Benjamin Ziemann
Biographic Data
| ID | 1122520 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Ziemann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Ziemann |
| SIGNATURE | ZIEMANN B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2075-1931 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Michael Wildt, Zerborstene Zeit. Deutsche Geschichte 1918–1945. München, C. H. Beck 2022
Pionier und Außenseiter
Journal Article Pionier und Außenseiter: Gustav Mayer. Deutsch-jüdischer Historiker des Sozialismus Get access Pionier und Außenseiter: Gustav Mayer. Deutsch-jüdischer Historiker des Sozialismus. By Gottfried Niedhart. Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf. 2023. 246 pp. €24.00 (paperback). Benjamin Ziemann Benjamin Ziemann University of Sheffield, UK [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar German H…
The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (1918–33) was a pivotal period of German and European history and a laboratory of modernity. This handbook is a comprehensive reference book presenting the key findings of recent research on Weimar Germany in the most concise and accessible way. Weimar is often presented as a warning from history, and as such invoked time and time again when challenges of democratic governance are debated. But the chapters of the Handbook demo…
Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic
Sönke Neitzel, Deutsche Krieger. Vom Kaiserreich zur Berliner Republik – eine Militärgeschichte. Berlin, Propyläen 2020
Article Sönke Neitzel, Deutsche Krieger. Vom Kaiserreich zur Berliner Republik – eine Militärgeschichte. Berlin, Propyläen 2020 was published on October 1, 2021 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 313, issue 2)
Richard Walther Darré. Der “Reichsbauernführer”, die nationalsozialistische “Blut und Boden”-Ideologie und Hitlers Machteroberung
Among the leaders of the Nazi party, Richard Walther Darré (1895–1953) is an often overlooked figure. He joined the leadership circles of the party rather late, in the August of 1930, and it was only a little earlier, on 1 June 1930, when he had finally formalized his long-standing affinity to the NSDAP and had joined the party as a member (p. 150). Yet Darré’s importance for the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, and thus for the genocidal p…
Introduction
The introduction to this special section discusses the state of the art in recent historiography on peace movements during the 1970s and 1980s, and recent attempts to conceptualise Southern Europe as a geographical or political space
Then They Came for Me
In the extensive literature on the Christian Churches during the Third Reich, Martin Niemöller has not found the scholarly attention that he deserves. As the co-founder and leader of the Pastor Emergency League which at its peak organized about one third of all Protestant ministers in Germany, as a participant in all the major synods of the Confessing Church until his arrest in 1937, and as a symbol of Christian conscience during his 7 years as H…
Ambivalente Männlichkeit. Geschlechterbilder und -praktiken in der kaiserlichen Marine am Beispiel von Martin Niemöller
On 1 April 1910,Martin Niemo ̈ller, the son of a Protestant pastor, joined the Imperial German navy together with 206 other sea cadets. After twelve months of training, he was promoted to ensign, and to the rank of lieutenant-at-sea in April 1913. Based on a dense record of letters and diary entries, this article analyses how Niemöller engaged the practices of male camaraderie in the navy, and how his perception of his own masculinity evolved. A …
Larry Eugene Jones, Hitler versus Hindenburg
European Political History 1870–1913
Contents: Part I The Emergence of Mass Politics: Giolitti's reform program. An exercise in equilibrium politics, SA!ndor AgA(3)cs The struggle for women's suffrage in Norway 1855-1913, Ida Blom Popular Boulangism and the advent of mass politics in France, 1886-90, Patrick H. Hutton The franchise factor in the rise of the Labour Party, H.C.G. Matthew, R.I. McKibbin and J.A. Kay The zemstvo and public initiative in late Imperial Russia, Thomas Port…
Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic
Max Weber’s seminal articles on the ‘Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism’ first appeared in two installments in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904/1905 and were subsequently reprinted, with Weber’s own additions, in the posthumously published 1920 edition of his collected articles on the sociology of religion.1 These are texts that have gone through distinctive cycles of reception and interpretation which have…
The Practical Sociologist
The article is discussing the practical work of pastoral sociologists in the West German Catholic Church from 1945 to 1970. In this context the distinction between “consultant,” “practitioner,” and “researcher in a practical setting,” can be used to highlight different sets of values, forms of engagement, and conceptual approaches to sociological work in the church. Using one specific example for each of the three types, this article argues that …
Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940
Journal Article Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940 Get access Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940. Edited by Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 2015. 208 pp. £55.00. ISBN: 978 1 1375 1594 0. Benjamin Ziemann Benjamin Ziemann University of Sheffield Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French History, Volume 30, Issue 1, March 2016, Pa…
