The work focuses on the specification of the specificities of the thinking of some smaller evangelical churches in the territory of Bohemia in the period 1890-1940. Specifically, this is the Brethren Unity of Chelčický (Baptist), the Unity of Czech Brethren (formerly Reformed Free Church) and the Evangelical Methodist Church. The focus of the interpretation is to introduce the construction of confessional identity based on the relationship to the past and the specific interpretation of the personalities and events that shaped the tradition from which these churches were based. Another element forming the identity of the members of these churches was their attitude to the modern secularization tendencies against which they stood in opposition. Last but not least, their confessional consciousness determined their definition of other forms of piety. The aim of the work was to provide, based on the study of the published written sources left by the members of these three churches, a comparison and characterization of their way of viewing certain subjects through their religious beliefs.

This master thesis examines the heritage of the Prague journal Volja Rossii, one of the leading Russian emigration's periodical publications in 1920s, in terms of literary criticism. The research aims to describe the main tendencies in the perception of current socio-political processes of that era, as well as the Soviet literature and other cultural processes in SSSR of the interwar period, by the magazine's critics and columnists. Furthermore, this study includes biographical data, thematical and theoretical preferences in publications of the key personalities in the journal's editorial staff.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the experience of modernity, and how it related to the process of establishing and determining one’s individual identity. By studying the protocols from discussion seminars on contemporary topics attended by students at Swedish folk high school Wiks folkhögskola in the 1920s and 1930s, the study explores how the students defined themselves in relation to societal changes as well as how they evaluated what they considered to be modern versus traditional. The thesis approaches the subject through the theoretical lens of modernity, defined as the experience of living in an uncertain and changeable present, fundamentally different from what is perceived to be the past. This generates paradoxical feelings of both optimism for the future and nostalgic longing for the past. Alongside the concept of modernity, the thesis utilises theories of individualisation and historical research on the making of the modern self to explore how experiences of modernity related to processes of identity formation. The analysis is structured around three themes, urban and rural lifestyles, leisure as opportunity and threat, and changing gender norms, which were present both in the students’ discussions and in Swedish public discourse during the interwar years. Throughout, the experiences of modernity expressed by the students were much more complex and dynamic than what previous historical research on the modernisation of Sweden has suggested. The thesis therefore argues for a pluralistic and experience-based view of modernity. Furthermore, it questions the relevance of theories of modern individualisation, and to what extent the students’ identities were individual and emancipated from traditional hierarchies. Instead, it considers the role of school authorities, and concludes with the assertation that concepts such as modernity and identity should be approached through empirical studies of historical context and with a critical eye towards power dynamics, authorities, and dominant narratives.

The presented diploma thesis deals with the issue of the legacy and reflection of the peace conference in the 20th century, through the theories of realism and idealism. The theoretical part presents the key theories of realism and idealism, from the perspective of several authors, as well as the first great debate in the sector of international relations. The distribution of forces at the peace conference in Paris is described in more detail, all the treaties forming the Versailles peace system are presented, and attention was also paid to the process of establishing the League of Nations. The main part of the work contains an analysis of the situation during the interwar period, with an emphasis on the sustainability of the idealistic peace concept, which contrasted with the realistic activities of individual states. Based on this, the main goal of the work is to answer the questions what caused the failure of the system of collective security, the demise of the League of Nations, as well as the possible transcendence of peace treaties to the present. Key words Peace conference, idealism, realism, interwar period, Versailles peace system, League of Nations

The endeavor of this thesis is to throw light on the portrayal of women by the Austrian-Jewish writer Joseph Roth. Roth’s women are regarded as highly negative and thus the author has increasingly been judged a male chauvinist and misogynist. This opinion seems particularly questionable since hardly any studies on his fictitious women have ever been conducted. The present study aims at filling that void and thereby presenting Roth’s views in a more differentiated manner. A new approach to Roth is thus called for. The analysis draws from the socio-historic background in which Roth’s work is situated. In his journalism as in his fiction, Roth strived to demonstrate and deal with the challenges of the times he lived in. His work frequently revolves around the “damaged” post-war generation in the 1920s and 30s, the feeling of being literally and metaphorically homeless. His later works are mostly set in the past, although this should not be viewed as escapism but as an attempt to come to terms with present reality. The worlds he portrays are dominated by men who are neither whole nor strong. But although women are few and it is said they are depicted only in crude stereotypes, the study shows that Roth does address their problems and plights. By observing women within established types, modern and traditional, it is revealed that Roth indeed shows depth when characterizing women, and that his interest in them is to use them as examples to illustrate fundamental aspects of the human condition. Rather than portraying them subservient to man, Roth demonstrates their common humanity. His understanding for the condition of women in his times often becomes apparent only when the narrative perspective is isolated from the protagonists. Simultaneously his work presents a valuable literary contribution for Gender Studies. / Classics & Modern European Languages / (D. Litt. et Phil.) (German)

