Cette thèse de doctorat est une biographie politique de Paul Levi, militant marxiste qui a fait carrière en Allemagne durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Dès 1914, Levi incarne un courant radical à l’intérieur du Parti social-démocrate d’Allemagne (SPD). Il dénonce, entre autres, aux côtés de Rosa Luxemburg l’appui du parti à l’effort militaire national. Levi s’inspire également de Lénine qu’il rencontre pour la première fois en Suisse en 1916-1917. Lorsqu’il prend les commandes du Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) en 1919, Levi dirige celui-ci d’une main de fer, selon le concept du « centralisme démocratique ». Il fait également tout en son pouvoir pour faire éclater la révolution ouvrière en Allemagne afin d’installer une dictature du prolétariat qui exclurait toutes les classes non ouvrières du pouvoir. En ce sens, Levi imagine un État socialiste semblable à celui fondé par Lénine en Russie en 1917. Contrairement à l’historiographie traditionnelle, notre thèse montre conséquemment que Levi n’était guère un « socialiste démocrate ». Il était plutôt un militant marxiste qui, par son radicalisme, a contribué à diviser le mouvement ouvrier allemand ce qui, en revanche, a fragilisé la république de Weimar. Cette thèse fait également ressortir le caractère résolument rebelle de Paul Levi. Partout où il passe, Levi dénonce les politiques bourgeoises des partis non-ouvriers, mais aussi celles de la majorité des organisations dont il fait partie, c’est-à-dire les partis ouvriers de la république de Weimar et le Reichstag. Son tempérament impulsif fait de lui un homme politique isolé qui, d’ailleurs, se fait de nombreux ennemis. En 1921, à titre d’exemple, il se brouille avec d’importants bolcheviques, ce qui met fin à sa carrière au sein du KPD. Les communistes voient désormais en lui un ennemi de la classe ouvrière et mènent contre lui de nombreuses campagnes diffamatoires. Levi, de son côté, dénonce ouvertement la terreur stalinienne qui, selon lui, est en train de contaminer le mouvement communiste européen. Notre travail montre également que Levi, cette fois en tant qu’avocat juif, lutte corps et âme contre les nazis. En 1926, dans le cadre d’une commission d’enquête publique du Reichstag chargée de faire la lumière sur des meurtres politiques commis en Bavière, il tente par tous les moyens d’inculper certains criminels nazis. Levi est conséquemment la cible de la presse antisémite allemande. Il refuse toutefois de céder à l’intimidation et choisit plutôt de poursuivre en justice quelques-uns des plus importants membres du Parti nazi, dont Alfred Rosenberg et Hitler lui-même, en plus de forcer de nombreux autres nazis à comparaître devant la commission d’enquête du Reichstag. Bref, si ce travail se veut critique envers la pensée révolutionnaire de Levi, il souligne aussi l’intégrité politique de cet homme dont les convictions sont demeurées inébranlables face aux dérives criminelles des extrêmes idéologiques de son époque. / This Ph.D. thesis is a political biography of Paul Levi, a German Marxist of the interwar period. Already in 1914, Levi embodied a radical faction within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of this same left wing, he is contesting, above all, the party’s participation in the national war effort. But Levi is also inspired by Lenin, who he met in Switzerland in 1916-1917. In fact, when taking over the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) in March 1919, Levi ruled with an iron fist according to the theory of “democratic centralism”. As Lenin has done in Russia in October 1917, Levi also did everything in his power to promote a workers’ revolution in Germany in order to set in power a dictatorship of the proletariat, which would exclude all other social classes from sitting in the government. Consequently, in opposition to traditional historiography, this thesis shows that Levi was not a “democratic Socialist” of the Luxemburg school, but rather a Marxist whose political thought resembled that of the Bolsheviks. In fact, his action contributed to further weaken an already frail Weimar Republic and all its democratic institutions. This study also shows that Levi’s outstanding career was in large part the result of his rebellious character. Throughout his life, Levi consistently denounced the bourgeois politics of the non-workers’ parties, but he also systematically went against the majority within the political organizations in which he took part: the workers’ parties and the Reichstag. His impulsive nature set him apart as a solitary politician. In fact, Levi had many enemies. In 1921, he ran afoul of major Bolshevik leaders, which caused him to lose the leadership of the KPD. The Communists subsequently saw him as an enemy of the working class, slandering him in the press and in the Reichstag. Levi denounced, for his part, the Stalinist terror and