Correspondance inédite du prince de Talleyrand et du roi Louis XVIII pendant le Congrès de Vienne,

Mode of access: Internet.

Bougainville avant Tahiti : les Amérindiens dans la correspondance canadienne (1756-1759)

Collection : Dont actes ; no 14

In the shadow of the enlightenment : Le Corbusier, Le Faisceau and Georges Valois

On 9 January 1927 Le Corbusier materialised on the front cover of the Faisceau journal edited by Georges Valois Le Nouveau Siècle which printed the single-point perspective of Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin and an extract from the architect’s discourse in Urbanisme. In May Le Corbusier presented slides of his urban designs at a fascist rally. These facts have been known ever since the late 1980s when studies emerged in art history that situated Le Corbusier’s philosophy in relation to the birth of twentieth-century fascism in France—an elision in the dominant reading of Le Corbusier’s philosophy, as a project of social utopianism, whose received genealogy is Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. Le Corbusier participated with the first group in France to call itself fascist, Valois’s militant Faisceau des Combattants et Producteurs, the “Blue Shirts,” inspired by the Italian “Fasci” of Mussolini. Thanks to Mark Antliff, we know the Faisceau did not misappropriate Le Corbusier’s plans, in some remote quasi-symbolic sense, rather Valois’s organisation was premised on the redesign of Paris based on Le Corbusier’s schematic designs. Le Corbusier’s Urbanisme was considered the “prodigious” model for the fascist state Valois called La Cité Française – after his mentor the anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel. Valois stated that Le Corbusier’s architectural concepts were “an expression of our profoundest thoughts,” the Faisceau, who “saw their own thought materialized” on the pages of Le Corbusier’s plans. The question I pose is, In what sense is Le Corbusier’s plan a complete representation of La Cité? For Valois, the fascist city “represents the collective will of La Cité” invoking Enlightenment philosophy, operative in Sorel, namely Rousseau, for whom the notion of “collective will” is linked to the idea of political representation: to ‘stand in’ for someone or a group of subjects i.e. the majority vote. The figures in Voisin are not empty abstractions but the result of “the will” of the “combatant-producers” who build the town. Yet, the paradox in anarcho-syndicalist anti-enlightenment thought – and one that became a problem for Le Corbusier – is precisely that of authority and representation. In Le Corbusier’s plan, the “morality of the producers” and “the master” (the transcendent authority that hovers above La Cité) is lattened into a single picture plane, thereby abolishing representation. I argue that La Cité pushed to the limits of formal abstraction by Le Corbusier thereby reverts to the Enlightenment myth it first opposed, what Theodor Adorno would call the dialectic of enlightenment.

Constructing the Architext : Georges Perec's life a user's manual

Mitchell critiques Georges Perec's Life a User's Manual, which articulates compellingly the confluence of literature and architecture studies that emerged in the late twentieth century. He argues the Perec's novel diverges from this tradition, for, rather than being a search for origins and true expression, Life a User's Manual denies the very possibility of originality. He adds that Perec's architext is de-constructive and ironic.

Tyhjä taivas : Georges Bataille ja uskonnon kysymys

Empty Heavens. Georges Bataille and the Question of Religion. The dissertation explores the question of religion in the texts of Georges Bataille (1897 1962), the controversial French avant-garde writer and philosopher. Passionate about religion throughout his life, Bataille devoted to it both critical analyses and personal meditations. In this study, Bataille s multifaceted relationship to religion is interpreted as expressing a passion for radical otherness. Bataille is approached as a characteristically modern thinker who, nevertheless, questions some landmarks of modernity insofar as modernity is interpreted as a triumph of secularization. The dissertation is situated at the intersection of comparative religion and philosophy of religion. Methodologically, the study resorts to theoretical contextualization and concept analysis. Acknowledging that Bataille s writings challenge the assumptions about coherent meaning taken for granted in traditional philosophical analysis, the study also pays attention to the literary means and, in general, the performative level of Bataille s texts. The study constructs three theoretical contexts for Bataille s question of religion first of all, the interpretation of Hegel in the mid-20th century French philosophy. In the first section of the study, Bataille s uneasy relationship with Hegel as mediated by Alexandre Kojève is explored. The motivation of his question of radical otherness is argued to arise from his struggle with the Hegelian Kojèvean notion of negativity. The second context is the dialogue with the Christian mystical tradition. Starting from the analysis of two Bataillean notions, dramatization and contestation , it is argued that, firstly, Bataille s approach to radical otherness is analogous to certain procedures of mystical texts while, secondly, the function of otherness providing no firm foundation in Bataille s texts differs from its function in mystical texts. In the third section of the study, Bataille s quest for otherness is concretized by analyzing his views on otherness of other person, on violence, and on death themes that are brought together in Bataille s lasting interest in sacrifice. Bataille s understanding of sacrifice is proportioned to social scientific and philosophical discussions on sacrifice. It is argued that the commitment to the idea of sacrifice accounts for a partial failure in the Bataillean approach to otherness, the otherness of other person remaining its (at least half) blind spot. The study presents an overview of Bataille s thought on religion. It brings out Bataille s view of the paradoxical fundamental yet impossible role of otherness in the construction of human world, as well as his understanding of religious representations as both covering over and indicating this otherness. It describes Bataille s atheological mysticism as a peculiar modern form of religiosity, as an ambivalent mourning for and exaltation of fundamental loss.

