Joachim C Häberlen
Biographic Data
| ID | 455173 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joachim C Häberlen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joachim C |
| FAMILY NAME | Häberlen |
| SIGNATURE | HÄBERLEN J C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9177-2345 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Viel Lärm um nichts. Eine Wahrnehmungsgeschichte des Nichtstuns in der Bundesrepublik
Democracy at Play
In April 1967, West Germany’s first adventure playground opened in Märkisches Viertel, West Berlin; it was soon to become a model for the entire Federal Republic. Adventure playgrounds were more than places for children to have fun: they were meant to teach democratic skills and virtues to children who grew up in urban environments that, critics charged, made them lonely, ensured they were unable to communicate, prevented them from being creative…
Das Prinzip Bewegung. Theorie, Praxis und Radikalisierung in der West-Berliner Linken 1961–1972
Journal Article Das Prinzip Bewegung. Theorie, Praxis und Radikalisierung in der West-Berliner Linken 1961–1972 Get access Das Prinzip Bewegung. Theorie, Praxis und Radikalisierung in der West-Berliner Linken 1961–1972. By Benedikt Sepp. Göttingen: Wallstein. 2023. 352 pp. €42.00 (hardback). Joachim C Häberlen Joachim C Häberlen Berlin, Germany [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar German…
New Lefts
Sixties EuropeStudent Revolt in 1968
Timothy Scott Brown’s Sixties Europe is a book one should start reading at the very end, with the afterword rather than the introduction. ‘Today, 1968 still matters because, in a world marked by the persistence of war, poverty, racism, and the threat of environmental collapse—not to mention insurgent right-wing extremism—the questions it posed about the proper organization of human society refuse to go away. Fifty years on, the questions posed ar…
German Angst
In October 1983, 17-year-old Frank Biess participated in a ‘human chain’ demonstration in south-western Germany, protesting the stationing of American Pershing II missiles, armed with nuclear warheads, in the Federal Republic. As did many of his peers, Biess professed a profound fear of a ‘nuclear holocaust’, the destruction of the world in a nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers. Afraid was how he felt at the time, writing (by his ow…
Heterochronias
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopias, the article explores how we can understand revolts and revolutions as ‘heterochronian’ moments. Revolts turn spaces of ordinary everyday life, streets and squares, factories and universities, into ‘absolutely different’ spaces, at least for a moment. But these are also times that radically differ from normal times. Revolts, the article suggests, fall outside the normalcy of time. As an empiric…
Spiritual Politics
In the late 1970s, an increasing number of West German ‘alternative’ leftist authors and activists turned to spiritual ideas. A milieu that had once been characterized by what Timothy Scott Brown called a ‘scholarly-scientific imperative’ now turned to magic and mystics, fairy tales and stories about American Indians. The article explores this turn to spirituality within the ‘alternative left’ in West Germany around 1980. Drawing on a close readi…
P eter C. C aldwell . Democracy, Capitalism, and the Welfare State
The German welfare state—probably like most other welfare states—is a beast. Its complexity makes it difficult even for experts to comprehend all details, not to speak of recipients of support who have to navigate the complex system, understand decisions, and recognize mistakes welfare administrators make. At the same time, many Germans across the political spectrum take pride in their “social market economy,” which is a peculiar combination of a…
En route vers la liberté ? Trois récits de réfugiées musulmanes en Allemagne
Cet article, qui s’appuie sur les récits de vie de trois femmes arrivées à Berlin après avoir fui l’Afghanistan et la Syrie, conteste la validité des représentations des réfugiées comme des victimes de cultures patriarcales devant être sauvées et libérées. Il montre au contraire que ces femmes, luttaient déjà pour leur liberté dans leurs pays d’origine, et que l’expérience de l’exil a même été un moment d’empowerment pour certaines d’entre elles.…
Feeling at home in lonely cities
In the 1970s, a commune movement emerged in West German cities. The article explores this movement as an attempt to create spaces for feeling ‘at home’ in cities that many people perceived to be alienating. After providing a brief overview of the development of the commune movement, the article explores the new domesticity that emerged in communes. It first discusses the emotional and political ambitions that motivated mostly left-leaning student…
(Not) Narrating the History of the Federal Republic
