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Mary Nolan's Visions of Modernity explores the contradictory ways in which German trade unionists and industrialists, engineers and politicians, educators and social workers explained American economic success, envisioned a more efficient or "rationalized" economic system for Germany, and anguished over the social and cultural costs of adopting the American version of modernity.
In much the same way that Japan has become the focus of contemporary American discussion about industrial restructuring, Germans in the economic reform in terms of Americanism and Fordism, seeing in the United States an intriguing vision for a revitalized economy and a new social order. During the 1920s, Germans were fascinated by American economic success and its quintessential symbols, Henry Ford and his automobile factories. Mary Nolan's book explores the contradictory ways in which trade unionists and industrialists, engineers and politicians, educators and social workers explained American economic success, envisioned a more efficient or "rationalized" economic system for Germany, and anguished over the social and cultural costs of adopting the American version of modernity. These debates about Americanism and Fordism deeply shaped German perceptions of what was economically and socially possible and desirable in terms of technology and work, family and gender relations, consumption and culture. Nolan examines efforts to transform production and consumption, factories and homes, and argues that economic Americanism was implemented ambivalently and incompletely, producing, in the end, neither prosperity nor political stability. Vision of Modernity will appeal not only to scholars of German History and those interested in European social and working-class history, but also to industrial sociologists and business scholars.
Important new study of wartime industrial collaboration focussing on Ford Motor Company's French affiliate during the Second World War.
The Weimar Republic was born out of Germany's defeat in the First World War and ended with the coming to power of Hitler and his Nazi Party in 1933. In many ways, it is a wonder that Weimar lasted as long as it did. Besieged from the outset by hostile forces, the young republic was threatened by revolution from the left and coups d'états from the right. Plagued early on by a wave of high-profile political assassinations and a period of devastating hyper-inflation, its later years were dominated by the onset of the Great Depression. And yet, for a period from the mid-1920s it looked as if the Weimar system would not only survive but even flourish, with the return of economic stability and the gradual reintegration of the country into the international community. With contributions from an international team of ten experts, this volume in the Short Oxford History of Germany series offers an ideal introduction to Weimar Germany, challenging the reader to rethink preconceived ideas of the republic and throwing new light on important areas, such as military ideas for reshaping society after the First World War, constitutional and social reform, Jewish life, gender, and culture.
Winner, 2010 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and shop floor movements to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.
The new photo-illustrated magazines of the 1920s traded in images of an ideal modernity, promising motorised leisure, scientific progress, and social and sexual emancipation. Modernist Magazines and the Social Ideal is a pioneering history of these periodicals, focusing on two of the leading European titles: the German monthly UHU, and the French news weekly VU, taken as representative of the broad class of popular titles launched in the 1920s. The book is the first major study of UHU, and the first scholarly work on VU in English. Modernist Magazines explores, in particular, the striking use of regularity and repetition in photographs of modernity, reading these repetitious images as symbolic of modernist ideals of social order in the aftermath of the First World War. Introducing a novel methodology, pattern theory, the book argues for a critical return to the Gestalt tradition in visual studies. Alongside the UHU and VU case studies, Modernist Magazines offers an essential primer to interwar magazine culture in Europe. Accounts of rival titles are woven into the book's thematic chapters, which trace the evolution of the two magazines' photography and graphic design in the tumultuous years up to 1933.
In this comprehensive, long-view study on the concept of the Neue or Moderne Frau (New or Modern Woman) that spans the Weimar Republic, Third Reich, post-war period, and a divided Germany, Contested Femininities explores how different political and social groups constructed images of women to present competing visions of the future. It takes the highly contested representations of women presented in the illustrated press and examines how they emerged as crucial markers of modernity. In doing so it reveals the surprising continuity of these images across political periods and reflects on how debates over paid work, the gender division of labor in the household, the politics of the body, and consumption, played a central role in how different German regimes defined the Modern Woman.
Transnationale Geschichte als Schlüssel zur nationalen Geschichte. Amerikanisierung und Antiamerikanismus sind in Deutschland und Europa im 20. Jahrhundert allgegenwärtige, sich wandelnde und umstrittene Phänomene gewesen. Sie haben die einzelnen Nationen und die transatlantischen Beziehungen tiefgreifend geprägt. Mary Nolan, Expertin für deutsche und transnationale Geschichte, untersucht, wie die Europäer von amerikanischen Wirtschafts-, Kultur- und Politikmodellen beeinflusst wurden und mit ihnen umgingen. Dabei entstanden hybride Gesellschaften und politische Systeme, die sich manchmal deutlich von den Vereinigten Staaten unterschieden, in jüngerer Zeit aber, angesichts von Wirtschafts- und Migrationskrisen und rechtsradikalem Populismus, die dortigen Entwicklungen widerspiegeln. Wie die Aufsätze von Mary Nolan zeigen, waren die diplomatischen Beziehungen und die Visionen von der globalen Ordnung eine ständige Quelle transatlantischer Konflikte. Das Gleiche gilt für Fragen zu Frauen, Geschlecht und Sexualität. Die transatlantischen Beziehungen werden häufig auf sehr geschlechtsspezifische Weise erzählt. Nolan zeigt, dass die transnationale Geschichte neue Einblicke sowohl in die nationale Geschichte als auch in die internationalen Beziehungen bietet. Transnational history as a key to national history. Americanization and anti-Americanism have been pervasive, shifting and contested phenomena in twentieth-century Germany and Europe. They have profoundly shaped individual nations and transatlantic relations. Mary Nolan, a scholar of German and transnational history, investigates how Europeans were influenced by and negotiated with American economic, cultural and political models, creating hybrid societies and polities that sometimes looked markedly different from the United States, but more recently, with economic and migration crises and right-radical populism, mirror developments there. As Mary Nolan's essays show, diplomatic relations and visions of the global order have been a persistent source of transatlantic conflict. So too have been questions of women, gender and sexuality. Transatlantic relations are frequently narrated in highly gendered ways. Nolan demonstrates that transnational history offers new insights into both national histories and international relations.
A study of the influence of German Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke, 1906-1914.