made a mockery of the KPD, which had become, according to him, no more than a Soviet puppet. But this thesis also reveals that Levi, as a Jewish lawyer, led a major political campaign against the Nazis. In 1926, for example, as he served on a Reichstag public commission investigating Bavarian political assassinations, he tried by all possible means to charge important Nazis with murder. The Nazi press replied with a vicious anti-Semitic press campaign against him. Levi, however, refused to kneel before such intimidation and rather chose to sue important Nazi leaders, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Hitler himself before the court, in addition to summoning many others before the above-mentioned Reichstag commission. In the end, despite the fact that this study very critically evaluates Levi’s ideology, it praises his political integrity, which remained unshakable though faced with adversity and the criminal drift of the political extremes of the interwar period.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Diss.--Freie Universität Berlin. / Bibliography: p. [439]-462.

O objetivo desta tese é o estudo da vida dos judeus na Alemanha, a partir de msua saída do gueto ao final do século XVIII. Tive a preocupação em contextualizar a história do antijuda-ísmo, desde a chegada dos romanos na antiga Germânia no século II, ressaltando os momentos mais críticos, como a Primeira Cruzada em 1096 e o enforcamento do judeu Süß em 1738, por razões de animosidades políticas. O estudo rastreia o antissemitismo a partir dos acontecimen-tos da primeira metade do século XIX, permitindo compreender a eclosão dos horrores da Shoá, como o auge de um processo que se desenvolveu durante um longo período. Foram observadas tentativas de integração à sociedade alemã, envolvendo progressos curtos, entremeados por re-cuos, pontuados por movimentos dos próprios judeus, evidenciando o paradoxo entre a liber-dade adquirida pela saída do gueto, com a entrada na vida urbana, e os crescentes sentimentos antijudaicos, agora no seio da sociedade alemã, ocasionando o agravamento desses sentimentos, com os quais os judeus tiveram de conviver. O trabalho demonstra como essa integração se tornou estímulo para o recrudescimento de tendências antijudaicas latentes. O antissemitismo foi tomando, progressivamente, forma mais política e serviu de sustentação ao crescimento do na-cional-socialismo, que o tomou como bandeira, para dar sentido ao ódio gerado pelas tensões vigentes na nação germânica. A insatisfação decorrente da humilhação acarretada pela derrota da Primeira Guerra Mundial e pelo Tratado de Versalhes fez com que o movimento crescente em direção à Segunda Guerra Mundial ficasse aí determinado. A imagem dos judeus ficou as-sociada ao que passou a ser visto pelos setores reacionários e nacionalistas, como intimamente ligados à República de Weimar, levando os arianos a declarar guerra a tudo o que fosse oci-dental, judaico, liberal e iluminista. A maldição estava posta. Houve tentativas de reação judai-cas, objeto central deste estudo, a partir da fundação do Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens em 1893, que existiu até 1938, e é a reafirmação da identidade alemã dos judeus. A insistência dos judeus em constituir-se como parte integrante da sociedade alemã pôde ser verificada a posteriori. Foi uma tentativa derradeira, condenada ao fracasso, porém corajosa. A abertura dos arquivos de Moscou permitiu conhecer este processo e alimentou de informações preciosas o estudo aqui apresentado. / The purpose of this study was to investigate the life of the German Jews after leaving the ghetto at the end of the 18th Century. There was a concern to put the History of Anti-Judaism in con-text, ever since the Romans entered Ancient Germania, emphasizing critical moments such as the 1st Crusade and the hanging of the Jew Süss in 1738 because of political animosities. The study tracked Anti-Semitism from the events of the first half of the 19th century, allowing an understanding of the outburst of the horrors of the Holocaust as the peak of a long progressing process. Attempts of the Jews to become integrated in the German society were observed, with momentary progresses interspersed with retreats, punctuated by movements of the Jews them-selves in this integration process. There is a paradox between the freedom conquered by exiting the ghetto and entering the urban life and the growing anti-Jewish feelings within the German society with which they had to live. It is shown in this work how this integration became a stimulus for anti-Jewish revivals. Anti-Semitism became more and more political, supporting the growth of National Socialism that adopted it as a flag, in order to give a meaning to the hatred arising from the tensions present in the German population. Then the dissatisfaction re-sulting from the humiliation caused by the defeat in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles determined the increasing movement towards World War II. Reactionary and nationalist sectors associated the image of the Jews with the Weimar Republic and so the Arians declared war against everything considered Western, Jewish, liberal and enlightening. The curse was on. Jewish attempts to react, also featuring a confirmation of their German identity and their insist-ence in belonging to the German society, were the core of this study. In retrospect, the founda-tion of the CV can be considered a last and brave attempt, yet destined to fail. The opening of the Moscow archives allowed getting to know this process, providing valuable information for the present study.

