Life after death : approaches to a cultural and social history during the 1940s and 1950s / edited by Richard Bessel, Dirk Schumann.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bessel, Richard, editor.

Schumann, Dirk, editor.

Series:

Publications of the German Historical Institute.

Publications of the German Historical Institute

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social change--Europe--History--20th century.

Social change.

Social change--Germany (West)--History--20th century.

Social conflict--Europe--History--20th century.

Social conflict.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Psychological aspects.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Reconstruction (1939-1951)--Europe.

Reconstruction (1939-1951).

Reconstruction (1939-1951)--Germany (West).

Europe--Social conditions--20th century.

Europe.

Germany--Social conditions--20th century.

Germany.

Europe--Ethnic relations.

Germany (West)--Ethnic relations.

Germany (West).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 363 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This collection of essays offers a novel approach to the cultural and social history of Europe after the Second World War. In a shift of perspective, it does not conceive of the impressive economic and political stability of the postwar era as a quasi-natural return to previous patterns of societal development but approaches it as an attempt to establish 'normality' upon the lingering memories of experiencing violence on a hitherto unprecedented scale. It views the relationship of the violence of the 1940s to the apparent 'normality' and stability of the 1950s as a key to understanding the history of post-war Europe. While the history of post-war Germany naturally looms large in this collection, the essays deal with countries across Western and Central Europe, offer comparative perspectives on their subjects, and draw upon a wide range of primary and secondary source material.

Contents:

Introduction: Violence, normality, and the construction of postwar Europe / Richard Bessel, Dirk Schumann

Post-traumatic stress disorder and World War II: can a psychiatric concept help us understand postwar society? / Alice Förster, Birgit Beck

Between pain and silence: remembering the victims of violence in Germany after 1949 / Sabine Behrenbeck

Paths of normalization after the persecution of the Jews: the Netherlands, France and West Germany in the 1950s / Ido de Haan

Trauma, memory, and motherhood: Germans and Jewish displaced persons in post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1949 / Atina Grossmann

Memory and the narrative of rape in Budapest and Vienna in 1945 / Andrea Petö

"Going home": the personal adjustment of British and American servicemen after the war / Joanna Bourke

Desperately seeking normality: sex and marriage in the wake of the war / Dagmar Herzog

Family life and "normality" in postwar British culture / Pat Thane

Continuities and discontinuities of consumer mentality in West Germany in the 1950s / Michael Wildt

"Strengthened and purified through ordeal by fire": ecclesiastical triumphalism in the ruins of Europe / Damion Van Melis

The nationalization of victimhood: selective violence and national grief in western Europe, 1940-1960 / Pieter Lagrou

Italy after fascism: the predicament of dominant narratives / Donald Sassoon

The politics of post-fascist aesthetics: 1950s West and East German industrial design / Paul Betts

Dissonance, normality, and the historical method: why did some Germans think of tourism after May 8, 1945? / Alon Confino.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-139-88296-1

1-139-05234-9

1-280-16084-5

0-511-11963-1

0-511-06368-7

0-511-20405-1

0-511-30268-1

0-511-07214-7

OCLC:

701838493