructing borders; and to highlight the potential of studying how children and young people imagine, act, cross, and inhabit symbolic and material borders, with the aim of advancing the theoretical and empirical debate within border studies.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

This edited volume increases knowledge about children and young people living in borderlands, passing through borders and (de)constructing borders, as well as highlights the potential of studying how children and young people imagine, act, cross, and inhabit symbolic and material borders.The study of borders and borderlands is growing extensively, but the experiences of children and young people in the turmoil of border changes and border crossings remain under-researched. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this edited volume has a twofold objective: to increase knowledge about children and young people living in borderlands, passing through borders and (de)constructing borders; and to highlight the potential of studying how children and young people imagine, act, cross, and inhabit symbolic and material borders, with the aim of advancing the theoretical and empirical debate within border studies.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium — border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period.

Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium — border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the history of borderland children during the 20th century. More than their parents, children were envisioned to play a crucial role in bringing about a peaceful Europe. The contributions show the complexity of nationalisation within various spheres of borderland children’s lives and display the dichotomy between nationalist policies and manifest non-national practices of borderland children. Despite the different imaginations of East and West that had influenced peace negotiators after both World Wars, moreover, borderland children in Western and Central Europe invented practices that contributed to the creation of a socially cohesive Europe.

This book tells the story of monuments in two cities that share a parallel and turbulent history: Strasbourg and Poznan. With the Franco-Prussian War begins the well-known story of the destruction and erection of memorials. This book not only explains the mechanisms related to how memorials have functioned in the past, but also contributes to our understanding of current modes of their perception. It analyzes their material shape, the problem of affect, and their meaning, not only in relation to the political context and the work of memory. This book shows how the form of monuments reflects the social understanding of such basic questions as the perception of nature, gender issues and the image of those who are in power, and how, and in which aspects, those kind of objects actually change the city space we live in.

This book is rooted in the author’s experience as an interviewer and researcher in the Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project – the biggest European oral history project devoted to a single Nazi concentration camp system, realized in the years 2002/2003 at the University of Vienna. Over 850 Mauthausen survivors have been recorded worldwide, more than 160 of them in Poland, and over 30 by the author.The work offers an in-depth analysis of Polish survivors’ accounts, sensitive to both, form and content of these stories, as well as their social and cultural framing. The analysis is accompanied by an interpretation of (Polish) camp experiences in a broader biographical and historical perspective. The book is an interpretive journey from camp experiences, through the survivors’ memories, to narratives recalling them − and backwards.

Today, fallen soldiers of the Second World War find their resting places across the globe. While many nations openly honor their military, Germany maintains a more reserved approach to its war dead. During the war, fallen soldiers were hailed as heroes, but after 1945, the treatment of the deceased and their graves underwent a profound transformation. Janz, focusing on the Eastern Front during wartime and then the post-war Soviet Union and Russian Federation, explores this transformation through three key moments: 1. the treatment of the bodies, burial practices, and exhumations; 2. the burial sites, including cemetery construction and design; and 3. the realm of commemoration, encompassing memorial ceremonies and rituals. These rituals evolved from the hero worship of Hitler’s Wehrmacht to the mourning and reconciliation policies of the post-war West German government with Russia. This study offers an examination of the German military dead amidst controversies surrounding Wehrmacht soldiers and their challenging commemoration in the present day.

This book compares the school image of the wartime past of the Falange and the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), created during the turbulent first decade of Francoism in Spain and Communism in Poland. Demonstrating the political usefulness of the Party was crucial to the consolidation of both regimes. The legitimisation of the new regime called for emphasising the Party’s war effort, not only in defeating the enemy but also in its struggle for social issues. Forschool-taught history, the early years of both dictatorships marked a period of breaking with prewar educational concepts and introducing and testing new ‘revolutionary’ pedagogical solutions. This book not only explains theaspirations of political rulers to rebuild the students’ memory, but also contributes to our understanding of the textbook authors’ perception of the recent past. It analyses the meanings of terms specific to mythical stories, such as nation, power, heroes and their deeds, and wartime struggle.