Normalität und Fragilität
Abschied vom Kalten Krieg? Die Sozialdemokraten und der Nachrüstungsstreit (1977–1987)
The debate over the implementation of the December 1979 NATO Dual Track decision was one of the seminal events in West Germany’s post-war history. The decision combined high-level talks about the reduction of intermediate nuclear missiles between the US and USSR with the threat to deploy Pershing-II missiles in Germany and other NATO countries in case they would fail. The prospect of new atomic missiles not only conjured up images of nuclear dest…
Von Städten, Gütern und Dörfern
In Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the Middle Ages only ended in 1918/19. Along with Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Mecklenburg-Schwerin was one of the two parts of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg. Mecklenburg as a whole was an anomaly in the wider political framework of the German nation-state that had been established in 1871. Of the twenty-two monarchical entities and three free cities that made up the German federative state, Mecklenburg was the only state that …
Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag. Die Arbeiterbewegung in Leipzig und Lyon im Moment der Krise 1929-1933/38
Why were French socialists and communists able to respond quickly with united action to the threat to the Third Republic that the radical right seemed to pose in 1934, whereas the German Communists and their party, the KPD, were locked in an intensive struggle against the Social Democrats (SPD) as their alleged ‘main enemy’ while the Nazis destroyed the Weimar republic in 1933 and forced both wings of the socialist labour movement into illegality…
Progressive Participation and Transnational Activism in the Catholic Church after Vatican II
This article examines transnational connections, perceptions and imaginations of bottom-up contention in the Dutch and West German Catholic Church. It not only analyses how the Second Vatican Council fuelled participatory practises launched by the bishops of both countries in order to keep their institute viable, such as opinion polling, but also focuses on the ways in which the Dutch Pastoral Council influenced Church reform in West Germany. Fur…
Encounters With Modernity
During the three decades from 1945 to 1975, the Catholic Church in West Germany employed a broad range of methods from empirical social research. Statistics, opinion polling, and organizational sociology, as well as psychoanalysis and other approaches from the “psy sciences,” were debated and introduced in pastoral care. In adopting these methods for their own work, bishops, parish clergy, and pastoral sociologists tried to open the church up to …
Der Weltkrieg als Erzieher
Organized youth in the Weimar Republic lived under a strange predicament. They had to engage with and practice the remembrance of the fallen soldiers of the Great War, who had been their fathers and older brothers, even though they themselves had not been old enough to make any meaningful contribution to the war effort. As the war youth generation, those born between 1900 and 1910, reached their late teens and early twenties, they were active par…
Der Sozialstaat hinter dem Haus. Wirtschaftliche Zukunftserwartungen, Selbstversorgung und regionale Vorbilder
Journal Article Der Sozialstaat hinter dem Haus. Wirtschaftliche Zukunftserwartungen, Selbstversorgung und regionale Vorbilder: Westfalen und Südwestdeutschland 1920–1960 Get access Der Sozialstaat hinter dem Haus. Wirtschaftliche Zukunftserwartungen, Selbstversorgung und regionale Vorbilder: Westfalen und Südwestdeutschland 1920–1960. By Michael Prinz. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2013. 454 pp. €44.90 (hardback). Benjamin Ziemann Benjamin Zie…
Machtergreifung ’. The Nazi Seizure of Power in 1933
The 80th anniversary of 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed as German Chancellor and the Nazi Party seized state power in the process, invites historical reflection. Looking back from
Zur Entwicklung christlicher Religiosität in Deutschland und Westeuropa, 1900–1960
Engineering Society
Explaining crime by reference to abnormalities of the brain is just one example of how the human and social sciences have influenced the approach to social problems in Western societies since 1880. Fo
The Code of Protest
The article examines posters produced by the peace movements in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War, with an analytical focus on the transformation of the iconography of peace in modernity. Was it possible to develop an independent, positive depiction of peace in the context of protests for peace and disarmament? Despite its name, the pictorial self-representation of the campaign ‘Fight against Nuclear Death’ in the late 1950s did…
Weimar was Weimar
The article reviews recent books on the cultural, social and political history of the Weimar Republic. Specific fields of enquiry have included gender history, where work on the history of abortion has challenged established narratives of emancipation. Another strand of research is interested in the idea that the crisis of Weimar was not simply an objective condition, but rather a cultural form which could be used to imagine and reflect upon poss…
The Gospel of Psychology