This article offers a critical engagement with narratives of the Federal Republic and with the role that the radical, extra-parliamentary left played within such narratives from the late 1960s into the 1970s. The article first discusses success stories of the Federal Republic that highlight the country's democratic achievements, as well as more critical accounts that focus on the emergence of a neoliberal regime of governmentality. In both accoun…
The Politics of Authenticity
Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive “authenticity” that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves—their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, E…
The Politics of Authenticity
The Emotional Politics of the Alternative Left
In the 1970s, a multifaceted alternative scene developed in West Germany. At the core of this leftist scene was a struggle for feelings in a capitalist world that seemed to be devoid of any emotions. Joachim C. Häberlen offers here a vivid account of these emotional politics. The book discusses critiques of rationality and celebrations of insanity as an alternative. It explores why capitalism made people feel afraid and modern cities made people …
The Contemporary Self in German History
The history of the subject, or, in a different parlance, genealogies of the self, has received increased attention in recent years. Numerous scholars, historians and cultural sociologists alike have inquired about the practices and discourses that shape the (post-)modern self. And while this is by no means an exclusively German debate – indeed, major influences come from French, British and Israeli scholarship –, it is a debate that is particular…
Backpack Ambassadors
Richard Ivan Jobs has written an exciting book about an exciting topic: ‘How youth travel integrated Europe’, as the book’s subtitle puts it. Jobs presents a history of European integration that does not focus on political institutions and economic connections, but on how ordinary young Europeans (and travellers from other parts of the world, notably the United States) helped create a sense of European identity. What might seem to be a history of…
Politics of Authenticity
Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive "authenticity" that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves--their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, …
Feeling Like a Child
The 1960s and 1970s are popularly known as a “time of sexual challenge to the prudery, hypocrisy and stolid family conservatism dominating the post-war Fifties’ world.”1 Scholars have often depicted these years as an era of sexual liberalization or even, especially in the context of the student revolts around 1968, as a time of sexual revolution.2 In West Germany, the focus of this article, premarital sexual relations became a new norm, as a 1971…
Political violence and democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940
Political violence and democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940." Modern & Contemporary France, 24(4), pp. 451–452
Consumption and Violence
It is difficult to say something new about 1968, Joachim Scharloth wrote in 2011. Alexander Sedlmaier seeks to do so by investigating the relation between consumption and violence, though he expands his time-frame to include protests in West Germany from the late 1950s to the unification in 1990. Questions of consumption were, he argues, ‘historically interlinked with discourse on the state’s monopoly on violence, terrorism, war, revolution and g…
Making Friends
In September 2015, Germany – and Austria, let’s not forget – opened its borders for tens of thousands of refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who were stranded on the Serbian-Hungarian border, or in Hungary itself, a country that did not want those refugees to stay. A conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, decided to allow refugees to enter Germany, fully aware that many of them would stay in the long run. Full of euphoria, thousand…
Eine Kommunikationsgeschichte * 1968 und die 68er
It is difficult to write about '1968', as Joachim Scharloth notes in the introduction of his book 1968: Eine Kommunikationsgeschichte. So much has been said about the student revolts around this year, and much of it is strongly politicized. Student activists have been praised for democratizing and liberalizing a deeply conservative Germany, and blamed for political extremism and terrorism. Furthermore, former activists have shaped much of the dis…
Struggling for Feelings
The article discusses emotional politics in the radical left in West Germany from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The first part analyses radical left-wing critiques of capitalism during the 1970s that focused on the emotions that capitalism allegedly produced. The article argues that activists described an ‘emotional regime’ of capitalism, but in doing so effectively instituted an emotional regime within their own milieu which made the expres…
Scope for Agency and Political Options. The German Working-Class Movement and the Rise of Nazism
