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There's a Christmas election campaign ahead, and it looks like the SPD is going to let Olaf Scholz deliver their presents one last time. Meanwhile, Robert Habeck is convinced that the path to victory goes via coy, night-time kitchen-table videos. Plus, why Germany's medical system has a language problem, what the CDU is planning for unemployment benefit, and the next way-stage on Megan's road to Germanness. Hooray! Megan's Megacan theme song by Eden Ottignon from Planet OTT Buy us a round, ask us a question! https://www.patreon.com/megansmegacan Or follow us on whichever evil billionaire's data-mining machine you prefer: https://twitter.com/megansmegacan https://www.facebook.com/MegansMegacan https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-o_U5nqe4_-yKfOm1CXOPA
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Showing SAE Latents Are Not Atomic Using Meta-SAEs, published by Bart Bussmann on August 24, 2024 on The AI Alignment Forum. Bart, Michael and Patrick are joint first authors. Research conducted as part of MATS 6.0 in Lee Sharkey and Neel Nanda's streams. Thanks to Mckenna Fitzgerald and Robert Krzyzanowski for their feedback! TL;DR: Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) latents have been shown to typically be monosemantic (i.e. correspond to an interpretable property of the input). It is sometimes implicitly assumed that they are therefore atomic, i.e. simple, irreducible units that make up the model's computation. We provide evidence against this assumption by finding sparse, interpretable decompositions of SAE decoder directions into seemingly more atomic latents, e.g. Einstein -> science + famous + German + astronomy + energy + starts with E We do this by training meta-SAEs, an SAE trained to reconstruct the decoder directions of a normal SAE. We argue that, conceptually, there's no reason to expect SAE latents to be atomic - when the model is thinking about Albert Einstein, it likely also thinks about Germanness, physicists, etc. Because Einstein always entails those things, the sparsest solution is to have the Albert Einstein latent also boost them. Key results SAE latents can be decomposed into more atomic, interpretable meta-latents. We show that when latents in a larger SAE have split out from latents in a smaller SAE, a meta SAE trained on the larger SAE often recovers this structure. We demonstrate that meta-latents allow for more precise causal interventions on model behavior than SAE latents on a targeted knowledge editing task. We believe that the alternate, interpretable decomposition using MetaSAEs casts doubt on the implicit assumption that SAE latents are atomic. We show preliminary results that MetaSAE latents have significant ovelap with latents in a normal SAE of the same size but may relate differently to the larger SAEs used in MetaSAE training. We made a dashboard that lets you explore meta-SAE latents. Terminology: Throughout this post we use "latents" to describe the concrete components of the SAE's dictionary, whereas "feature" refers to the abstract concepts, following Lieberum et al. Introduction Mechanistic interpretability (mech interp) attempts to understand neural networks by breaking down their computation into interpretable components. One of the key challenges of this line of research is the polysemanticity of neurons, meaning they respond to seemingly unrelated inputs. Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have been proposed as a method for decomposing model activations into sparse linear sums of latents. Ideally, these latents should be monosemantic i.e. respond to inputs that clearly share a similar meaning (implicitly, from the perspective of a human interpreter). That is, a human should be able to reason about the latents both in relation to the features to which they are associated, and also use the latents to better understand the model's overall behavior. There is a popular notion, both implicitly in related work on SAEs within mech interp and explicitly by the use of the term "atom" in sparse dictionary learning as a whole, that SAE features are atomic or can be "true features". However, monosemanticity does not imply atomicity. Consider the example of shapes of different colors - the set of shapes is [circle, triangle, square], and the set of colors is [white, red, green, black], each of which is represented with a linear direction. 'Red triangle' represents a monosemantic feature, but not an atomic feature, as it can be decomposed into red and triangle. It has been shown that sufficiently wide SAEs on toy models will learn 'red triangle', rather than representing 'red' and 'triangle' with separate latents. Furthermore, whilst one may naively re...