This study analyzes narratives of individual Jewish experiences of discrimination and genocidal violence in Hungary during the period of 1920–1945. The aim is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the events through an investigation of survivor testimonies concerning anti-Jewish laws and the Holocaust. The main focus is on how survivors perceived the treatment to which they and their fellow Jews were exposed, and how they responded to the persecution they faced. Perceptions and responses are analyzed through multiple factors such as gender, age, social class, and geographical place. The period under investigation stretches from 1920, when the law of Numerus Clausus (a quota system influencing admission to universities) was introduced, until the end of the Second World War in early 1945. Focus is placed on the war years, especially on 1944, the year of German occupation and the fascist Arrow Cross rule. Experiences from the labour service system, the Jewish houses in Budapest, and the ghettos, as well as of hiding and resistance, are some of the recurring themes which are examined here. Extensive interviews, along with eyewitness reports and memoirs, form the empirical basis of the study. The results demonstrate the complexity of individual experiences during times of upheaval, and the importance of the above factors is evident within the testimonies. The survivors’ experiences greatly depended on gender, age, social class, geographical place, civil status, religious orientation, as well as “race”. However, the importance of the different factors changed over time. For instance, in the beginning of this period, discrimination had a direct impact on adult males, while children, women, and the elderly were indirectly affected. Furthermore, persons belonging to the upper classes could circumvent the anti-Jewish laws in various ways. Ultimately, differences in treatment decreased, according to the testimonies. Women, children, and the elderly also became victims, as did individuals from all social classes.

Au terme de la Grande Guerre (1914-1918), rares sont ceux et celles qui ne rêvent pas d’un monde nouveau. Après quatre années de souffrance et d’angoisse, la paix s’impose comme une pulsion de vie qui touche toutes les populations impliquées dans le conflit, en premier lieu celles qui ont connu les combats sur leur propre territoire. Un nombre record de mouvements pour la paix émerge des cendres de la guerre, dont plusieurs sont spécifiquement féminins. Pour ces femmes, privées du droit de vote et donc exclues de la vie politique au sens traditionnel, ces mouvements apparaissent comme autant de nouveaux espaces d’actions politiques. À travers leur lutte pacifiste, elles investissent le champ politique et social, avec des débats qui n’ignorent aucune des grandes questions de l’entre-deux-guerres. C’est donc dans cette perspective que les femmes prennent parole : même si elles n’ont pas connu comme les hommes les champs de bataille, elles ont aussi souffert pendant le conflit et revendiquent le droit de « refaire le monde ». Ces quelques femmes sont toutefois longtemps restées dans l’ombre : doublement ignorées en raison de leur pacifisme et de leur sexe. L’historiographie de l’entre-deux-guerres en France a en effet longtemps négligé leur travail dans l’établissement de la paix et dans les relations internationales. Cette thèse cherche donc à combler un vide laissé par une historiographie trop longtemps axée seulement sur les hommes politiques et liant de façon trop stricte l’action politique et le droit de vote. À partir de l’analyse de cinq associations pacifistes féminines – la Section française de la Ligue internationale des femmes pour la paix et la liberté (SFLIFPL), la Ligue des femmes contre la Guerre (LFCG), l’Union féminine pour la Société des Nations (UFSDN), l’Union fraternelle des femmes contre la guerre (UFFCG) et la Ligue internationale des mères et des éducatrices pour la paix (LIMEP) – notre recherche propose une nouvelle analyse des affaires internationales en abordant les questions de la paix, de la réconciliation franco-allemande et du désarmement au féminin. Elle met également en lumière les discours sur le rôle et la place des femmes dans la société de l’entre-deux-guerres et cherche à comprendre comment les pacifistes contournent leur exclusion des affaires politiques et légitiment leurs démarches dans la construction de la société d’après-guerre. / Few people came out of the Great War (1914-1918) without dreaming of a better world. After four years of suffering and anguish, peace appears as a driving force for the populations that have been affected by the war, notably for those who have experienced its consequences first hand. A record number of peace movements emerged from the ashes of the war, many of which were specifically feminine. Deprived of the right to vote and therefore excluded from political life in a traditional sense, these movements created new grounds for women’s political action. Through their pacifism, they invested the political and social fields, and debated all the major issues of the interwar period. It is in this perspective that women speak out: even if they have not seen the battlefields like men, they have also suffered during the conflict and claim their right to “create a new world”. These few women have long been left in the shadows: ignored because of their pacifism and their gender. The historiography of the interwar period in France has indeed neglected their work in the establishment of peace and in international relations. This thesis seeks to fill a void left by a historiography focused solely on political men and which links too strictly political actions and the right to vote. Looking at five women’s peace associations – the Section française de la Ligue internationale des femmes pour la paix et la liberté (SFLIFPL), the Ligue des femmes contre la guerre (LFCG), the Union féminine pour la Société des Nations (UFSDN), the Union fraternelle des femmes contre la guerre (UFFCG), and the Ligue internationale des mères et des éducatrices pour la paix (LIMEP) – this research offers a new analysis of international relations giving a gendered analysis of peace, reconciliation and disarmament. It also focuses on the discourse on women’s role and place in the after-war society and seeks to understand how these pacifists worked around their exclusion from political life to enter a field traditionally reserved to men.

Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur l’évolution du discours critique et théorique sur le cinéma développé par les écrivains français de l’entre-deux-guerres (1918-1939). À une époque où le cinéma prend de plus en plus de place dans la société, les écrivains s’intéressent à cette nouveauté, y réfléchissent et tentent d’élaborer des canevas à partir desquels peut se former une cinéologie, c’est-à-dire, une écriture sur le cinéma. De très nombreux textes (articles, chroniques, essais, manifestes, préfaces, biographies), issus de publications diverses (revues de cinéma, revues littéraires, revues d’art, presse quotidienne, édition), témoignent de l’engouement pour ce qui sera rapidement présenté comme un art. S’inscrivant dans un vaste réseau de diffusion, ces textes aux prémisses essayistiques laissent une place centrale à la réflexion et sont représentatifs des tendances et des enjeux de l'époque. Ainsi, ils montrent les débats autour de l’acceptation du cinéma comme art tout comme les prises de position au sujet du parlant, ils abordent les relations avec la forme de représentation rivale qu’est le théâtre, ils témoignent de la modernité du nouveau média et en proposent des définitions mettant l’accent sur certains de ses aspects – thématiques (comme le rêve et l’inconscient), pratiques (comme la dépendance vis-à-vis de l’industrie et de la finance) et techniques (comme la photogénie et le rythme). Cette production textuelle doit également être abordée comme une mémoire du cinéma où se côtoient des figures (Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, ou encore Erich von Stroheim) et des films (The Cheat, Le Cabinet du Docteur Caligari, ou Hallelujah!) dont les seules évocations fonctionnent comme des citations et des arguments appuyant les propos. En plus de la richesse des idées proposées, l'étude de la posture, l’analyse des renvois intertextuels et des inventions lexicales montrent que des écrivains comme Louis Aragon, Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Mac Orlan, Jean Prévost ou encore Marcel Pagnol, ont largement contribué à l'élaboration d’un pan du savoir cinématographique et au développement d'un discours qui place l’expérience du cinéma et celle du spectateur au centre des préoccupations cinéphiliques. / This PhD dissertation is about critical and theoretical discourses on cinema that French writers have contributed to elaborate during the interwar period. At the beginning of the 20th century, cinema had acquired more importance in society. Therefore, some writers have tried to create new ways to write about it – what we called a cinéologie. They have expressed and discussed their ideas and views about what will soon become a new art in numerous and varied texts (articles, columns, essays, manifestos, prefaces, biographies). These texts come from diverse types of publications (film magazines, literary journals, art magazines, newspapers, publishing) and largely testify to the popularity of cinema. In the form of the essay, these texts are representative of the issues discussed at the time and need to be considered as a constituent part of an extensive network of diffusion. Thus, they present arguments about the acceptance of cinema as art, the talkies, the relations with drama and the place of cinema in modernity. These texts alos give several definitions about the possibilities of cinema in terms of esthetic, practice and technique. Besides, they can be considered as a cinematographic memory filled with artist names (Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks or Erich von Stroheim) and film titles (The Cheat, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Hallelujah). Those references, which need to be considered as quotes supporting the argumentation, are an important part of that cinéologie developed in the interwar period. In addition to the ideas and the thoughts presented in those texts, the study of the position of the writer, the intertextual references and the lexical inventions show that writers such as Louis Aragon, Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Mac Orlan, Jean Prévost and Marcel Pagnol have contributed to a part of the cinematographic knowledge putting both the experience of cinema and the one of the audience at the center of concerns about cinephilia.