The article investigates the reactions of the working-class movement to the rise of Nazism. It begins with a discussion of the Preußenschlag, when the Social Democratic government of Prussia was disempowered by the Reich government in July 1932. These events are then put into the context of the social democrats’ struggle for the defense of the Republic. The article argues that certain options for courses of actions, such as calling for mass activ…
Struggling for Feelings
The article discusses emotional politics in the radical left in West Germany from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The first part analyses radical left-wing critiques of capitalism during the 1970s that focused on the emotions that capitalism allegedly produced. The article argues that activists described an ‘emotional regime’ of capitalism, but in doing so effectively instituted an emotional regime within their own milieu which made the expres…
Feeling Like a Child
The 1960s and 1970s are popularly known as a “time of sexual challenge to the prudery, hypocrisy and stolid family conservatism dominating the post-war Fifties’ world.”1 Scholars have often depicted these years as an era of sexual liberalization or even, especially in the context of the student revolts around 1968, as a time of sexual revolution.2 In West Germany, the focus of this article, premarital sexual relations became a new norm, as a 1971…
Feeling at home in lonely cities
In the 1970s, a commune movement emerged in West German cities. The article explores this movement as an attempt to create spaces for feeling ‘at home’ in cities that many people perceived to be alienating. After providing a brief overview of the development of the commune movement, the article explores the new domesticity that emerged in communes. It first discusses the emotional and political ambitions that motivated mostly left-leaning student…
Making Friends
In September 2015, Germany – and Austria, let’s not forget – opened its borders for tens of thousands of refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who were stranded on the Serbian-Hungarian border, or in Hungary itself, a country that did not want those refugees to stay. A conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, decided to allow refugees to enter Germany, fully aware that many of them would stay in the long run. Full of euphoria, thousand…
Scope for Agency and Political Options. The German Working-Class Movement and the Rise of Nazism
The article investigates the reactions of the working-class movement to the rise of Nazism. It begins with a discussion of the Preußenschlag, when the Social Democratic government of Prussia was disempowered by the Reich government in July 1932. These events are then put into the context of the social democrats’ struggle for the defense of the Republic. The article argues that certain options for courses of actions, such as calling for mass activ…
Reflections on Comparative Everyday History
The essay develops a methodological approach to writing comparative history of everyday life and discusses methodological problems this involves. To empirically ground this discussion, it compares the working-class movements' reactions to the rise of the radical right in Leipzig and Lyon in the early 1930s. Methodologically, the essay argues for ‘dissecting’ stories, the ‘raw material’ historians of everyday life use, and comparing different aspe…
Meint Ihr's auch ehrlich
Taking Leipzig and Lyon as case studies, the article asks why the German working-class movement 'surrendered without putting up a fight' (M. Scharrer) to the National Socialists, while in France the working class-movement was able to successfully mobilize itself against a perceived fascist threat between 1934 and 1936. The article argues that the leftist milieu in Leipzig was characterized by a tremendous distrust that is examined in detail in th…
Meint Ihr's auch ehrlich
Taking Leipzig and Lyon as case studies, the article asks why the German working-class movement 'surrendered without putting up a fight' (M. Scharrer) to the National Socialists, while in France the working class-movement was able to successfully mobilize itself against a perceived fascist threat between 1934 and 1936. The article argues that the leftist milieu in Leipzig was characterized by a tremendous distrust that is examined in detail in th…
Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism
The revolts of 1968 and the terrorism of the 1970s are, both in Germany and in Europe at large, increasingly popular topics for both historians and the general public. Pursuing a biographical approach, both books under review contribute to our understanding of these phenomena, and hence of the history of the Federal Republic. Analysing the relationships between language, violence and identity, Sarah Colvin has written an engaging intellectual bio…
Reflections on Comparative Everyday History
The essay develops a methodological approach to writing comparative history of everyday life and discusses methodological problems this involves. To empirically ground this discussion, it compares the working-class movements' reactions to the rise of the radical right in Leipzig and Lyon in the early 1930s. Methodologically, the essay argues for ‘dissecting’ stories, the ‘raw material’ historians of everyday life use, and comparing different aspe…
