War at times is still in my thoughts, in my dreams. . Once you have experienced it, particularly as a teenager, at the most vulnerable age, it becomes the foundation of your life. I have known it all: hunger, poverty, homelessness, above all fear in its most Horrible form, i have seen its deadly grin. And in the midst of the destruction of the city where i was born and raised, the question of "why" has always been on my mind - why does mankind bent to the few, who lead them upon a bloody trail, deeper and deeper to a river of blood, where the waves swirl only in one direction, forward - no matter where it leads to. As the waves carry the men along on their crest, a return seems almost impossible. The sign posts on the River bank carry the warnings in big letters "stop, turn back! Destruction is Contagious - it leads to further destruction, it swallows hardened men in its wake and leaves women and children crying by the river bank. Above all, the Fortunes of war cannot be controlled, only the beginning, but not the end. Yet mankind has hardly recovered from one war, when it embraces another one, giving scant thought to the evil that is called forth. Was not world war ii the war to end all wars?
Beautifully illustrated with 40 four-color and 85 black-and-white full-page plates, this finely crafted volume is the first book in English devoted entirely to the drawings and watercolors of German Romantic artists, including Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, and Adolph von Menzel. Published to coincide with a landmark exhibition at The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, The Romantic Spirit features 125 drawings gathered from the Nationalgalerie, East Berlin, and the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, two of the richest repositories of this material in the world. (This is the first time this material has ever been lent to the West.) In addition, an introduction traces the history of collecting German 19th-century drawings in Berlin and Dresden, and five stimulating essays explore various aspects of 19th-century German art, including the major artistic trends (Romanticism, Realism, Classicism, and Biedermeier) and Italian and other foreign influences on German Romantic Art. This exceptional volume is an excellent addition to any library of fine art books. Collectors will especially appreciate the high quality of craftsmanship.
While we now have a great number of testimonials to the horrors of the Holocaust from survivors of that dark episode of twentieth-century history, rare are the accounts of what growing up in Nazi Germany was like for people who were reared to think of Adolf Hitler as the savior of his country, and rarer still are accounts written from a female perspective. Ursula Mahlendorf, born to a middle-class family in 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, was the daughter of a man who was a member of the SS at the time of his early death in 1935. For a long while during her childhood she was a true believer in Nazism—and a leader in the Hitler Youth herself. This is her vivid and unflinchingly honest account of her indoctrination into Nazism and of her gradual awakening to all the damage that Nazism had done to her country. It reveals why Nazism initially appealed to people from her station in life and how Nazi ideology was inculcated into young people. The book recounts the increasing hardships of life under Nazism as the war progressed and the chaos and turmoil that followed Germany’s defeat. In the first part of this absorbing narrative, we see the young Ursula as she becomes an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth and then goes on to a Nazi teacher-training school at fifteen. In the second part, which traces her growing disillusionment with and anger at the Nazi leadership, we follow her story as she flees from the Russian army’s advance in the spring of 1945, works for a time in a hospital caring for the wounded, returns to Silesia when it is under Polish administration, and finally is evacuated to the West, where she begins a new life and pursues her dream of becoming a teacher. In a moving Epilogue, Mahlendorf discloses how she learned to accept and cope emotionally with the shame that haunted her from her childhood allegiance to Nazism and the self-doubts it generated.
Non-conformist, non-linear, unruly thought and action have always led to great works of art, pathbreaking inventions and forward-looking perspectives. But how can this precious good find its way into our everyday working life to help us deal with social, ecological and economic challenges? The crucial step, Ursula Bertram contends, is to reach a synergy of logically justifiable knowledge and the capacity to navigate in open systems. To find out how such synergy could come about, Ursula Bertram has observed the strategies and principles of artists, choreographers, musicians and unruly thinkers and compared them with the statements of physicists, mathematicians, managers and researchers. She shows that when artistic thought is circulated and probed in non-artistic fields, an extremely efficient pattern called artistic transfer emerges. With contributions by Werner Preißing and others.
