Why do artists, poets, philosophers, writers, and others who are usually classified as intellectuals leave the ivory tower to "dirty their hands" in the political arena? In an effort to illuminate ...the intellectual's struggle to come to grips with the issues raised by political involvement, David Schalk examines the life and thought of fiveintellectuels engagésin France during the period between 1920 and 1945. From communist to fascist, these figures-Paul Nizan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Mounier, Julien Benda, and Robert Brasillach-cover the full political spectrum, and Professor Schalk studies their diverse reactions to the social, political, and economic tensions of the interwar period.
Broadly defining "engagement" as political involvement that is voluntary, conscious, and freely chosen, usually by intellectuals, the author poses the intellectual's dilemma in the following terms: "When we areengagé," he writes, "we fear that we are debasing our highest values; when we are not, we worry that we have become, in Paul Nizan's trenchant phrase, merechiens de gardewatchdogs." He then investigates the origins and the popularization of the concept of engagement in the early 1930s, the arguments used to denounce it and to defend it, its different manifestations, and finally its effects on the socio-political actuality of the world.
Originally published in 1979.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Amid the rising nationalism and racial politics that culminated in World War II, European countries wishing to "purify" their nations often forced unwanted populations to migrate. The targeted ...minorities had few options, but as R. Chris Davis shows, they sometimes used creative tactics to fight back, redefining their identities to serve their own interests.
Davis's highly illuminating example is the case of the little-known Moldavian Csangos, a Hungarian- and Romanian-speaking community of Roman Catholics in eastern Romania. During World War II, some in the Romanian government wanted to expel them. The Hungarian government saw them as Hungarians and wanted to settle them on lands confiscated from other groups. Resisting deportation, the clergy of the Csangos enlisted Romania's leading racial anthropologist, collected blood samples, and rewrote a millennium of history to claim Romanian origins and national belonging-thus escaping the discrimination and violence that devastated so many of Europe's Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other minorities. In telling their story, Davis offers fresh insight to debates about ethnic allegiances, the roles of science and religion in shaping identity, and minority politics past and present.
Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather, much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the ...bustling cities and towns of the Piedmont South. No group contributed more to the commercialization of early country music than southern factory workers. InLinthead Stomp, Patrick Huber explores the origins and development of this music in the Piedmont's mill villages.Huber offers vivid portraits of a colorful cast of Piedmont millhand musicians, including Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and the Dixon Brothers, and considers the impact that urban living, industrial work, and mass culture had on their lives and music. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including rare 78-rpm recordings and unpublished interviews, Huber reveals how the country music recorded between 1922 and 1942 was just as modern as the jazz music of the same era.Linthead Stompcelebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers, guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the changing realities of the twentieth-century South.
In a definitive new account of the Soviet Union at war, Alexander Hill charts the development, successes and failures of the Red Army from the industrialisation of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s ...through to the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945. Setting military strategy and operations within a broader context that includes national mobilisation on a staggering scale, the book presents a comprehensive account of the origins and course of the war from the perspective of this key Allied power. Drawing on the latest archival research and a wealth of eyewitness testimony, Hill portrays the Red Army at war from the perspective of senior leaders and men and women at the front line to reveal how the Red Army triumphed over the forces of Nazi Germany and her allies on the Eastern Front, and why it did so at such great cost.
Inhumanities is an unprecedented account of the ways Nazi Germany manipulated and mobilized European literature, philosophy, painting, sculpture and music in support of its ideological ends. David B. ...Dennis shows how, based on belief that the Third Reich represented the culmination of Western civilization, culture became a key propaganda tool in the regime's program of national renewal and its campaign against political, national and racial enemies. Focusing on the daily output of the Völkischer Beobachter, the party's official organ and the most widely circulating German newspaper of the day, he reveals how activists twisted history, biography and aesthetics to fit Nazism's authoritarian, militaristic and anti-Semitic world views. Ranging from National Socialist coverage of Germans such as Luther, Dürer, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner and Nietzsche to 'great men of the Nordic West' such as Socrates, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Dennis reveals the true extent of the regime's ambitious attempt to reshape the 'German mind'.
Die "Achse Berlin-Rom" war mehr als ein politisch-militärisches Projekt, sie erstreckte sich auf alle Bereiche der Gesellschaft. Wissenschaft und Kunst machten keine Ausnahme. Auch hier entstanden ...intensive Beziehungen, deren Wurzeln bis in die 1920er Jahre zurückreichten. Zahlreiche Intellektuelle beteiligten sich an dieser akademischen "Achse" zwischen Italien und Deutschland - unter ihnen auch viele deutsche Juden, die in Italien eine "Zuflucht auf Widerruf" (Klaus Voigt) gefunden hatten, ehe sie nach der Einführung der Rassengesetze auch dort unter Druck gerieten. Namhafte Experten aus fünf Ländern analysieren die Vielfalt dieser lange ignorierten Netzwerke, die freilich nicht nur von Kooperation und Transfer geprägt waren. Genauso oft standen sie im Zeichen von Abgrenzung und latenter Konkurrenz, die auch das "Achsen"-Bündnis insgesamt bestimmten. Die Botschaft dieses innovativen Ansatzes ist klar: Für eine interdisziplinär informierte Geschichtswissenschaft gibt es noch viel zu tun.
International relations theorists have in recent years shown an interest in international norms and rules not equaled since the interwar period. This contemporary literature is, of course, quite ...different—i.e., better—than that of the 1920s and 1930s: it has greater intellectual depth, empirical backing, and explanatory power. The promise of this research, bolstered by the opportunities of the post–cold war era, is that norms encouraging free trade, protecting the environment, enhancing human rights, and controlling the spread and use of heinous weapons may have a substantial impact on the conduct and structure of international relations. But pessimists also exist. Some have taken up the stick E. H. Carr skillfully shook at idealists in an earlier period, arguing that the anarchic power-shaped international arena is not so malleable and that international norms and institutions have relatively little influence. On the one hand, we are pointed to the centrality of international norms; on the other, we are cautioned that norms are inconsequential. How do we make sense of these divergent claims? Which is right?
The publication “Land of promise – place of refuge” addresses the emigration and flight of Austrian Jewish women and men to Palestine by embedding it in the history of the overall Palestine migration ...since the beginning of the 1920s. It focuses on the cooperation of the Jewish Community, the “Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung” and the Palestine Office in Vienna, an institution, which barely has been researched so far. Furthermore the book deals with the policies and interests of the British mandatory power and the activities of the Jewish Agency and its associated institutions in Jerusalem.
Das Buch „Land der Verheißung – Ort der Zuflucht“ widmet sich der Auswanderung und Flucht österreichischer Jüdinnen und Juden nach Palästina vorrangig in den Jahren 1938 bis 1941 und bettet diese in die Geschichte der Palästinamigration seit den 1920er Jahren ein. Im Fokus steht dabei zum einen die Zusammenarbeit von jüdischer Gemeinde, der im August 1938 eingerichteten „Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung“ und des Palästina-Amtes. Zum anderen wird der Blick auf die Politik und Interessen der britischen Mandatsmacht und der Arbeit der Jewish Agency in Jerusalem gelenkt.
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