No description available.

Die Dissertation behandelt die Texte britischer Schriftsteller_innen, die in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik nach Deutschland kamen und über ihre Erfahrungen mit Deutschland und den Deutschen schrieben. Sie umfasst sowohl Texte, die in den Jahren 1919-1933 entstanden sind, als auch Texte, die sich rückblickend mit Erfahrungen in der Weimarer Republik befassen und in den Jahren zwischen dem Ende der Weimarer Republik und dem Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkriegs (1933-1939) entstanden sind. Die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit den Texten britischer Schriftsteller_innen über die Weimarer Republik hat sich bisher weitgehend auf die Werke von Christopher Isherwood und seinen Freunden W. H. Auden und Stephen Spender beschränkt. Durch die Fokussierung auf die Erfahrungen dieser Autoren legt die bisherige Forschung zu britischen Schriftsteller_innen in der Weimarer Republik einen starken Schwerpunkt auf die Erfahrungen junger homosexueller Männer in Berlin in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik und vernachlässigt andere Aspekte der Erfahrungen dieser Schriftsteller sowie die Perspektiven der zahlreichen anderen schreibenden Brit_innen, die die Weimarer Republik besuchten und aufgrund ihrer Herkunft, ihres Alters und ihrer Beweggründe für ihren Aufenthalt sehr unterschiedliche Erfahrungen machten. Die Studie zeigt erstmals eine breit angelegte Untersuchung der unterschiedlichen Perspektiven, die sowohl die biografischen Erfahrungen der Schriftsteller analysiert als auch den Prozess der Fiktionalisierung dieser Erfahrungen in verschiedenen Phasen der Zwischen- und Nachkriegszeit erklärt. Die eingehende Analyse der verschiedenen literarischen Versionen der "Weimarer Erfahrung" durch britische Schriftsteller zeigt, wie diese Erfahrung in Fiktion umgewandelt wurde, wie die persönliche Auseinandersetzung mit Deutschland retrospektive Erzählungen verkompliziert und wie diese Komplikationen in fiktionalen Texten ausgetragen werden. Die Arbeit ist in drei chronologische Kapitel unterteilt, die sich jeweils mit einer Phase der Weimarer Republik befassen und eine Reihe von fiktionalen und nicht-fiktionalen Texten einbeziehen. / The dissertation analyses the texts of British writers who visited Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic and wrote about their experiences with Germany and the Germans. It includes texts that were written during the years 1919-1933 as well as texts that deal retrospectively with experiences in the Weimar Republic and were written in the years between the end of the Weimar Republic and the outbreak of the Second World War (1933-1939). Scholarly engagement with the writings of British writers on the Weimar Republic has so far been very much limited to the texts of Christopher Isherwood and his friends W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender. By focusing predominantly on the experiences of these authors, the existing research on British writers in the Weimar Republic places a strong emphasis on the experiences of young homosexual men in Berlin in the final years of the Weimar Republic and neglects other aspects of these writers' experiences as well as the perspectives of the numerous other British writers who visited the Weimar Republic and had very different experiences due to their background, age and motivations for their stay. For the first time, this study undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of diverse perspectives, which both analyses the biographical experiences of the writers and explains the fictionalisation process of these experiences in different phases of the interwar and post-war period. The in-depth analysis of the diverse literary versions of the 'Weimar experience' by British writers shows how this experience was transformed into fiction, how personal engagement with Germany complicates retrospective narratives, and how these complications are played out in fictional texts. The work is divided into three chronological chapters, each dealing with a phase of the Weimar Republic and drawing on a range of fictional and non-fictional texts.

