- University College London
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
- History, Cultural History, Intellectual History, German History, Habsburg Studies, Czech History, and 21 moreFrench History, American History, Transatlantic History, Central European history, Urban History, History of Sexuality, History Of Psychology, Emile Durkheim, Fin de siècle Vienna, Sigmund Freud, History of Social Sciences, History of Sociology, The Beatles, Austrian History, Central and Eastern Europe, History Of Eugenics, 20th Century German History, Völkerpsychologie, Jacob Taubes, Niklas Luhmann, and Modern German Historyedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The chapter focuses on the “British Invasion” of the American music market. It presents the success of the Beatles, as well as a number of further British bands as a decisive moment in the history of modern pop and rock music, which put... more
The chapter focuses on the “British Invasion” of the American music market. It presents the success of the Beatles, as well as a number of further British bands as a decisive moment in the history of modern pop and rock music, which put an end to the global domination of American popular music. While the U.S. had dominated the development of modern popular music since the beginning of the twentieth centrury, the “British Invasion” increasingly complicated the direction of transfers between “old” and “new”world. From 1964, the modes of reception between the U.S. and Europe – thus far one-sided – changed suddenly, and for good. The history of the “British Invasion” does not fit into attempts to explain popular culture as part of the global, irresistable and unstoppable “Americanization” of the world. Rather, the successes of British pop- and rock music in the United States tell a different, more complicated story of the transatalantic transfers of popular culture. Therefore, the history of the “British Invasion” forces us to re-think concepts such as “Americanization” or “Europeanization”.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article assesses interactions between American and German eugenicists in the interwar period. It shows the shifting importance and leading roles of German and American eugenicists: while interactions and exchanges between German and... more
This article assesses interactions between American and German eugenicists in the interwar period. It shows the shifting importance and leading roles of German and American eugenicists: while interactions and exchanges between German and American eugenicists in the interwar period were important and significant, it remains difficult to establish direct American influence on Nazi legislation. German experts of race hygiene who advised the Nazi government in drafting the sterilization law were well informed about the experiences with similar laws in American states, most importantly in California and Virginia, but there is little evidence to suggest they depended on American knowledge and expertise to draft their own sterilization law. Rather, they adapted a body of thought that was transnational by nature: suggesting that the Nazis’ racial policies can be traced back to American origins over-simplifies the historical record. Still, the ‘American connection’ of the German racial hygiene movement is a significant aspect of the general history of eugenics into which it needs to be integrated. The similarities in eugenic thinking and practice in the USA and Germany force us to re-evaluate the peculiarity of Nazi racial policies.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article reconstructs French readings and debates of German approaches to Völkerpsychologie. Irrespective of its academic credentials, Völkerpsychologie was a symptomatic approach during a transformative period in German, and... more
This article reconstructs French readings and debates of German approaches to Völkerpsychologie. Irrespective of its academic credentials, Völkerpsychologie was a symptomatic approach during a transformative period in German, and indeed European, intellectual history: based on the idea of progress—both scientific and moral—and on the belief in the primordial importance of the Volk, it represented the mindset of “ascendant liberalism” in an almost pure form. The relevance and importance of Völkerpsychologie can be gauged from a list of scholars and intellectuals who discussed its merits as well as its problems. Moreover, the reception of Völkerpsychologie was not restricted to German academics: it was in France where central elements of Völkerpsychologie had the most profound effect on scholars who tried to establish a social science. Some of the best-known French academics and intellectuals of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries—Théodule Ribot, Célestin Bouglé, Ernest Renan, Alfred Fouillée, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss—commented extensively on the works of Moritz Lazarus, Heymann Steinthal and Wilhelm Wundt, and developed their concepts of a “social science” that would reach beyond traditional philosophy, philology and history in a close dialogue with their German colleagues. Hence Völkerpsychologie was not a German oddity, but an integral part of the debates that led to the establishing of the modern social sciences, as its French reception shows.
Research Interests:
This article introduces the Völkerpsychologie of the German psychologist and liberal politician Willy Hellpach. It shows how Hellpach used the once venerable approach of Völkerpsychologie, introduced by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann... more
This article introduces the Völkerpsychologie of the German psychologist and liberal politician Willy Hellpach. It shows how Hellpach used the once venerable approach of Völkerpsychologie, introduced by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal in the nineteenth century, to adapt to the Third Reich and distract the authorities from his political career. The article provides a close reading of Hellpach's main text on the subject, the Einführung in die Völkerpsychologie published in 1938, and explains the ease with which he was able to make this approach compatible with Nazi ideology. Hellpach's case thus illustrates the proximity of national-liberal thinking to ‘Nazi ideology’. Moreover, on account of the post-war reception of Hellpach's Völkerpsychologie by scholars such as Ralf Dahrendorf, the article examines the uneasy and incomplete repudiation of Völkerpsychologie after 1945. It concludes that the origins of widely used concepts such as ‘national habitus’ or ‘national identity’ can be traced back to the tradition of Völkerpsychologie and related studies of national character.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Book review