Glossary

Adenauer, Konrad

(1876 - 1967), first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany 1949 - 1963 and co-founder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In terms of economic policy, Konrad Adenauer stood for the system of the social market economy. In both domestic and foreign policy, he pursued a western-oriented policy, which led, among other things, to the Federal Republic of Germany’s membership of NATO and the signing of the Treaty of Rome (1957).

Further information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Adenauer (Accessed: June 13, 2005)


Annales School

The Annales School is the most important group of French historians in the 20th century, spanning several generations. It established a new methodology and practice in the study of history (nouvelle histoire). Its three most important innovations were the focus on the economy and society, the development of quantifiable material and the orientation towards long-term developments. Karl Lamprecht’s methodological approach was of fundamental importance to her. The name derives from its journal, Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, which was founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre.‘

Further information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_school (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Antisemitism

‚Antisemitism[a] or Jew-hatred[2] is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an anti-Semite.[3][4][5] Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought.[b][6][7] Antisemitic tendencies may be motivated primarily by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually known as racial antisemitism, a person’s hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person’s society.[8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Bade, Klaus

Klaus Jürgen Bade (* May 14, 1944 in Sierentz, Alsace) is a German professor emeritus of modern history in the Department of Cultural and Geosciences at the University of Osnabrück, political consultant and migration expert.

Further information: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_J%C3%BCrgen_Bade (Accessed: June 12, 20025)




Bohemia

‚Bohemia (/boʊˈhiːmiə/ boh-HEE-mee-ə;[2] Czech: Čechy [ˈtʃɛxɪ] ;[3] German: Böhmen [ˈbøːmən] ; Upper Sorbian: Čěska [ˈtʃɪska]; Silesian: Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia,[4] in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemia (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Bohemian Rural Jews

‚In Bohemia, the Jews were mainly settled in smaller communities in Czech Central Bohemia until after the middle of the 19th century, and they spoke both Czech and German. With the disintegration of a steadily growing number of Jewish religious communities in Czech Central Bohemia in the second half of the 19th century, more and more of the Jewish character of the Jewish families still living in the Bohemian villages and small towns faded away. The Jewish share in the development of the textile, and later brewing, sugar and other agricultural industries in Central Bohemia after the middle of the 19th century was significant”. (From: Wilma Iggers, Die Juden in Böhmen und Mähren, Introduction, p. 15) Further information: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmen

(Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Böhme, Helmut

… (Born in  April 1936 in Tübingen; + December 29, 2012 in Darmstadt) was a German historian. He was President of the Technical University of Darmstadt from 1971 to 1995. Böhme was awarded honorary doctorates from the Technical Universities of Ankara, Bucharest, Lyon, Sofia, Veszprem and Warsaw. He was honored with the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2008). Cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_B%C3%B6hme_%28Historiker%29 (Accessed: June 12, 2025)



Kippa

‚A kippah (plural: kippot), yarmulke, or koppel is a brimless Jewish skullcap, usually made of cloth, traditionally worn by Jewish males to fulfill the customary requirement that the head be covered. It is the most common type of head-covering worn by men in Orthodox Jewish communities during prayers and by most Orthodox Jewish men at most other times. Among non-Orthodox Jewish individuals, some wear them at most times, while most wear them only during prayer, while attending a synagogue, or at other ceremonies, and others wear them rarely or never.‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kippah  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Kocka, Jürgen

‚Jürgen Kocka (born 19 April 1941 in Haindorf, Sudetenland) is a German historian.

A university professor and former president of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (2001–2007), Kocka is a major figure in the new Social History, especially as represented by the Bielefeld School. He has focused his research on the history of employees in large German and American businesses, and on the history of European bourgeoisie.

Inspired by the methods of Ernest Labrousse, he attempts to analyze social processes of German society from the perspective of modernisation, industrialization, and the creation of modern Europe. ‚

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Kocka  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)



Little Rock Nine

‚The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. Tied to the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation.[1] After the decision, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the school board agreed to comply with the high court’s ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school year, which would begin in September 1957.