As Friedrich Wilhelm Graf has argued, any thorough assessment of religious change in the twentieth century has to pay attention to the interplay between the established churches and social forces in fields of society as different as the media, the economy, the arts, and the sciences. It is the aim of this article to stress both the emergence and the importance of hybrids between organized religion and the human sciences in the decades since the 1…
Germany after the First World War – A Violent Society? Results and Implications of Recent Research on Weimar Germany
GermanFrenchDeutschland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg – eine gewalttätige Gesellschaft ? Ergebnisse und Konsequenzen der jüngsten Forschungen zur Weimarer RepublikIn den letzten zehn Jahren hat sich die historische Forschung zu den Formen von Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik neu orientiert. Dies geht erstens auf eine kritische Neubewertung der «Brutalisierungsthese» zurück, die einen unmittelbaren Kausalzusammenhang zwischen der Kriegserfahrung und ge…
Front und Heimat
Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing. Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare
Germany after the First World War – A Violent Society? Results and Implications of Recent Research on Weimar Germany
GermanFrenchDeutschland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg – eine gewalttätige Gesellschaft ? Ergebnisse und Konsequenzen der jüngsten Forschungen zur Weimarer RepublikIn den letzten zehn Jahren hat sich die historische Forschung zu den Formen von Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik neu orientiert. Dies geht erstens auf eine kritische Neubewertung der «Brutalisierungsthese» zurück, die einen unmittelbaren Kausalzusammenhang zwischen der Kriegserfahrung und ge…
Opinion Polls and the Dynamics of the Public Sphere
Journal Article Opinion Polls and the Dynamics of the Public Sphere: The Catholic Church in the Federal Republic after 1968 Get access Benjamin Ziemann Benjamin Ziemann University of Sheffield, [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar German History, Volume 24, Issue 4, October 2006, Pages 562–586, https://doi.org/10.1177/0266355406070331 Published: 01 October 2006
The Gospel of Psychology
As Friedrich Wilhelm Graf has argued, any thorough assessment of religious change in the twentieth century has to pay attention to the interplay between the established churches and social forces in fields of society as different as the media, the economy, the arts, and the sciences. It is the aim of this article to stress both the emergence and the importance of hybrids between organized religion and the human sciences in the decades since the 1…
Katholische Kirche und Sozialwissenschaften 1945-1975
The Theory of Functional Differentiation and the History of Modern Society. Reflections on the Reception of Systems Theory in Recent Historiography
Anders als andere Elemente von Luhmanns soziologischer Systemtheorie ist seine Theorie funktionaler Differenzierung unter Historikern der modernen Gesellschaft kaum rezipiert worden. Der Aufsatz diskutiert einige Ursachen für diese Situation. Ein wichtiger Grund ist die Persistenz eines älteren, Parson’schen Differenzierungskonzepts mit der Annahme einer stabilen, drei- oder viergliederigen Differenzierungsform. Ein anderer Grund ist die von viel…
The Code of Protest
The article examines posters produced by the peace movements in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War, with an analytical focus on the transformation of the iconography of peace in modernity. Was it possible to develop an independent, positive depiction of peace in the context of protests for peace and disarmament? Despite its name, the pictorial self-representation of the campaign ‘Fight against Nuclear Death’ in the late 1950s did…
Ludwig Quidde (1858–1941)
Weimars Ende
The demise of the Weimar Republic is not really a fresh topic, and Peter Fritzsche has in fact argued that it would be more fruitful to ask: ‘Did Weimar fail?’ Nonetheless, in this short book Dirk Blasius intends to highlight a hitherto neglected aspect of the turbulent last three years of the republic, the political instrumentalisation of the discourse of an impending civil war. The governments of both Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher, he…
Historische Diskursanalysen
In 1969, Michel Foucault published The Archaeology of Knowledge. In this short text he suggested a new way of dealing with historical documents. Historians, he argued, should no longer ask whether primary sources were telling the ‘truth’ and what they ‘really’ mean. Rather, they should ‘work from within’ the document, ‘arrange it in levels, establish series’ and try to distinguish what is relevant and what is not. Foucault suggested analysing tex…
Weimar was Weimar
The article reviews recent books on the cultural, social and political history of the Weimar Republic. Specific fields of enquiry have included gender history, where work on the history of abortion has challenged established narratives of emancipation. Another strand of research is interested in the idea that the crisis of Weimar was not simply an objective condition, but rather a cultural form which could be used to imagine and reflect upon poss…
Do all paths lead to Moscow? The Nato dual-track decision and the peace movement – a critique
This article presents elements of a novel approach to the study of social movements in a Cold War context. Using peace activism in West Germany during the 1980s as a case study, this article argues for a conceptualisation of social movement activism that moves beyond the ideological divides of the Cold War and a functional understanding of politics. Instead, this article highlights the multi-layered, fractured and contested nature of activism and…
