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The question of how to deal with the legacy of the National Socialist dictatorship and how to teach the period in West German schools has been and continues to be a controversial issue in the Federal Republic of Germany. During the 1950s and early 1960s history textbooks were severely criticized for their inadequate coverage of National Socialism, particularly regarding the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust. Such criticism combined with a number of anti-Semitic incidents in 1959 led authorities to initiate major reforms on how schools should teach the Nazi period and consequently brought about major textbook revisions.The objective of this study was to determine how adequately textbooks used in the 1980s cover this period and whether what they are teaching is accurate and sufficient to deal with the enormity of the events and policies of that time. The study in four chapters analyzes textbooks regarding their coverage of such topics: I, Hitler's early life, his beginnings in politics to his nomination as chancellor; II, the consolidation of power and of social and political control; III, the treatment of the Jews; and IV, National Socialist foreign policy before and during World War II. Each chapter was divided into two parts, with the first part recommending material textbooks should include, and the second part analyzing this coverage based on criteria established in the first part.Findings showed that textbooks satisfactorily covered the majority of the topics examined and found them to be much improved, especially concerning the treatment of the Jews and the Holocaust.Despite marked improvements, areas of concern nevertheless remain, and coverage of some topics needs to be corrected and/or expanded in future textbook editions. Most topics on which coverage was weak or nonexistent concerned issues which are painful and embarrassing for German people to deal with. Among these issues were the German treatment of prisoners of war, German occupation policies in western Europe, forced relocations from areas such as Alsace and Lorraine, Nazi reprisal actions and the killing of hostages, activities of the SS Einsatz units, documentation concerning deportations and ghettos, medical experiments, and the role German industry played in the mass murder of innocent people.One of the more disturbing findings was that no changes had been made between the 1966 and 1978 (1983 printing) editions of one text and between the 1968 and later undated [1983?] editions of another text. It is strongly recommended that those responsible for the publication of German history textbooks take the necessary steps to correct these still existing errors and omissions before a new wave of criticism at home or from abroad forces them once again to do so.

published_or_final_version / toc / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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On 1 October 1879 the German Imperial Court, the Reichsgericht, was formally opened in a ceremony in Leipzig. Decades of division among the German states, particularly in the years between the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the creation of the German Reich in 1871, led to constant demands for national unification on political, economic, social and legal levels. Throughout those years proposals for Rechtseinheit, or legal unity, called for numerous substantive reforms as well as procedural or institutional reforms. Such proposals ultimately led to several important legal reforms, including the adoption of the Imperial Justice Laws of 1877. / This dissertation argues that the successful establishment of the Reichsgericht, as an integral component of the larger movement towards German legal unity, provides an important example of contemporary struggles between centralization and particularism and between liberal political ideals and political realities in the new German Reich. Between 1806 and 1879 several contemporaries recommended the creation of a national supreme court for the German states. The failure of the pre-1867 court proposals contrasted sharply with the successful proposals of the 1867 to 1879 period. Nevertheless, the negotiations and debates which took place between the various German states, between the federal government and the states, and in the legislative organs of the German state itself, were intense and contentious. The creation of the Reichsgericht reflected several important issues, including the comparative abilities of the various states, the federal bureaucracy and the federal legislature to influence the form and substance of national judicial legislation. / The documentary evidence for this dissertation has been gathered from several archival depositories, including relevant holdings in the Bundesarchiv sections in Potsdam and Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten and the Prussian state archives in Berlin-Dahlem, and from published government and contemporary sources. In addition, unpublished and published secondary sources have been utilized.

The Transylvanian Saxons provide a case study of how small minorities respond to their lack of statehood and the imposition of an "alien" nation-state upon them. In this thesis, I will argue that, as with many other minorities unwilling or unable to form a nation-state in their own right, the Saxons sought collective rights on the basis of self-determination. This included access to resources, self-administration, an independent education system, the ability to exclude outgroups and powers by which to ensure social norms within the community. Their aims did not include territorial autonomy or independence, and for this reason it is necessary to consider their strivings as distinct from nationalism. I term this attempt to secure collective self-determination by non-territorial means "ethnocorporatism". The goals of Saxon ethno-corporatism were influenced by the broader discussion of minority rights in interwar Europe before and after the First World War. In this sense, the Saxons were typical of many small communities in interwar Europe. The Saxons approached the challenges of ethno-corporatism by numerous means. These included the pursuit of collective legal rights by negotiation with the Romanian state, positing a broader multi-ethnic Transylvanian polity that would guarantee collective ethnic rights, pursuing ethno-corporatism under the banner of religious freedoms and seeking to strengthen ties with other German communities. While a number of these strategies met with partial success, none fully compensated for the lack of a state, and all fell short of Saxon expectations. I argue that disappointment with other attempts to achieve ethnocorporate status led to growing radicaIisation of Saxon ethnic identity, and to the eventual adoption of fascism. In this sense, while influenced by currents from Germany, Saxon "National Socialism" can paradoxically be seen as stemming from the pursuit of minority right.

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The purpose of this study is to point the directions a program of education might take in providing opportunities for the members and followers of the defeated Nazi political party of Germany to find their ways into normal constructive living in a new political order.