With all the pressure of the Christmas season I held off from putting out a 'geopolitical review of the year' or something like that: there's a lot going on and people need some space. Instead, I wanted to finish the year with an episode that is in some ways completely different, but also relevant to the issues we have covered in the podcast earlier. Shane O'Mara is a professor of experimental brain psychology at Trinity College, Dublin and the author of numerous books and studies. He also has a brilliant Substack called Brain Pizza which I can highly recommend.Recently, Shane published a book called Talking Heads which explains the unexpected link between human conversation, which of course depends on human memory, and nations. At a time when nationalism in its most pernicious and dangerous form is an increasing phenomenon, understanding that it is a function of human memory, not some inherent feature of Englishness, Germanness, Russianess or whatever, feels like an important insight and worth talking about.Thank you all for listening to this and other episodes of the podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it and hope that you will continue to listen into 2024.You can follow me https://twitter.com/SnellArthur also more often on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social. I write at https://arthursnell.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Join us for a conversation with Kira Thurman, author of Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, and Seattle Opera scholar-in-residence Dr. Naomi André. Drawing on her experience as a classically trained pianist who grew up in Vienna, Austria, Thurman traces the sweeping story of Black musicians performing in Germany and Austria over more than a century. As musicians like Marian Anderson and Grace Bumbry broke barriers on stage and in concert halls, they found opportunities in German-speaking Europe that were denied to them in the Jim Crow-era U.S. In doing so, they also challenged categories of Blackness and Germanness and complicated the public's understanding of how music is tied to racial and national identity.
The Brazilian origins of his mother Júlia were initially a source of shame for Thomas Mann, but that changed in the 1920s “as his understanding of his role in society and democracy changed,” claims Dr. Veronika Fuechtner. The Professor of German Studies at Dartmouth talks about the role of racial and sexual ambiguity in Mann's writing and why he emigrated to the U.S. rather than to Brazil. Fuechtner has co-authored A Global History of Sexual Science 1880-1960 (2017) and is currently completing a monograph on Júlia Mann and Thomas Mann's construction of race and “Germanness.”
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia's violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia's violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia's violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia's violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia's violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia's ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia's violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life.
In this conversation, Lucija Balikić, a researcher affiliated with the CEU Democracy Institute and a PhD candidate at the History department of the same university, discusses Forging Germans: Youth, Nation and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia (1918-1944) (Oxford University Press, 2020) with the author, Caroline Mezger. The conversation touches upon issues related to researching children and youth as historical actors in their own right, complex avenues of negotiating “Germanness” in historical perspective, as well as the dynamics of the National Socialist takeover of youth organizations in the regions of Bačka and Western Banat during the interwar and World War II periods.
Every collaboration has a backstory. Ours goes back nearly 30 years, when Chris (the older one, jazz musician, former line-cook and nightclub bouncer, some tattoos) and Tom (the slightly younger one, classical musician, serial migrant, no tattoos) worked together at WFIU, Indiana University Public Radio. Both of us were in grad school at Indiana at the time, Chris in jazz and musicology and Tom in music performance. In radio those were the old days. We worked with reel-to-reel tape and rudimentary hard-wired networks on the studio computers, pulling shifts late nights and early mornings for a listening audience scattered through the southern Indiana hills. And then we went our separate ways: Chris to start his academic career in Texas, Tom to Germany to work as a musician before returning to the US for a PhD in musicology at Cornell. Fast forward fifteen years: we are both in academia, two American scholars on divergent paths. Chris is at Texas Tech building a Vernacular Music Center and much else besides. Tom has landed in Southampton in the UK, beginning to move from pretty old-fashioned art music (ask him about Mozart and he'll tell you a lot of things you didn't know people even knew) to global music history. Fast forward another ten years to the summer of 2018. Chris has just finished the second of two books about American vernaculars, and Tom is wrapping up a book about European experiences of Chinese music around 1800 and starting a new project about jazz and AI. Over the years we'd