Shell Shock Cinema
Journal Article Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War Get access Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War. By Anton Kaes. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2009. 312 pp. £20.95/$29.95 (hardback). Benjamin Ziemann Benjamin Ziemann University of Sheffield Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar German History, Volume 29, Issue 2, June 2011, Pages 328–329, https://do…
Engineering Society
Explaining crime by reference to abnormalities of the brain is just one example of how the human and social sciences have influenced the approach to social problems in Western societies since 1880. Fo
Contested Commemorations
This innovative study of remembrance in Weimar Germany analyses how experiences and memories of the Great War were transformed along political lines after 1918. Examining the symbolism, language and performative power of public commemoration, Benjamin Ziemann reveals how individual recollections fed into the public narrative of the experience of war. Challenging conventional wisdom that nationalist narratives dominated commemoration, this book de…
Introduction
In a memorandum submitted to Germany’s Catholic bishops in 1905, the Jesuit priest Hermann Krose called for the establishment of a central statistical office in the Catholic Church. Krose was strongly influenced by the ideas of the Belgian astronomer and statistician Alphonse Quetelet (1796–1874). According to Quetelet, the behaviour of individuals in a given social context displayed a certain probability to commit crime, suicide or other social …
Republik das ist nicht viel
In the wake of the revolution in 1918/19, circles of Young Socialists (Jungsozialisten) cropped up in various German cities. They provided an alternative to the existing party youth of the Social Democratic Party, which since 1922 had been called the Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend (SAJ). Whereas the SAJ basically catered for youth from 14 to 18, the Jungsozialisten organized SPD members and affiliated individuals between the ages of 18 and 25. Whi…
Machtergreifung ’. The Nazi Seizure of Power in 1933
The 80th anniversary of 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed as German Chancellor and the Nazi Party seized state power in the process, invites historical reflection. Looking back from
Zur Entwicklung christlicher Religiosität in Deutschland und Westeuropa, 1900–1960
Encounters With Modernity
During the three decades from 1945 to 1975, the Catholic Church in West Germany employed a broad range of methods from empirical social research. Statistics, opinion polling, and organizational sociology, as well as psychoanalysis and other approaches from the “psy sciences,” were debated and introduced in pastoral care. In adopting these methods for their own work, bishops, parish clergy, and pastoral sociologists tried to open the church up to …
Der Weltkrieg als Erzieher
Organized youth in the Weimar Republic lived under a strange predicament. They had to engage with and practice the remembrance of the fallen soldiers of the Great War, who had been their fathers and older brothers, even though they themselves had not been old enough to make any meaningful contribution to the war effort. As the war youth generation, those born between 1900 and 1910, reached their late teens and early twenties, they were active par…
Der Sozialstaat hinter dem Haus. Wirtschaftliche Zukunftserwartungen, Selbstversorgung und regionale Vorbilder
Journal Article Der Sozialstaat hinter dem Haus. Wirtschaftliche Zukunftserwartungen, Selbstversorgung und regionale Vorbilder: Westfalen und Südwestdeutschland 1920–1960 Get access Der Sozialstaat hinter dem Haus. Wirtschaftliche Zukunftserwartungen, Selbstversorgung und regionale Vorbilder: Westfalen und Südwestdeutschland 1920–1960. By Michael Prinz. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2013. 454 pp. €44.90 (hardback). Benjamin Ziemann Benjamin Zie…
Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag. Die Arbeiterbewegung in Leipzig und Lyon im Moment der Krise 1929-1933/38
Why were French socialists and communists able to respond quickly with united action to the threat to the Third Republic that the radical right seemed to pose in 1934, whereas the German Communists and their party, the KPD, were locked in an intensive struggle against the Social Democrats (SPD) as their alleged ‘main enemy’ while the Nazis destroyed the Weimar republic in 1933 and forced both wings of the socialist labour movement into illegality…
Progressive Participation and Transnational Activism in the Catholic Church after Vatican II
This article examines transnational connections, perceptions and imaginations of bottom-up contention in the Dutch and West German Catholic Church. It not only analyses how the Second Vatican Council fuelled participatory practises launched by the bishops of both countries in order to keep their institute viable, such as opinion polling, but also focuses on the ways in which the Dutch Pastoral Council influenced Church reform in West Germany. Fur…
Political science (31 works) · History (28 works) · European history and politics (26 works) · Law (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · German (12 works) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements (11 works) · Law (11 works)