Tesi dott. ricerca--Dipartimento di francese e d'italiano--Università di Stoccolma, 1995. / Bibliogr. p. 177-181. Glossaire. Résumé en anglais.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Kunstgeschichte--Berlin--Freie Universität, 1993. / Bibliogr. p. 175-184.

Diss.--Politik--Berlin--Frei Universität, 1996. / Bibliogr. p. 565-583.

Zugl.: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2008

"Metropolitan Theatrics" charts the unsettling and reshaping of everyday life in Weimar Berlin between 1919 and 1933. It does so, by convening a conversation between the multidisciplinary insights of performance studies and recent geographical approaches to the study of the modern city. Berlin's restless relationship with the 'modern' offers, it is argued, an ideal historical milieu in which to test performance theory while at the same time question some of its presentist assumptions. Drawing on a variety of historical sources, the study focuses on the role of performance - not only theatrical representation, but also the popular press, novels, the visual and performing arts, modern dance, scientific experiments, and everyday practices - in order to demonstrate the specific conjunction of visuality and embodiment that allied 'Berlin' with 'modernity.' The thesis is divided into two main parts. Part One is a close reading of texts and images and how they have come to figure Weimar Berlin as an imagined environment. In this respect, recent scholarship in the humanities has been caught on the horns of a theoretical dilemma, namely how to accommodate the seemingly undocumentable event of performance. Different responses to this dilemma are discussed. In particular, it is argued that in seeking to go beyond representation to embodied experience, a sense of the cultural presence of the former in the latter merits greater critical attention. Part Two continues the thesis's discussion of performance's unorthodox archives by drawing attention to a repertoire of aesthetic and scientific practices which were developed to sense and adapt to the traumatic shock of metropolitan modernity. Ultimately, this thesis provides an historically specific account of aspects of Weimar modernity and thus means to contribute not only to an historical geography of Berlin, but also to the forging of methodologies that serve to widen the cross-disciplinary study of modern culture and modernity. Given the importance of the Weimar era to our understanding of the nature of European modernity, the development of a geography of performance makes a strong case for re-examining the ways in which the relationship between 'modernity' and the 'city' is usually formulated / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Historians have expressed a variety of opinions concerning the true significance of the Congress of Berlin. While the 1878 meeting did not have to deal with questions as comprehensive as those discussed in Vienna in 1814-1815 or at Paris in 1856, the Congress of Berlin had great impact in its own right. While the Berlin meeting made decisions in order to reorganize the Balkans after years of instability and war, it also created a split in relations between the German Empire and Imperial Russia which would eventually drive the two powers towards conflict in "The Great War" in 1914.

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Operation Gold (1953-56) was a collaborative covert operation between the American CIA and British SIS. The two major objectives: firstly, rebalance the state of affairs in covert activity, which the KGB had been dominating heading into the 1950s. Secondly, gain more detailed, valuable information on the state of Soviet forces throughout Europe and gain prior warning of possible information. The technological nature of the operation marks it as the beginning of a move away from traditional espionage. Understanding the narrative of Operation Gold establishes a firm foundation on which to address the development of covert activity into the modern day. Key elements of the story of the Berlin Tunnel serve to tie this lesser known operation to modern concerns of privacy, personal data, and covert involvement in international affairs. While unravelling the truest narrative of the planning and implementation of the operation, this thesis integrates substantial events, groups and people which shape the role of the Berlin Tunnel in understanding covert conflict. Further consideration is also given to how this operations legacy unfolded and the role of the media in understanding events in this separate sphere. Lessons about the covert sphere not only address a sub-narrative of 1950s Cold War but reach conclusions pertinent to the 21st century.

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