seen each other at conferences in strange airless hotels. You could count on us (the big guy with the tattoos and the bookish Mozart scholar living as a migrant in Britain) to regale anyone who would listen with stories about small-town radio in the good old days, where you knew your audience because some of them would call you on the control room phone just to talk, and the reel-to-reel machines sometimes did terrible things to you on air.And, curiously enough, we realize that our paths are beginning to align: Chris is working on “history from below,” in music and dance soundscapes across the Americas, and Tom is working in material and social history using soundscapes of global imperial encounter and modern technology.Chris has an idea. Why don't we two surprise people (because despite our shared history, from the outside we seem an unlikely duo in academia, where everyone is trapped in narrow specialties) and do a thing. We're both all-in on global history and empire, on music and what it means in the world. We feel like we need to say something in times of environmental and political crisis. So...an essay collection? Maybe a symposium? You could feel our enthusiasm waning even as one of us suggested these. As energizing as it can be to spend time in a room full of really cool colleagues, neither of us wanted the thing to be that. Instead, after decades in academia, both of us were looking for something more immediate, the kind of experience we know from the classroom and yes, from the old days on the radio. We talk it over some, and agree to meet in England next time Chris is traveling in Europe. You'll have to listen to the episode to get the rest of the story. It didn't take long for us to settle on an ambitious project: a music history book for non-academic readers. And a podcast, a medium Tom and Chris, Old Radio Guys, were just beginning to discover. A few emails later we had found our producer, Tom's sister Tatiana Irvine, and her production company, Seedpod Sound. And here we are.Key PointsHow we came to be writing a book together nearly 30 years after first working at the same public radio station in small-town Indiana (or “How a global history of imperial encounter, across five centuries, was born in the studios of a small public radio station in southern Indiana, 30 years ago”)What it's like to come up with an ambitious joint project in a business that favors lone working (or “Getting our brains, and those of our colleagues and managers, around the idea of an international collaboration across time zones and disciplines--in the midst of a global pandemic.”)What excites us about podcasting as a medium: its immediacy and the possibility of two-way communication with the audience (or “How podcasting engages and unites us through shared personal and scholarly goals: radio skills, expertise in sound as both meaning and technology, a sense of history, and an urgent desire to contribute to global efforts to fight environmental destruction”)How we want to structure the podcast around three themes: labor, energy and data (or “Why ‘labor'; why ‘energy'; why ‘data'? What are the human, ecological, cultural, and historical stories that brought us to this moment?”)Why we want to tell bold new stories about voices most music historians miss (or “The untold stories, the silenced voices, the unseen or unrecognized encounters between people, places, eras, and experience--between labor, energy, and data--for which we seek to create new spaces for encounter and understanding.”)ResourcesTom Irvine's Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839 is about the shifting responses of Western travellers, musicians, philosophers, and diplomats to China and its soundscapes around 1800, and how these responses shaped their sense of what it meant to be “Western.”Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor, edited by Tom Irvine and the Southampton historian Neil Gregor, explores how Germans reacted in music to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale, and how the world responded to German music in return. The introduction and Tom's chapter on how ideas of “Germanness” shaped the British composer Hubert Parry's heavily racialized approach to music history are available for free on the Berghan Books website.Chris Smith's The Creolization of American Culture: William Sydney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy uses the artworks of painter and musician William Sidney Mount (born in Setauket, Long Island in 1807) as a lens through which to recover the earliest roots of the Black-white cultural exchange that gave birth to the street musics that were the roots of the “Creole Synthesis” of African and Anglo-Celtic sound and movement that lies at the heart of American music.Chris Smith's Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space, and Sound in American Cultural History is a study of 400 years of movement and noise--street dance and "rough music"--as tools by which minoritized peoples, across many moments in the history of the Americas, have sought to create freedom “from below.”All of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veterans? Michael Geheran's wonderful new book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler (Cornell UP, 2020) tries to understand how Jewish participation in World War I shaped their lives in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He uses a seemingly never-ending supply of diaries, letters, journals and other sources to paint a compelling picture of the ways in which German Jews understood their identities and influenced their interactions with Germans and with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Government. It raises new questions about how to periodize the Holocaust and how to think about the role of Germans--both civilian and military--in the persecution and elimination of German Jews. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veterans? Michael Geheran's wonderful new book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler (Cornell UP, 2020) tries to understand how Jewish participation in World War I shaped their lives in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He uses a seemingly never-ending supply of diaries, letters, journals and other sources to paint a compelling picture of the ways in which German Jews understood their identities and influenced their interactions with Germans and with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Government. It raises new questions about how to periodize the Holocaust and how to think about the role of Germans--both civilian and military--in the persecution and elimination of German Jews. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veterans? Michael Geheran's wonderful new book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler (Cornell UP, 2020) tries to understand how Jewish participation in World War I shaped their lives in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He uses a seemingly never-ending supply of diaries, letters, journals and other sources to paint a compelling picture of the ways in which German Jews understood their identities and influenced their interactions with Germans and with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Government. It raises new questions about how to periodize the Holocaust and how to think about the role of Germans--both civilian and military--in the persecution and elimination of German Jews. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veterans? Michael Geheran's wonderful new book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler (Cornell UP, 2020) tries to understand how Jewish participation in World War I shaped their lives in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He uses a seemingly never-ending supply of diaries, letters, journals and other sources to paint a compelling picture of the ways in which German Jews understood their identities and influenced their interactions with Germans and with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Government. It raises new questions about how to periodize the Holocaust and how to think about the role of Germans--both civilian and military--in the persecution and elimination of German Jews. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veterans? Michael Geheran's wonderful new book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler (Cornell UP, 2020) tries to understand how Jewish participation in World War I shaped their lives in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He uses a seemingly never-ending supply of diaries, letters, journals and other sources to paint a compelling picture of the ways in which German Jews understood their identities and influenced their interactions with Germans and with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Government. It raises new questions about how to periodize the Holocaust and how to think about the role of Germans--both civilian and military--in the persecution and elimination of German Jews. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies
What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veterans? Michael Geheran's wonderful new book Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler (Cornell UP, 2020) tries to understand how Jewish participation in World War I shaped their lives in 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. He uses a seemingly never-ending supply of diaries, letters, journals and other sources to paint a compelling picture of the ways in which German Jews understood their identities and influenced their interactions with Germans and with the restrictions imposed by the Nazi Government. It raises new questions about how to periodize the Holocaust and how to think about the role of Germans--both civilian and military--in the persecution and elimination of German Jews. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book. Join us at 10AM every second Thursday, from September to April, as Arthur and our Director of Heritage Programs, Caitlin Yager, dive into each chapter and explore the stories of the people, places, and ideas that helped shape Missouri's German cultural heritage. Register for the series here: https://mohumanities.org/programs/explore-missouris-german-heritage/
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Missouri Humanities has spent the last several years forming partnerships and developing programming dedicated to commemorating and interpreting Missouri's rich German cultural heritage. In 2019, Missouri Humanities partnered with Missouri Life Publishing to create a “book-a-zine” exploring the many facets of “Germanness” in our state: Explore Missouri's German Heritage. Authored by Dr. W. Arthur Mehrhoff, the publication serves as both a travel guide and coffee table book.