This diploma thesis investigates propaganda practices of the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs applied especially to the local press of Vienna during the interwar period. The aim of the thesis is to explain the reasons that made the Czechoslovakian authorities take these steps and to reconstruct the events surrounding the subsidizing of the Vernay publishing house. A part of the investigation is an analysis of the press published under this house (Der Tag, Die Stunde, Die Börse, Die Bühne, Die Sphinx and business books of Compass) - its history, political orientation, columns, journalists, characteristics, etc. The emphasis is placed on changes brought by the Czechoslovakian influence. The thesis studies activities of the journalists (not only in Vernay's newspapers) during the crucial moments of the history of the Austrian - Czechoslovakian relations (e.g. the Austro-German Customs Union of 1931) and then draws conclusions on the effectiveness the propaganda. In this regard, the aspects seen as the most problematic are especially the non-loyalty of some of the journalists, a wide awareness of the propaganda in both countries, and a choice of newspapers intended for the purpose of propaganda.

Le traité de paix signé en 1920 à Trianon, réduisant des deux-tiers le territoire et la population de la Hongrie vaincue, engendre une crise diplomatique franco-hongroise. Ce contentieux a-t-il eu un impact sur l’enseignement du français et sur la représentation de la culture française en Hongrie ? La réforme de l’enseignement secondaire de 1924 introduit le français, l’anglais et l’italien à côté de l’allemand obligatoire. On constate alors un essor spectaculaire du français dans les lycées. Cet essor ainsi que la création du premier lycée bilingue français-hongrois montrent l’influence de la culture française et le rôle actif des diplomates français en poste à Budapest malgré les consignes restrictives de Paris. Le Collège Eötvös, créé en 1895 sur le modèle français de l’École Normale Supérieure joue aussi un rôle déterminant dans la formation d’une élite enseignante francophone et francophile. L’approche allemande Kulturkunde, visant l’étude de l’esprit d’un peuple à travers sa littérature, pénètre dans les cercles pédagogiques hongrois. L’accueil est ouvert mais réservé quant aux dérives nationalistes possibles. L’analyse des manuels de français montre que les auteurs inscrivent cette approche dans la tradition francophile de l’élite intellectuelle hongroise en reliant la représentation de l’esprit français aux valeurs humanistes universelles véhiculées par la littérature française. L’absence d’amalgame entre culture et politique, l’attitude distanciée et humaine des enseignants hongrois, dont certains avaient même souffert personnellement de la situation politique entre la France et la Hongrie, montrent que des choix individuels peuvent transcender les contingences politiques et les dérives méthodologiques. / The peace treaty signed at Trianon in 1920 reduced by two-thirds the territory and population of defeated Hungary, thus creating a French-Hungarian diplomatic crisis. Might this strife had an impact on French language teaching and on the way French culture was depicted in textbooks? Actually, in 1924, a secondary education reform provided the possibility to learn English, French and Italian besides compulsory German. The result is a huge rise of French language in secondary schools. This rise and also the creation of the first French bilingual school show how influent French culture was in the country and how French diplomats in Budapest supported the reform in spite of limitative instructions from Foreign Office in Paris. Eötvös College, created in 1895 on the model of French Ecole Normale Supérieure, played also a decisive role in French teachers’ training and in the growth of a French-speaking elite. The german Kulturkunde approach, aimed to study the “mind or esprit of a nation” in teaching literature, penetrates into Hungarian educational circles. Hungarian teachers welcomed this new approach but expressed reserves about possible nationalistic drifts. The analysis of French textbooks shows that the authors applied Kulturkunde by making a strict distinction between politics and culture and by associating it with the humanist and universal values conveyed by French culture, in accordance with the francophile tradition of the Hungarian intellectual elite. The balanced and kind attitude of the Hungarian teachers, some of whom had to suffer personally from the political situation between France and Hungary, shows that individual choices can transcend political contingencies and methodological drifts.