By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance.[2] Called the “Little Rock Nine”, they were Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010), Terrence Roberts (b. 1941), Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942), Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Thelma Mothershed (1940–2024), and Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School.

When integration began on September 4, 1957, the Arkansas National Guard was called in to “preserve the peace”. Originally at orders of the governor, they were meant to prevent the black students from entering due to claims that there was “imminent danger of tumult, riot and breach of peace” at the integration. However, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730, which federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to support the integration on September 23 of that year, after which they protected the African American students.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine

(Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Mardi Gras

‚Mardi Gras (UK: /ˌmɑːrdi ˈɡrɑː/, US: /ˈmɑːrdi ɡrɑː/; also known as Shrove Tuesday) is the final day of Carnival (also known as Shrovetide or Fastelavn); it thus falls on the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday”, reflecting the practice of the last night of consuming rich, fatty foods in preparation for the Christian fasting season of Lent, during which the consumption of such foods is avoided. ‚

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Munich Agreement

‚The Munich Agreement[a] was reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United KingdomFrance, and Italy. The agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived.[1] The pact is known in some areas as the Munich Betrayal (CzechMnichovská zradaSlovakMníchovská zrada), because of a previous 1924 alliance agreement[2] and a 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic.‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also known as the NAACP, is one of the oldest and most influential black civil rights organizations in the USA. It emerged from the Niagara Movement, founded in 1905, and was established on February 12, 1909 to work on behalf of the African-American population. The founding members were William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Ida Wells-Barnett, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard and William English Walling. The NAACP was among the supporters and organizers of both the 1963 March on Washington and the 1995 Million Man March. The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, MD with regional offices in California, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, Texas and Maryland. The NAACP is represented nationally by a Board of Directors. This has 64 members and is led by a Chairman. The Board of Directors elects a President and Chief Executive Officer for the organization. The NAACP had 300,000 members in August 2011.

 (cf. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Colored_People (Accessed: June 13, 2025)

https://naacp.org/  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Nazi Seizure of Power in 1933

On 30 January 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. This event is known as the Machtergreifung (seizure of power). In the following months, the Nazi Party used a process termed Gleichschaltung (co-ordination) to rapidly bring all aspects of life under control of the party.The “seizure of power” (also known as the assumption of power or transfer of power) refers to the transfer of government power in the German Reich on January 30, 1933 to the NSDAP and its national-conservative allies (DNVP, Stahlhelm) as well as the subsequent transformation of the Weimar Republic’s democracy into the dictatorship of National Socialist Germany. As the first two terms are not considered neutral or precise for various reasons, historians also use the terms transfer of power or transfer of power and describe the events as a whole as the phase of the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933/34. The National Socialists celebrated the day of the national uprising on January 30 as the beginning of their seizure of power. On this day in 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Reich Chancellor by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and tasked with forming a coalition government of the National Union, in which the National Socialists were in the minority.

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany (Accessed: June 13, 2025)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtergreifung (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Nuremberg Laws

‚The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze, pronounced [ˈnʏʁnbɛʁɡɐ ɡəˈzɛtsə] ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romani people as “enemies of the race-based state”, the same category as Jews‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Parks, Rosa

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of Jim Crow racial segregation laws, in 1955, which sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. She is sometimes known as the “mother of the civil rights movement”.[1]

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Parks grew up under Jim Crow segregation. She later moved to Montgomery and joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, serving as the organization’s secretary. Despite various policies designed to disenfranchise Black citizens, Parks successfully registered to vote after three separate attempts between 1943 and 1945. She investigated cases and organized campaigns around cases of racial and sexual violence in her capacity as NAACP secretary, including those of Recy Taylor and Jeremiah Reeves, laying the groundwork for future civil rights campaigns.‘

 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks)  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)