Mareika, Nora and Runya Chirikure are three German-Zimbabwean sisters who currently live in Germany. They were raised in Zimbabwe, and only moved to Germany after high school. In this conversation, we explore what it meant to be mixed race in Zimbabwe, in comparison to what it means now that they are in Germany. We also dive into issues such as colourism, lightskin priviledges, and the complexities associated with being expected to choose between one's Germanness and one's Zimbabweanness.Nora is a Pan-Afrikan feminist passionate about creating spaces where people socialize, learn from one another and inspire change. She has done this through organising events in Rotterdam and in Berlin, and through co-founding the Pan-Afrikan collective, Isusu Ffena. She has a background in Economics, Politics and Philosophy, and is currently pursuing Master’s program in Economics and Management Science. In addition, she believes that economic empowerment is necessary for change to be realised, and therefore Nora is involved in the Sangano Business Hub initiative in Berlin.Mareika is currently finishing off her bachelor in Culture and History in Freiburg. She believes that it is vital to not be complacent towards the injustices in this world. She is passionate about creating space for BIPoC people to meet and exchange as she sees this as an avenuue to fight injustices that have been perpetrated through colonialism, capitalism and imperialism. Beyond this, Mareika dedicates much of her time to exploring Afrikan literatures that embody the powerful and spiritual tool of storytelling.Runya is a candidate for a Masters in Sustainable Management of Water and Energy and the co-Founder/Director at Dzidzai Edu. (an agency for study in Germany). She is passionate about sustainability, renewable energy, social innovation and development. Her Zimbabwean/German background has always encouraged her to look for a bridge between the two continents. She believes Africa is the continent of the future and seeks to make a meaningful contribution towards realizing her potential.
Jess is joined by the award-winning author Diana Souhami who has just published a new book titled 'No Modernism Without Lesbians'. Discussions in this episode centre around personal anecdotes and experiences, Diana's unique take on history and lesbian characters, as well as musings on what a post-pandemic future might look like. There are also reflections on the notion of identity and how labels such as, for example, the idea of 'Jewishness', 'Germanness' or 'Queerness' play into this. Things mentioned in this episode:Diana's book 'No Modernism Without Lesbians; Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney; Gertrude Stein; Shakespeare and Company;
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans' national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O'Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy's role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1.
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans’ national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O’Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy’s role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans’ national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O’Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy’s role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans’ national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O’Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy’s role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans’ national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O’Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy’s role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans’ national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O’Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy’s role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The First World War was not limited the trenches on the Western Front. Nor was the system of internment camps it spawned. In his new book, Colonial Captivity during the First World War: Internment and the Fall of the German Empire, 1914-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mahon Murphy looks at the experiences of German colonial settlers interned by the Entente Powers, particularly the British, during World War I. Challenging Europe-centric interpretations of the conflict and internment, Murphy uses a wide range of sources, illustrating both the global integrated camp network, and how experiences of internment varied according to social class, gender and race. He also explores the effects of internment on Germans’ national identity, and how their experiences of post-colonial, Weimar Germany led many to believe that true Germanness was only to be found in the colonies. A must read for anyone interested in the global dimensions of internment and First World War. Anyone in London on 19 March is cordially invited to attend the launch of the book at the London School of Economics. Speakers include William Mulligan and David Stevenson. Information available here. Darren O’Byrne is a PhD student in History at Cambridge University, where he is researching the Ministerial Bureaucracy’s role under National Socialism. He can be contacted at obyrne.darren@gmail.com or on twitter at @darrenobyrne1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Germans and Nazis. They were different things, right? I mean some Germans were members of the Party and believed all it said and some were not and believed none of what it said. True enough, but actually the relationship between the identity “German” and “Nazi” was a bit more complicated than “this” and “that.” The two were mixed, as Peter Fritzsche shows in his fascinating new book Life and Death in the Third Reich (Harvard UP, 2008). Peter looks at the artifacts left to us by ordinary Germans during the Third Reich–memoirs, diaries, letters, and so forth–in order to