Kampfbunde der Arbeiterbewegung. Das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold und der Rote Frontkampferbund in Sachsen 1924-1933
Journal Article Kampfbünde der Arbeiterbewegung. Das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold und der Rote Frontkämpferbund in Sachsen 1924–1933 Get access Kampfbünde der Arbeiterbewegung. Das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold und der Rote Frontkämpferbund in Sachsen 1924–1933. By Carsten Voigt. ‘Geschichte und Politik in Sachsen’, 26. Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. 2009. 607 pp. €64.90 (hardback). Joachim C. Häberlen Joachim C. Häberlen University …
Between global aspirations and local realities
This article explores the global dimension of communism during the interwar period. It criticizes a literature that either depicts communist parties as small ‘red armies’ obeying any order from Moscow, or focuses exclusively on the local level and ignores any international aspects. The article first discusses attempts of communist leaders to create a ‘world party’ based in Moscow. It next analyses the conflicts between a globally acting communist…
Between Class War on All Fronts and Anti-Political Autonomy
This article investigates the contested boundaries of the political within the working-class movements in Leipzig and Lyon at the end of the Weimar Republic and during the Popular Front. What the appropriate issues and places of politics should be was a question that was highly contested among the organisations of the local working-class movements in both cities. The article argues that an over-politicisation of the left-proletarian milieu in Lei…
Beton Brennt
In the early 1980s, a wave of frequently violent protests shook German-speaking western Europe. In Zurich, youths rioted after the decision of the municipal council to support the opera with sixty million Swiss Franks, but did nothing to support a local, independent youth culture. The riots were only the beginning of a series of protests that demanded, ultimately successfully, the establishment of an Autonomes Jugendzentrum (AJZ), but also that t…
Scope for Agency and Political Options. The German Working-Class Movement and the Rise of Nazism
The article investigates the reactions of the working-class movement to the rise of Nazism. It begins with a discussion of the Preußenschlag, when the Social Democratic government of Prussia was disempowered by the Reich government in July 1932. These events are then put into the context of the social democrats’ struggle for the defense of the Republic. The article argues that certain options for courses of actions, such as calling for mass activ…
Eine Kommunikationsgeschichte * 1968 und die 68er
It is difficult to write about '1968', as Joachim Scharloth notes in the introduction of his book 1968: Eine Kommunikationsgeschichte. So much has been said about the student revolts around this year, and much of it is strongly politicized. Student activists have been praised for democratizing and liberalizing a deeply conservative Germany, and blamed for political extremism and terrorism. Furthermore, former activists have shaped much of the dis…
Struggling for Feelings
The article discusses emotional politics in the radical left in West Germany from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The first part analyses radical left-wing critiques of capitalism during the 1970s that focused on the emotions that capitalism allegedly produced. The article argues that activists described an ‘emotional regime’ of capitalism, but in doing so effectively instituted an emotional regime within their own milieu which made the expres…
Feeling Like a Child
The 1960s and 1970s are popularly known as a “time of sexual challenge to the prudery, hypocrisy and stolid family conservatism dominating the post-war Fifties’ world.”1 Scholars have often depicted these years as an era of sexual liberalization or even, especially in the context of the student revolts around 1968, as a time of sexual revolution.2 In West Germany, the focus of this article, premarital sexual relations became a new norm, as a 1971…
Political violence and democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940
Political violence and democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940." Modern & Contemporary France, 24(4), pp. 451–452
Consumption and Violence
It is difficult to say something new about 1968, Joachim Scharloth wrote in 2011. Alexander Sedlmaier seeks to do so by investigating the relation between consumption and violence, though he expands his time-frame to include protests in West Germany from the late 1950s to the unification in 1990. Questions of consumption were, he argues, ‘historically interlinked with discourse on the state’s monopoly on violence, terrorism, war, revolution and g…
Making Friends
