The critical component of this thesis, “Hitler Comedy”, is a dissertation on the intersection between comedy theory in general, and the specific practice of Hitler comedy. Focusing on Bertolt Brecht’s play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941; directed by Heiner Müller in 1995), and Dani Levy’s film Mein Führer: the Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (2007), my argument critiques existing “instrumentalist” theories of comedy as didactic and morally reductive. Moving beyond prevailing conceptualisations of comedy as corrective and/or forgiving, my dissertation emphasises the centrality of pleasure, displeasure and disruption for audience members in the process of their experiencing Hitler comedies. / The creative component of this thesis is a script and a DVD recording of Hitlerhoff, a theatre and multimedia work that combines the characters of Adolf Hitler and David Hasselhoff into a single hybrid figure. Hitlerhoff is a spectacular black comedy that uses comedy to entertain and unsettle, and to disrupt audience members’ expectations. Hitlerhoff is a practical demonstration of the ability of “irresponsible” comedy to act as a potent catalyst for “responsible”, ethically engaged discussions.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [447]-477).

Alors qu’un vaste corpus de documents existe en français concernant la Shoah en général et Auschwitz en particulier, celui relatif aux sites de l’Action Reinhard – Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, et surtout Treblinka - est relativement peu abondant. Un des obstacles majeurs à leur étude est l’absence - voulue par les nazis - des traces « visibles » de leur existence. Rasés et transformés en exploitations agricoles dès la fin 1943, aucun ne fut libéré par une quelconque armée. En France, Treblinka reste un camp encore largement méconnu. De tous les centres de mise à mort de l’opération Reinhard, ce fut pourtant celui où l’assassinat des Juifs fut le plus « efficace » (selon les responsables du système) - près d’un million victimes en 400 jours - et celui où les survivants furent (relativement) les plus nombreux : entre 50 et 70 en 1945. Il représente le cas paradigmatique d’une « impossibilité de rendre compte ». Décrire et réinscrire Treblinka dans l’Histoire, malgré tous ces écueils, c’est aussi déjouer les pronostics mémoriels du projet nazi tout en incitant l’historien à réfléchir sur les méthodes de son champ de recherche et sur le sens de son travail. / If a vast array of historical and literary material concerning WWII and the Holocaust is available in French, accounts concerning Aktion Reinhard in Poland, (Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka Camps) are relatively scarce. One of the major causes for this scarcity is the fact that the Nazis purposely destroyed almost all traces of their occurrence. Before the end of 1943, these sites were dismantled and turned into fake farms. None of these places was “liberated” by any military force.In France, Treblinka remains quite unknown. So is the fact that it was the most “successful” unit of the Aktion Reinhard death machinery. Close to a million Jews were assassinated there during the 400 days that it operated. It was also there that the number of survivors was relatively important: 50 to 70 were alive in 1945. It can be viewed as the paradigmatic case of words’ inability to express such knowledge. Despite all these difficulties, the description and reinsciption in History of Treblinka’s reality addresses a double necessity: to defeat the Nazis’ predictions regarding the erasure of their crimes and to confront the Historian with the relevance of his methods and the meaning of his endeavor.

The thesis "Conception of Jew in the Czech film during the Second Republic and the Protectorate" deals with ways of displaying characters of Jewish figures in the film in the period. It deals with Czech films made between the years 1939-1945, which appears Jewish character, then their analysis and evaluation of whether the film antisemitic sting occurred or not. The work focuses primarily on Czech film production, but also mentions characteristically related films made in Nazi Germany. The work uses for its purposes also newspapers of the mentioned period and compile the available literature. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

After the conclusion of World War II, Richard Strauss’s activities and compositions came under intense scrutiny as scholars tried to understand his position with respect to the National Socialist regime. Their conclusions varied, some describing Strauss as a Nazi sympathizer, some as a victim of Nazism, with others concluding that Strauss was neither a sympathizer nor a victim, merely politically naïve. Among the latter was Strauss’s friend and biographer, Willi Schuh, who ardently defended the composer’s activities during the Nazi period. While Schuh asserted that Strauss’s music had no direct political ties to the “Third Reich”, Strauss’s 1938 opera, Friedenstag, demonstrates that he was, in fact, politically aware and capable of composing a work replete with conscious political overtones. The correspondence between Strauss and his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, shows that Strauss deliberately chose to compose Friedenstag in the face of his disillusionment with the Nazi government. Although initially hailed as the first Nazi opera, elements of Friedenstag’s political message resist appropriation by Hitler’s regime. While addressing the pro-Nazi implications through a close study of the libretto and score, this thesis will argue that Friedenstag was composed as a tribute to peace and a response to the increasingly hostile political climate.