Salaiset aseveljet : Suomen ja Saksan turvallisuuspoliisiyhteistyö 1933-1944

Salaiset aseveljet deals with the relations and co-operation between Finnish and German security police authorities, the Finnish valtiollinen poliisi and the German Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) and its predecessors. The timeframe for the research stretches from the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 to the end of German-Finnish co-belligerency in 1944. The Finnish Security Police was founded in 1919 to protect the young Finnish Republic from the Communists both in Finland and in Soviet Russia. Professional ties to German colleagues were maintained during the 1920 s, and quickly re-established after the Nazis rose to power in Germany. Typical forms of co-operation concentrated on the fight against both domestic and international Communism, a concern particularly acute in Finland because of her exposed position as a neighbour to the Soviet Union. The common enemy proved to be a powerful unifying concept. During the 1930 s the forms of co-operation developed from regular and routine exchanges of information into personal acquaintancies between the Finnish Security Police top personnel and the highest SS-leadership. The critical period of German-Finnish security police co-operation began in 1941, as Finland joined the German assault on the Soviet Union. Together with the Finnish Security Police, the RSHA set up a previously unknown special unit, the Einsatzkommando Finnland, entrusted with the destruction of the perceived ideological and racial enemies on the northernmost part of the German Eastern Front. Joint actions in northern Finland led also members of the Finnish Security Police to become participants in mass murders of Communists and Jews. Post-war criminal investigations into war crimes cases involving former security police personnel were invariably stymied because of the absence of usually both the suspects and the evidence. In my research I have sought to combine the evidence gathered through an exhaustive study of Finnish Security Police archival material with a wide selection of foreign sources. Important new evidence has been gathered from archives in Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and the United States. Piece by piece, it has become possible to draw a comprehensive picture of the ultimately fateful relationship of the Finnish Security Police to its mighty German colleague.

Dr. Curt Bejach, Stadtarzt von Berlin-Kreuzberg 1922-1933 portraits men

Dr. Curt Bejach was town physician of Berlin-Kreuzberg 1922 - 1933. He was born on Dec. 20, 1890, and died in Auschwitz in 1944

Erich Goldberg Collection 1928-1933

Admission letter from Westfalia Loge (1928); letter of refusal for hospital admission for non Aryans (1933).

Wittenberg; Jewish Community Collection 1933-1945

List of Jewish residents between 1933 and 1945. Photocopy from "The Jewish Chronicle" (1935) on persecution of Jews in Wittenberg.

Das juedische Buch im Dritten Reich 1933-1945

Draft of published version which examines the status of Jewish authors and publishers in Nazi Germany; continues with the process of removing Jewish works from Nazi-German society, with special attention to the difficulties with Heinrich Heine and the Schocken Press.

In Frankreich interniert - aus Frankreich entwichen 1933-1941

The author describes his escape from Nazi Germany to France together with his mother. He volunteered for the French army (Defense Nationale), but his application was rejected. After the outbreak of the war Schoenfeldt was interned in Antibes and Les Milles. Recollections of life in the internment camps. Lack of basic hygienic conditions. German invasion of France. Escape from the invading German army. Reunion with his mother. Fervent endeavors to leave France for Spain in order to escape another internment. Escape with his 76 year old mother via the Pyrenees. Arrival in Lisbon. Exit visa for America. In 1941 Herbert Schoenfeldt left with his mother for the United States.

Unausloeschliche Erinnerungen 1933

The memoir was published by the Gymnasium Allee-Altona, Hamburg, Ms. Grove's high school, in December 1998. Therefore the main focus lies on Ms. Grove's memories of school life, and the changes after the Nazis' rise to power. Ms. Grove steps back and forth between own memoiries and wider reflections on her relationship to Germany. The memoir includes private and official corespondence, and photographs.

Dreiundsechzig 1933-2005

Irene Runge wrote 14 books so far. This one was written for the occasion of her 63rd birthday - instead of a speech, it was printed and delivered to 63 of her friends. The book is a memoir, and jumps back and forth in time. It consists mostly of personal memories and anecdotes, but there is also an essay-style to it, with very reflective passages and analyses. It is divided into many chapters, which also resemble diary entries. Irene Runge is a member of the "second generation". She was born in the New York exile, but her parents moved back to Germany after the war, during a climate in the USA, which made it very difficult for sympathisers with the communist party. Her memories give rich insight into the life as an emigrant in New York, but also as re-emigrant in Germany. She writes about the their disappointments with the evolving German Democratic Republic (GDR), Eastern Germany, experiences, which repeated again in 1989/1990, when the reunification with West Germany took place. The year 1989 had practical consequences for her private life--she lost her job at the university, because her past seemed not compatible. She discusses the PDS, the party which evolved from the communist party of Eastern Germany, Berlin after the "Wende" (reunification), and life in Berlin after the reunification. At one point she asks whether the current Turkish-Muslim community in Berlin could be comparable to the living conditions of the Jewish community in the 1930. This is a rare memoir documenting many recent aspects of German-speaking Jewry.