understand the ways in which their “German” identity was entangled in the Party’s “Nazi” identity. The result is an insightful study of the ways Germans thought about Germanness, about Germany, and about the Party that promised to restore both to greatness. Not surprisingly, different Germans thought about these things in different ways. More surprisingly–at least from my semi-educated standpoint–is that different Germans thought about them in different ways at different times. One of the most original contributions of the book is the documentation of the manner in which German attitudes toward the Nazis and their program evolved as events unfolded. The Germans of 1933 were not the Germans of 1938; and the Germans of 1938 were not the Germans of 1944. This is a terrifically interesting book and should be read by everyone interested in answering the fundamental question about Nazi Germany and its crimes: How could it have happened? Thanks to Peter’s book, we are a lot closer to an answer. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Germans and Nazis. They were different things, right? I mean some Germans were members of the Party and believed all it said and some were not and believed none of what it said. True enough, but actually the relationship between the identity “German” and “Nazi” was a bit more complicated than “this” and “that.” The two were mixed, as Peter Fritzsche shows in his fascinating new book Life and Death in the Third Reich (Harvard UP, 2008). Peter looks at the artifacts left to us by ordinary Germans during the Third Reich–memoirs, diaries, letters, and so forth–in order to understand the ways in which their “German” identity was entangled in the Party’s “Nazi” identity. The result is an insightful study of the ways Germans thought about Germanness, about Germany, and about the Party that promised to restore both to greatness. Not surprisingly, different Germans thought about these things in different ways. More surprisingly–at least from my semi-educated standpoint–is that different Germans thought about them in different ways at different times. One of the most original contributions of the book is the documentation of the manner in which German attitudes toward the Nazis and their program evolved as events unfolded. The Germans of 1933 were not the Germans of 1938; and the Germans of 1938 were not the Germans of 1944. This is a terrifically interesting book and should be read by everyone interested in answering the fundamental question about Nazi Germany and its crimes: How could it have happened? Thanks to Peter’s book, we are a lot closer to an answer. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Germans and Nazis. They were different things, right? I mean some Germans were members of the Party and believed all it said and some were not and believed none of what it said. True enough, but actually the relationship between the identity “German” and “Nazi” was a bit more complicated than “this” and “that.” The two were mixed, as Peter Fritzsche shows in his fascinating new book Life and Death in the Third Reich (Harvard UP, 2008). Peter looks at the artifacts left to us by ordinary Germans during the Third Reich–memoirs, diaries, letters, and so forth–in order to understand the ways in which their “German” identity was entangled in the Party’s “Nazi” identity. The result is an insightful study of the ways Germans thought about Germanness, about Germany, and about the Party that promised to restore both to greatness. Not surprisingly, different Germans thought about these things in different ways. More surprisingly–at least from my semi-educated standpoint–is that different Germans thought about them in different ways at different times. One of the most original contributions of the book is the documentation of the manner in which German attitudes toward the Nazis and their program evolved as events unfolded. The Germans of 1933 were not the Germans of 1938; and the Germans of 1938 were not the Germans of 1944. This is a terrifically interesting book and should be read by everyone interested in answering the fundamental question about Nazi Germany and its crimes: How could it have happened? Thanks to Peter’s book, we are a lot closer to an answer. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Germans and Nazis. They were different things, right? I mean some Germans were members of the Party and believed all it said and some were not and believed none of what it said. True enough, but actually the relationship between the identity “German” and “Nazi” was a bit more complicated than “this” and “that.” The two were mixed, as Peter Fritzsche shows in his fascinating new book Life and Death in the Third Reich (Harvard UP, 2008). Peter looks at the artifacts left to us by ordinary Germans during the Third Reich–memoirs, diaries, letters, and so forth–in order to understand the ways in which their “German” identity was entangled in the Party’s “Nazi” identity. The result is an insightful study of the ways Germans thought about Germanness, about Germany, and about the Party that promised to restore both to greatness. Not surprisingly, different Germans thought about these things in different ways. More surprisingly–at least from my semi-educated standpoint–is that different Germans thought about them in different ways at different times. One of the most original contributions of the book is the documentation of the manner in which German attitudes toward the Nazis and their program evolved as events unfolded. The Germans of 1933 were not the Germans of 1938; and the Germans of 1938 were not the Germans of 1944. This is a terrifically interesting book and should be read by everyone interested in answering the fundamental question about Nazi Germany and its crimes: How could it have happened? Thanks to Peter’s book, we are a lot closer to an answer. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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