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the Trial of major Nazi war criminals before International Military Tribunal with others trials held in American occupation zone in the Exclusive American jurisdiction (concretely the so called Subsequent Nuremberg trials and the Dachau trials) and to find the similarities between them. The thesis is divided into the six chapters, which are further divided into the subchapters. The first chapter describes the situation during and after the Second World War and the considerations of the Allied powers about the method of the punishment of the Nazi war criminals, which was necessary. The second chapter deals with the creation of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal. This law was created with the joint efforts of the most prominent lawyers from the United States of America, Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. The Charter included new categories of crimes, which were the reaction to the unprecedented extensity of Nazi atrocities. This "Nuremberg charter" helped greatly in the development of the International criminal law. In the second chapter, the reasons for choosing Nuremberg as the location of the trials are also taken in consideration. The third chapter examines the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal. Extra attention is given to the...

Diploma thesis Anti-Nazi resistance in Rychnov nad Kněžnou region from 1939 to 1945 focuses on anti-Nazi resistance during the Second World War, specifically in eastern Bohemia, in Rychnov nad Kněžnou region. The introductory part of thesis briefly summarize situation in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and anti-Nazi resistance in general, its main centers including leaders and related events. In the next chapters, the thesis watches situation in Rychnov nad Kněžnou region from 1939 to 1945. Records from chronicles will serve as a main source for these chapters. Next topic is dedicated to resistance groups which operated in this area. Especially their activities, persons and cooperation with other resistence groups. Here, among other things, the written memories of members of the resistance will be used as a source. Next, thesis studies situation after year 1945 - the one of the sources of activity of resistance groups there are written confirmations which were discovered after the end of the Second World War. Established target of the thesis is to introduce organization of anti-Nazi resistance in this area, Rychnov nad Kněžnou region, in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. Demonstrate bravery od ordinary people who were active in the resistance groups even if they know that this decision...

On April 11, 1933, Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis delivered a sermon in Stockholm's Reform Jewish synagogue. The text was published by Bonnier's publisher with the title Malachi´s cry to the ages: a speech on old and new bondage. The sermon is a scathing confrontation with Nazism's racial political ideas that would lead to the Holocaust.   The sermon is delivered just a few days after the Nazi regime in Germany introduced its first discrimination laws against Jewish citizens. Malachi´s cry  uses the jewish religion, jewish history and jewish culture to argue for universal human values and rights. The sermon is a part of the Jewish celebration of Pesach - a holiday that aims to commemorate the liberation of the Jewish people from captivity and slavery in Egypt - which led to the Exodus from Egypt and the conclusion of the covenant with God on Mount Sinai. Ehrenpreis argues that a new Mizraim - a new Egypt - has come to plague the Jewish people in Germany. At a time when many believed that the Nazi dictatorship would not mean real and far-reaching persecution of German Jews, Marcus Ehrenpreis already had a clear idea that a catastrophe awaited. Marcus Ehrenpreis envisioned a development that would mean that the German jews were deprived of their civil rights and expelled from the country. He had also already a few weeks after the Nazis introduced their dictatorship in Germany realized that the legal system of the entire world was threatened. According to Marcus Ehrenpreis, no one could predict what consequences the abolition of human rights for the jews in Germany could have for the rest of the world's civilizational foundations.

Film produced by Nazi Germany has been a classic that has drawn scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines as well as innumerable cineastes from various cultural backgrounds. The simultaneous rise in the number of players acting as observers and operators in digital games with a WWII theme has drawn recent scholarly attention since it is thought that this pattern is contributing to players' hazy understanding of historical events. In order to close the gap from earlier studies that there is no future perspective for these concepts refined from Nazi films, nor relevance to films in the field of Game Studies, I proposed a new connection between Nazi films and WWII games based on the conceptual relocation of Fascist Aesthetic, Futuristic Utopianism, and Steel-like Romanticism. In this relocation, Fascist Aesthetic has kept its elements from Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films but expanded to the pursuit of death and violence in the Wolfenstein series (WWII FPS games), Futuristic Utopianism in Piel's science fiction trilogy derived from the passion for technology of the Weimar period, his original designs in the Sci-fi trilogy have proved to be an inspiration for WWII games. In Walter Ruttmann's industrial films, steel-like romanticism was portrayed as a romantic sensation from the production of large-scale, intricate weapons by dedicated German workers to achieve the reactionary modernism, but in WWII simulation games, it evolved into a nostalgia for the weapons built by the Reich. As a result of this change, a trustworthy commemoration of the Third Reich is vanishing from visual culture and its grim past has been changed by simulation.

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