In opposition to Elizabeth Bowen, the superbly gifted Irish-English short story writer, who was not enticed by the idea of art as self-expression, other novelists believe that writing is autobiographical. The characters in the six stories that comprise Iridescent Stumbles are based on actual encounters. Their physical and psychological make-ups vary. Men and women either appear as shadowy reflections or are more sharply exposed depending upon the background into which they are set. In The upstairs Studio a woman, no longer in her thirties and her younger lover, a well over six feet tall runner, go late at night to their hide-out, an artist‘s studio in a semi rural location. During their love-making the enticing female‘s body appears in dreamlike sequences as a coveted symbol of a medieval monk‘s forbidden sexual cravings, and also changes into Selene who seduces Endymion in his sleep. In the runner‘s arms his inamorata whispers about a swim in the shark-infested Red Sea where she‘s encircled by a pod of dolphins that resemble a gam of sharks. The lovers erotic trysts end when the sprinter gets married again and his second young wife produces two healthy offspring. If a reader has enjoyed The upstairs Studio, he/she will most likely take pleasure too in March Mornings and Nights (a second richly varied love story), Hawaii (a mother-daughter team taking thrilling glimpses at the Aloha State‘s intrinsic, natural splendor and the diversity of Kanaka Maoli people), Tous les jours d‘Europe (fictionalizes a woman‘s journey into past personal occurrences in Europe), Lush Summer Days at Gaby‘s in the Birkshires (recalls annual holidays spent in Masschusetts) and Arizona with Sabine (explores parts of the United States enticing West). The author‘s style, the signature, if not the soul of a writer, so slippery, so hard to catch, remains the same. Her style unerringly aims for its most important goal: beauty.
While we now have a great number of testimonials to the horrors of the Holocaust from survivors of that dark episode of twentieth-century history, rare are the accounts of what growing up in Nazi Germany was like for people who were reared to think of Adolf Hitler as the savior of his country, and rarer still are accounts written from a female perspective. Ursula Mahlendorf, born to a middle-class family in 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, was the daughter of a man who was a member of the SS at the time of his early death in 1935. For a long while during her childhood she was a true believer in Nazism—and a leader in the Hitler Youth herself. This is her vivid and unflinchingly honest account of her indoctrination into Nazism and of her gradual awakening to all the damage that Nazism had done to her country. It reveals why Nazism initially appealed to people from her station in life and how Nazi ideology was inculcated into young people. The book recounts the increasing hardships of life under Nazism as the war progressed and the chaos and turmoil that followed Germany’s defeat. In the first part of this absorbing narrative, we see the young Ursula as she becomes an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth and then goes on to a Nazi teacher-training school at fifteen. In the second part, which traces her growing disillusionment with and anger at the Nazi leadership, we follow her story as she flees from the Russian army’s advance in the spring of 1945, works for a time in a hospital caring for the wounded, returns to Silesia when it is under Polish administration, and finally is evacuated to the West, where she begins a new life and pursues her dream of becoming a teacher. In a moving Epilogue, Mahlendorf discloses how she learned to accept and cope emotionally with the shame that haunted her from her childhood allegiance to Nazism and the self-doubts it generated.
The relationship of the current technosciences and the older engineering sciences, examined through the history of the “useful” sciences in Prussia. Do today's technoscientific disciplines—including materials science, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics—signal a radical departure from traditional science? In Technoscience in History, Ursula Klein argues that these novel disciplines and projects are not an “epochal break,” but are part of a history that can be traced back to German “useful” sciences and beyond. Klein's account traces a deeper history of technoscience, mapping the relationship between today's cutting-edge disciplines and the development of the useful and technological sciences in Prussia from 1750 to 1850. Klein shows that institutions that coupled natural-scientific and technological inquiry existed well before the twentieth century. Focusing on the science of mining, technical chemistry, the science of forestry, and the science of building (later known as civil engineering), she examines the emergence of practitioners who were recognized as men of science as well as inventive technologists—key figures that she calls “scientific-technological experts.” Klein describes the Prussian state's recruitment of experts for technical projects and manufacturing, including land surveys, the apothecary trade, and porcelain production; state-directed mining, mining science, and mining academies; the history and epistemology of useful science; and the founding of Prussian scientific institutions in the nineteenth century, including the University of Berlin, the Academy of Building, the Technical Deputation, and the Industrial Institute.
Eleven short stories are united by the common theme of a woman's journey. Her voyage begins with a repressive childhood in an authoritarian, war-torn society and continues through periods of awakening and self-discovery in which she finds the hidden strength to support herself in new worlds and raise a family. Although the stories are quite different in time and place, in mood and color, there is a thread that connects the main character with each happening, each new encounter, each mishap and each joy. The tales show a woman enamored with the ideal of love yet unable to understand and enjoy sex. It is a woman who adores men but is afraid of their physical power, their superior muscular strength, a woman who had many lovers, not to mention two husbands, but was unable or unwilling to hold on to them.
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