Ein Forschungsreisender als Notbehelf: Hermann von Wissmann und der erste Ãœberseeeinsatz des Deutschen Reichs (1889-1891)

When the German government faced for the first time an irregular war in German East Africa in 1888, it realised that it did not have the necessary means for such a conflict. Hermann Wissmann, an explorer, was therefore given the mandate to form and lead a force of mercenaries that was bound to him personally on the basis of contracts. Although Wissmann was successful in crushing the disturbances, the government of the Reich refused to give him a leading administrative position in the new formed protectorate subordinate directly to the Kaiser. It feared that the entrepreneur of violence, which had up to then been backed up, would not accept the regulations of colonial rule that should be implemented. Soon, however, it became clear that due to entrenched local views on sovereignty and legitimacy it would be difficult to transfer the western European concept of the monopoly of the state on violence to Africa.

Taking the Shilling: Songs of and about World War 1

A performance lecture exploring a) contemporary music hall songs as a means of propaganda, recruitment and later criticism, b) the folk songs originating from among the soldiers, based on music hall, hymn and children's song tunes, and c) songs written about World War 1 by songwriters of the sixties and seventies in the critical vein inspired amongst others by the Vietnam War.

[Modalities of acupuncture treatments in assisted reproductive technology--a comparison of treatment practice in Swiss, German, and Austrian fertility centers with findings from randomized controlled trials]

One in 5 couples is affected by infertility. To increase the effectiveness of assisted reproductive technology (ART) adjuvant acupuncture treatments are frequently administered. However, little is known about acupuncture treatment modalities employed in fertility centers. The aim of our study was to assess modalities of acupuncture treatments in fertility centers and compare them with investigated acupuncture treatments in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) related to ART.

„Es war, als hätte das Virus mich geschwängert.“ Vertextungsformen in Aids-Autobiographien

Die vorliegende Untersuchung der Vertextung von Aids in Autobiografien fokussiert die Frage, welcher Darstellungsstrategien diese sich bedienen und welche Funktionen sie in den westlichen Kulturen übernehmen. Vier Autobiografien werden exemplarisch mit Hilfe der Systemtheorie und der Diskursanalyse analysiert und auf folgende Leitfragen hin untersucht: Sind die AutorInnen an Aids erkrankt oder nicht? Welche Lebenszeit steht ihnen zur Verfügung? Sind sie professionelle Schriftsteller oder Laien? Welche Rolle spielt ihr Geschlecht? Welche Werte werden wie vermittelt? Wird Akzeptabilität geschaffen? Wie wird mit den Grenzen des Akzeptablen umgegangen? Wie wird die Konstruktion und Destruktion des schreibenden Subjektes angesichts der Krankheitserfahrung verhandelt? Das untersuchte Material umfasst ein Spektrum, das • das schnelle Sterben an Aids, das lange Leben mit Aids sowie das Leben als HIV-Negativer in Gegenwart von Aids zeigt. • von gesellschaftlich orientierter Bewältigung der Krankheitserfahrung über individuelle Bewältigung bis hin zur Verweigerung der gesellschaftlichen Integration reicht. • den unterschiedlichen Einsatz von Metaphern bei der Sinngebung und der Vertextung von Körpererfahrung aufzeigt: Sterben als Geburt (Normalisierungsrhetorik), Sterben als Holocaust (Eskalationsrhetorik), Krankheitserfahrung als Generator immer neuer, überbordender Sprachbilder.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s "Garbage, The City, and Death". A Four Act Scandal in Post-war Germany

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Garbage, The City, and Death. A Four Act Scandal in Post-war Germany The paper explores the dramaturgy of the scandals around the play Garbage, The City and Death (Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod) by German playwright, theatre and film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Published in 1976, the play immediately caused a scandal in West Germany, because it was accused of reproducing anti-Semitic stereotypes. The presentation sheds light on the different phases of the scandal and their historical and cultural contexts in post-war Germany – starting as a literary scandal in 1976, being transformed into a theatre scandal in the 1980ies and finally being dissolved by the German premiere in 2009. The paper is structured as follows: Act One: The Literary Scandal. Destroying Fassbinder’s Garbage, Act Two: Preventing the Staging of the Play, Act Three: Blocking the Opening Night, Act Four: Performing the Play in Germany. By analysing the dramaturgical structure of this specific scandal, the paper discusses the following hypotheses: 1. Scandals arise through the circulation of decontextualised information in public. This is due to either a lack of information about the actual object or incident being scandalised or a lack of information about the context of the object or incident. This lack is caused by the logic of the scandal itself: Because the play or the performance is prohibited, it has been withdrawn from the public, making it impossible to form a well-founded opinion on the controversy. 2. The scandal is driven forward by an emotionalising rhetoric built around the decontextualised information. 3. Once the gap of information is filled, the scandalising rhetoric turns into a rhetoric of irrelevance: Reviews of the first performance of Garbage, The City and Death in Germany considered the play hardly a matter of public concern.