In September 2015, Germany – and Austria, let’s not forget – opened its borders for tens of thousands of refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who were stranded on the Serbian-Hungarian border, or in Hungary itself, a country that did not want those refugees to stay. A conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, decided to allow refugees to enter Germany, fully aware that many of them would stay in the long run. Full of euphoria, thousand…
The Politics of Authenticity
Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive “authenticity” that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves—their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, E…
The Politics of Authenticity
The Emotional Politics of the Alternative Left
In the 1970s, a multifaceted alternative scene developed in West Germany. At the core of this leftist scene was a struggle for feelings in a capitalist world that seemed to be devoid of any emotions. Joachim C. Häberlen offers here a vivid account of these emotional politics. The book discusses critiques of rationality and celebrations of insanity as an alternative. It explores why capitalism made people feel afraid and modern cities made people …
The Contemporary Self in German History
The history of the subject, or, in a different parlance, genealogies of the self, has received increased attention in recent years. Numerous scholars, historians and cultural sociologists alike have inquired about the practices and discourses that shape the (post-)modern self. And while this is by no means an exclusively German debate – indeed, major influences come from French, British and Israeli scholarship –, it is a debate that is particular…
Backpack Ambassadors
Richard Ivan Jobs has written an exciting book about an exciting topic: ‘How youth travel integrated Europe’, as the book’s subtitle puts it. Jobs presents a history of European integration that does not focus on political institutions and economic connections, but on how ordinary young Europeans (and travellers from other parts of the world, notably the United States) helped create a sense of European identity. What might seem to be a history of…
Politics of Authenticity
Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive "authenticity" that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves--their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, …
Feeling at home in lonely cities
In the 1970s, a commune movement emerged in West German cities. The article explores this movement as an attempt to create spaces for feeling ‘at home’ in cities that many people perceived to be alienating. After providing a brief overview of the development of the commune movement, the article explores the new domesticity that emerged in communes. It first discusses the emotional and political ambitions that motivated mostly left-leaning student…
(Not) Narrating the History of the Federal Republic
This article offers a critical engagement with narratives of the Federal Republic and with the role that the radical, extra-parliamentary left played within such narratives from the late 1960s into the 1970s. The article first discusses success stories of the Federal Republic that highlight the country's democratic achievements, as well as more critical accounts that focus on the emergence of a neoliberal regime of governmentality. In both accoun…
En route vers la liberté ? Trois récits de réfugiées musulmanes en Allemagne
Cet article, qui s’appuie sur les récits de vie de trois femmes arrivées à Berlin après avoir fui l’Afghanistan et la Syrie, conteste la validité des représentations des réfugiées comme des victimes de cultures patriarcales devant être sauvées et libérées. Il montre au contraire que ces femmes, luttaient déjà pour leur liberté dans leurs pays d’origine, et que l’expérience de l’exil a même été un moment d’empowerment pour certaines d’entre elles.…
Heterochronias
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopias, the article explores how we can understand revolts and revolutions as ‘heterochronian’ moments. Revolts turn spaces of ordinary everyday life, streets and squares, factories and universities, into ‘absolutely different’ spaces, at least for a moment. But these are also times that radically differ from normal times. Revolts, the article suggests, fall outside the normalcy of time. As an empiric…
Spiritual Politics
In the late 1970s, an increasing number of West German ‘alternative’ leftist authors and activists turned to spiritual ideas. A milieu that had once been characterized by what Timothy Scott Brown called a ‘scholarly-scientific imperative’ now turned to magic and mystics, fairy tales and stories about American Indians. The article explores this turn to spirituality within the ‘alternative left’ in West Germany around 1980. Drawing on a close readi…
Political science (29 works) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Politics (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · European history and politics (20 works) · Law (15 works) · History (14 works) · Art (12 works) · Political economy (12 works)