Rabbi

‚A rabbi (/ˈræbaɪ/; Hebrew: רַבִּי, romanizedrabbī) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism.[1][2] One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as semikha—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of the rabbi developed in the Pharisaic (167 BCE–73 CE) and Talmudic (70–640 CE) eras, when learned teachers assembled to codify Judaism’s written and oral laws. The title “rabbi” was first used in the first century CE. In more recent centuries, the duties of a rabbi became increasingly influenced by the duties of the Protestant Christian minister, hence the title “pulpit rabbis”, and in 19th-century Germany and the United States, rabbinic activities such as sermons, pastoral counseling, and representing the community to the outside all increased in importance‘.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi’ki/Rabbi

(Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Racial Segregation

‚Racial segregation is the separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by people of different races. Specifically, it may be applied to activities such as eating in restaurants, drinking from water fountains, using public toilets, attending schools, going to movie theaters, riding buses, renting or purchasing homes, renting hotel rooms, going to supermarkets, or attending places of worship.[1] In addition, segregation often allows close contact between members of different racial or ethnic groups in hierarchical situations, such as allowing a person of one race to work as a servant for a member of another race. Racial segregation has generally been outlawed worldwide.

Segregation is defined by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as “the act by which a (natural or legal) person separates other persons on the basis of one of the enumerated grounds without an objective and reasonable justification, in conformity with the proposed definition of discrimination. As a result, the voluntary act of separating oneself from other people on the basis of one of the enumerated grounds does not constitute segregation”.‘[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Schleier, Hans

Hans Schleier was one of the representatives of German Demokratic Republik (GDR) historiography who was also received and taken seriously in the old Federal Republic of Germany, above all due to his book on the ‘bourgeois German historiography of the Weimar Republic’, which is rich in material. This is shown not least by the deputy professorships in Bielefeld and Düsseldorf, which the historian, born in 1931, received after the dissolution of the Central Institute for History (or Institute for German History) of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Schleier had worked at the Academy Institute since its foundation in 1956, focusing exclusively on the German historiography of the ’long 19th century’ and the Weimar Republic.

Cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Schleier  (accessed: June 13,2025)



Separate But Equal

‚Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed “equal protection” under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by race, which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase “equal but separate”.[1]

The doctrine was confirmed in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Though segregation laws existed before that case, the decision emboldened segregation states during the Jim Crow era, which had commenced in 1876, and supplanted the Black Codes, which restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans during the Reconstruction era.

In practice, the separate facilities provided to African Americans were rarely equal; usually they were not even close to equal, or they did not exist at all.[2] For example, in the 1930 census, black people were 42% of Florida’s population,[3] yet according to the 1934–1936 report of the Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, the value of “white school property” in the state was $70,543,000, while the value of African American school property was $4,900,000. The report says that “in a few south Florida counties and in most north Florida counties many Negro schools are housed in churches, shacks, and lodges, and have no toilets, water supply, desks, blackboards, etc. Counties use these schools as a means to get State funds and yet these counties invest little or nothing in them.” At that time, high school education for African Americans was provided in only 28 of Florida’s 67 counties.[4] In 1939–1940, the average salary of a white teacher in Florida was $1,148, whereas for a black teacher it was $585.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)

See also: Separate But Equal (film)- 1991

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_Equal_(film)  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Sudetenland

‚The Sudetenland (/suːˈdeɪtənlænd/ soo-DAY-tən-land, German: [zuˈdeːtn̩ˌlant]; Czech and Slovak: Sudety) is a German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia since the Middle Ages. Since the 9th century these districts had been an integral part of the Czech state (first within the Duchy of Bohemia and later the Kingdom of Bohemia) both geographically and politically.

The word “Sudetenland” did not come into being until the early part of the 20th century and did not come to prominence until almost two decades into the century, after World War I, when Austria-Hungary was dismembered and the Sudeten Germans found themselves living in the new country of Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by the Pan-Germanist demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany, which happened after the later Munich Agreement. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland. Afterwards, the formerly unrecognized Sudetenland became an administrative division of Germany. When Czechoslovakia was reconstituted after World War II, the Sudeten Germans were expelled and the region today is inhabited almost exclusively by Czech speakers. ‚

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Synagogue

‚A synagogue,[a] also called a shul[b] or a temple,[c] is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children’s plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.

Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and reading of the Torah (read in its entirety once a year, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle, in weekly Torah portions during religious services). However, a synagogue is not always necessary for Jewish worship, due to adaptations during times of Jewish persecution in countries and regions that banned Judaism, frequently destroying and/or reappropriating synagogues into churches or even government buildings. Halakha (Jewish law from the Mishnah – the “Oral Torah”) states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish adults, is assembled, often (but not necessarily) led by a rabbi. Worship can also happen alone or with fewer than ten people, but certain prayers are considered by halakha as solely communal; these can be recited only by a minyan. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions, the synagogue does not replace the symbol of the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. ‚

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synagogue  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Talmud Torah

‘Talmud Torah (Hebrew: תלמוד תורה, lit. ‘Study of the Torah’) schools were created in the Jewish world, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, as a form of religious school for boys of modest backgrounds, where they were given an elementary education in Hebrew, the scriptures (especially the Torah), and the Talmud (and halakha). This was meant to prepare them for yeshiva or, particularly in the movement’s modern form, for Jewish education at a high school level. The Talmud Torah was modeled after the cheder, a traditional form of schooling whose essential elements it incorporated, with changes appropriate to its public form rather than the cheder’s private financing through less formal or institutionalized mechanisms, including tuition fees and donations.

In the United States, the term Talmud Torah refers to the afternoon program for boys and girls after attending public school. This form of Jewish education was prevalent from the mid–19th century[1][2][3] through “the 1940s and 1950s.”[4][5] Although by the 1980s full-time Jewish day schools (yeshivas) were the norm in the United States, some European countries still had these.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud_Torah  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)





Wehler, Hans-Ulrich

‚Hans-Ulrich Wehler (September 11, 1931 – July 5, 2014)[1] was a German left-liberal[1] historian known for his role in promoting social history through the “Bielefeld School”, and for his critical studies of 19th-century Germany.[2]

Wehler was born in Freudenberg, Westphalia. He studied history and sociology in Cologne, Bonn and, on a Fulbright scholarship, at Ohio University in the United States; working for six months as a welder and a truck driver in Los Angeles. He took his PhD in 1960 under Theodor Schieder at the University of Cologne. His dissertation examined social democracy and the nation state and the question of nationality in Germany between 1840 and 1914. His postdoctoral thesis on Bismarck and imperialism, opened the way for an academic career. His habilitation project on “American imperialism between 1865 and 1900”, supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, permitted him to do research in American libraries in 1962–1963 and resulted in two books. In all he spent six years in the US and was strongly influenced by its academic structures and by research in comparative modernization.[3]

Wehler taught at the University of Cologne (1968–1970), at the Free University of Berlin (1970–1971) and at Bielefeld University (1971–1996).[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Wehler  (Accessed: June 13, 2025)


Yom Kippur

‚Yom Kippur (/ˌjɒm kɪˈpʊər, ˌjɔːm ˈkɪpər, ˌjoʊm-/  YOM kip-OOR, YAWM KIP-ər, YOHM-;[1] Hebrew: יוֹם כִּפּוּר‎ Yōm Kippūr [ˈjom kiˈpuʁ], lit. ‘Day of Atonement’) is the holiest day of the year in Judaism.[2][3][4] It occurs annually on the 10th of Tishrei,[5] corresponding to a date in late September or early October.

For traditional Jewish people, it is primarily centered on atonement and repentance. The day’s main observances consist of full fasting and asceticism, both accompanied by extended prayer services (usually at synagogue) and sin confessions. Some minor Jewish denominations, such as Reconstructionist Judaism, focus less on sins and more on one’s goals and accomplishments and setting yearly intentions.‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur (Accessed: June 13, 2025)