No description available.

Die Dissertation untersucht mittels Lokalstudien die Massendemokratie der Zwischenkriegszeit im Medium der Praxis von Wahlkämpfen. Sie argumentiert, dass die britische Demokratie bereits in den 1920er Jahren in deutlich stärkerem Maße als die deutsche nach den Prinzipien eines politischen Marktes funktionierte. Während in der hiesigen politischen Kultur Wähler als Individuen von den Parteien umworben wurden, standen sie sich in Deutschland als Großgruppen und feste Anhängerschaften der Parteien als Gegner - und Feinde - entgegen. Das gab der demokratischen Auseinandersetzung in der Weimarer Republik ein kriegerisches Gepräge, im Kontrast zum pragmatisch-spielerischen Umgang mit Konflikt in Großbritannien. Erklären lässt sich dieser Unterschied aus den Traditionen der Eingewöhnung politischer Partizipation in beiden Ländern im Verlauf des 19. Jahrhunderts, die der „Politik“ in Deutschland ein deutlich höheres Gewicht im sozialen Miteinander mitgab als in Großbritannien. Das letztendliche Scheitern der Weimarer Republik an dieser Attributierung des Politischen mit Bedeutung und des Konflikts mit Ernsthaftigkeit, wirft die Frage auf, ob die moderne Demokratie für ihr Bestehen ein gewisses Maß an Gleichgültigkeit benötigt. / The thesis uses local contexts to study mass democracy in the inter-war period in the medium of electioneering practice. It argues that British democracy already followed the logic of a political market in the 1920s, to a much higher degree than was the case in Germany. Whereas parties wooed voters as individuals here, they were rather seen as part of big social groupings in German political culture, standing off against each other as opponents - and as enemies. This gave democratic contests in the Weimar Republic a war-like character, which stood in contrast to the pragmatic and playful way of dealing with conflict in Britain. The difference is explained by the traditions of how political participation had been learned throughout the 19th century in both countries, where the German path had resulted in 'politics' weighing much more heavily on social relations than was the case in Britain. The eventual failure of the Weimar Republic due to the attribution of meaning to everything political, and due to the seriousness of conflict, begs the question of whether modern democracy, to persist, requires a certain amount of disinterest among the electorate.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Bedeutung der Landschafts- und Marinemalerei für die nationale Einheit und bürgerliche Identifikation im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik beispielhaft am Werk des Berliner Secessionskünstlers Ulrich Hübner (1872-1932) untersucht. Zu Beginn wird die Rolle der Landschaft für die Konstitution von Staatswesen und nationaler Identität allgemein erläutert, um deutlich zu machen, vor welchem Hintergrund die Landschaftsmalerei Ulrich Hübners einen Beitrag zur bürgerlich-nationalen Identitätsfindung im (neugegründeten) Nationalstaat leisten konnte. Im Hauptteil werden dazu anhand Hübners biographischer Stationen unterschiedliche Gesichtspunkte, wie die pluralistischen Einflüsse auf Hübners Landschaftsmalerei, seine Rolle in der Berliner Secession, seine Positionierung auf dem Kunstmarkt, seine Rezeption durch die Kunstkritik und seine Funktion an der Akademie der Künste, untersucht. Hübners Konzentration auf Küstendarstellungen, Seestücke und Stadtansichten führte in Abgrenzung zur Marinemalerei zu dem neuen Typus der Stadt- und Wasserlandschaft, zwischen klassischer Veduten- und Landschaftsmalerei und impressionistischen Stimmungsbildern. Auf Grundlage des erstellten Werkverzeichnisses wird durch die Betrachtung Hübners Werks im Gesamtzusammenhang des Berliner Kunstgeschehens unter dem Aspekt des wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Erfolges und der Entwicklung des privatwirtschaftlichen Kunstmarktes