In the late 1920s, both the German public and the medical profession were debating over what many had come to see as a `crisis of medicine'. Articles in the medical press, in daily newspapers and magazines as well as popular books, discussed the `crisis' extensively. Medical scientists responded to the crisis debate by embracing holistic ideas. Crisis-mongers identified as the main crisis symptoms economic hardship amongst doctors and an increase in the numbers of heterodox practitioners. They argued that orthodox medicine had lost the trust of the patients mainly because modem medicine had become too `mechanistic' and `materialistic'. They suggested that modem doctors, restrained by the `iron cage' of sickness insurance bureaucracy and by the need to be `scientific', had lost the charisma of the healer, which in their view made heterodox practitioners successful. The crisis debate started in 1919 with fierce struggles between doctors' professional organisations and the sickness insurance funds, who provided the lion share of the incomes of the great majority of doctors. These struggles were shaped by what has come to be known as `Weimar Culture': continued economic, social and cultural turmoil and an intellectual climate dominated by a field of tension between on the one hand, anti-modernism and neo-conservative cultural critique, and on the other, a fascination for ideas of rationalisation and modernisation, both technological and social. This study examines how in this context doctors, medical scientists, civil servants, insurance managers, nonlicensed healers, parliamentarians and patients re-interpreted a constellation of economic difficulties and professional struggle as a fundamental `crisis of medicine'. Drawing on published and unpublished material, the study identifies a group of medical `heretics' as the main crisis-mongers. It examines their motivations and arguments. Did doctors really suffer economic hardship? The evidence suggests that they suffered rather less than other sections of the population. This aspect of the crisis debate was an attempt, I suggest, to secure for the medical profession a larger share of the limited resources available for health care. How charismatic were lay practitioners? Organisations of non-licensed practitioners in fact emulated the professionalisation tactics of the medical profession. Situating the `crisis' in the larger context of `Weimar Culture', this study attempts to reconstruct how, while the `heretics' idealised lay practitioners as charismatic healers and while the doctors' professional organisations demanded a ban on `quackery', heterodox medicine was undergoing its own rationalisation process.

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The history of the Weimar Republic has most commonly been written from the vantage point of its ultimate failure. Recent trends in historiography have shown that the first German democracy was by no means doomed from the start. Instead, contemporary sources convey a very varied picture of optimistic and pessimistic diagnoses of the times. At the centre of these diagnoses often stood the idea of “crisis” which contained the notion of an open yet problematic future. This thesis aims to investigate the use of sickness metaphors in political and related public discourses. More specifically, it analyses in which contexts these have been used, which semantic forms can be found, to which political points of view they can be attributed, and finally which purpose they served within political and journalistic controversies of the times. The main body of the thesis consists of three parts (ch. 2-4). Following the introduction, Part II is a methodological outline concentrating on the main relevant theoretical approaches: discourse analysis, the history of basic concepts, the Cambridge School of political ideas, and metaphorology. Furthermore it pays special attention to the history and use of the concept of “crisis”, both in its contemporary form and its use within historical writing.

This thesis examines the role played by protest song in the development of the political culture of Germany’s industrial working class between 1844 and 1933. Protest song was an integral component in the struggle of the German working class to achieve some measure of political and social equality in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout this period, the working class found itself subjected to varying levels of political repression by the German authorities, and in order to promote their political views, industrial workers used the medium of song to protest against injustice. The thesis seeks to determine the significance of protest song for the political development of the German industrial working class through an analysis of song lyrics. The study of working-class protest song lyrics has largely been the preserve of historians from the former German Democratic Republic, where scholarship was shaped by the unique political imperatives of history writing under the Communist regime. This thesis seeks to redress the historiographical imbalance that this approach engendered, arguing that protest song produced under the auspices of the Social Democrats was both a culturally valid and politically significant feature of German working-class political life, albeit one that offered a different ideological approach to that of the overtly revolutionary output of the Communist movement. Additionally this thesis will acknowledge that working-class song was not merely used as an instrument of protest, but also as a medium to communicate political ideology. Protest song was an integral part of the cultural capital of the working class milieu, creating a distinct canon upon which German industrial workers drew in a variety of political, social and cultural situations. This study will engage with this canon in order to establish how the cultural practice of singing endowed working-class protest songs with an intrinsic political significance.

This thesis examines the manufacture, use, exchange (including gift exchange), collecting and commodification of German medals and badges from the early 18th century until the present-day, with particular attention being given to the symbols that were deployed by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) between 1919 and 1945. It does so by focusing in particular on the construction of value through insignia, and how such badges and their symbolic and monetary value changed over time. In order to achieve this, the thesis adopts a chronological structure, which encompasses the creation of Prussia in 1701, the Napoleonic wars and the increased democratisation of military awards such as the Iron Cross during the Great War. The collapse of the Kaiserreich in 1918 was the major factor that led to the creation of the NSDAP under the eventual strangle-hold of Hitler, a fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic movement that continued the German tradition of awarding and wearing badges. The traditional symbols of Imperial Germany, such as the eagle, were then infused with the swastika, an emblem that was meant to signify anti-Semitism, thus creating a hybrid identity. This combination was then replicated en-masse, and eventually eclipsed all the symbols that had possessed symbolic significance in Germany’s past. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, millions of medals and badges were produced in an effort to create a racially based “People’s Community”, but the steel and iron that were required for munitions eventually led to substitute materials being utilised and developed in order to manufacture millions of politically oriented badges. The Second World War unleashed Nazi terror across Europe, and the conscripts and volunteers who took part in this fight for living-space were rewarded with medals that were modelled on those that had been instituted during Imperial times. The colonial conquest and occupation of the East by the Wehrmacht, the Order Police and the Waffen-SS surpassed the brutality of former wars that finally culminated in the Holocaust, and some of these horrific crimes and the perpetrators of them were perversely rewarded with medals and badges. Despite Nazism being thoroughly discredited, many of the Allied soldiers who occupied Germany took part in the age-old practice of obtaining trophies of war, which reconfigured the meaning of Nazi badges as souvenirs, and began the process of their increased commodification on an emerging secondary collectors’ market. In order to analyse the dynamics of this market, a “basket” of badges is examined that enables a discussion of the role that aesthetics, scarcity and authenticity have in determining the price of the artefacts. In summary, this thesis demonstrates how the symbolic, socio-economic and exchange value of German military and political medals and badges has changed substantially over time, provides a stimulus for scholars to conduct research in this under-developed area, and encourages collectors to investigate the artefacts that they collect in a more historically contextualised manner.

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At the onset of the First World War, Germany was subject to a shipping embargo by the Allied forces. Ostensibly military in nature, the blockade prevented not only armaments but also food and fertilizers from entering Germany. The impact of this blockade on civilian populations has been debated ever since. Germans protested that the Allies had wielded hunger as a weapon against women and children with devastating results, a claim that was hotly denied by the Allies. The impact of what the Germans termed the 'Hungerblockade' on childhood nutrition can now be assessed using various anthropometric sources on school children, several of which are newly discovered. Statistical analysis reveals a grim truth: German children suffered severe malnutrition due to the blockade. Social class impacted risk of deprivation, with working-class children suffering the most. Surprisingly, they were the quickest to recover after the war. Their rescue was fuelled by massive food aid organized by the former enemies of Germany, and delivered cooperatively with both government and civil society. Children, and those who cared for them, responded to these acts of service with gratitude and joy. The ability of former belligerents to work together after an exceptionally bitter war to feed impoverished children may hold hope for the future.