deutlich, wie ein Künstler in diesem System agierte. Hübners Erfolg mit dem neuen Typus der Stadtlandschaft und der Konzentration auf bestimmte Vertriebswege und erfolgreiche Motive steht exemplarisch für den deutschen Impressionismus in Zeiten des Stilpluralismus. Als Vertreter einer moderaten Moderne wurden seine Gemälde heimatlicher Landschaften Identifikationsbilder des aufgeschlossenen Bürgertums und somit eine Versicherung von Kontinuität in den politisch bewegten Zeiten vom Kaiserreich bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik. / This doctoral thesis examines the significance of landscape and maritime painting for the national unity and civil identification in Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic through the case study of the oeuvre of the Berlin Secession artist Ulrich Hübner (1872-1932). In the first instance, we will outline the effect that landscape painting in general had on the constitution of the political system and national identity in order to assess the extent of which Hübner’s landscape painting contributed towards the shaping of a civil-national identity in the newly founded nation state. To this effect we will then study key events in his biography, focusing on the following aspects: the pluralist influences that shape Hübner’s landscape painting, his role in the Berlin Secession, his place in the art market, art criticism’s response to his work and his position at the Berlin Academy of Arts. Hübner’s focus on coastal views, sea- and cityscapes, as opposed to maritime painting, lead to the new type of Urban Landscape and Waterscape which is situated between classical Veduta and landscape painting on one hand and impressionist “Stimmungsbilder” on the other. The catalogue raisonné will form the basis on which we examine his oeuvre in the context of the greater Berlin art scene with particular emphasis on his commercial and social success on one hand as well as seen within the more specific framework which is the development of the commercial art market on the other. The success Hübner had with his new type of Urban Landscape and his focus on specific commercial channels and successful subject matters is exemplary for the German Impressionism in times of stylistic pluralism. Representing a moderate Modernism, his paintings of “Heimat”-landscapes became symbols that the liberal bourgeoisie could identify with and thereby a guarantee of continuity during the politically agitated times from the beginning of the German Empire to the end of the Weimar Republic.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This dissertation analyzes the efforts to develop a pluralistic political culture and democratic practices of governance through the training of democratic leaders in Germany's first school of public affairs, the German School of Politics. The investigation of the thought-leaders that formed this school illustrates two main points. First, through the prism of the School, I detail the efforts to develop a conception of civil society that, by being grounded in civility, could retie social bonds and counter the brutalization of politics characteristic of the post-World War One years. By providing practical knowledge, courses in public affairs could not only free Germans from the blinders of ideologies, but also instill in them an ethos that would help viewing the political enemy as an opponent with an equal right to participate in the political process. Secondly, I point to the limits of trans-national philanthropy in supporting the development of civil society in young democracies. By analyzing the relationship between U.S. foundations and the School, I focus on the asymmetry that existed between American ideals of democracy and the realities of the German political system. This study thus focuses on the dynamics between the actions of institutions and organizations, and the broader social behaviors that constitute public life.