The "micro-histories" of fear: Erfurt in 1920

Introduction:
In this post I want to present my research on the public record of fear in Erfurt from the first half of 1920. In a post that follows, I want to present the second half of my findings for that year, highlighting a gathering of Erfurt’s citizenry for the commemoration of the nation that September and in a final post, I want to discuss the theoretical, historiographical and archival significance of this research in relation to my larger project. Part II: June to the Fall of 1920

A Year of Hope:
1920 began as a year of hope for Germany’s national leadership and the local Erfurt papers published their wishes for the New Year. The first national elections were scheduled for that June, but the rightwing Kapp Putsch in Berlin would lead to renewed Putsch attempts from the right and left across Germany. In nearby Gotha, the radical socialists and communists had taken control of the city only to be violently crushed by the military and paramilitary organizations made up of Great War veterans, local Buerger and fresh young men. Meanwhile, those local political and military leaders turned Erfurt into a militarized zone of barbwire and armed checkpoints, but called for restraint on all sides of the political spectrum as reports came in of excessively violent clashes. Most strikingly, there was a working coalition of moderate voices in Erfurt. The moderate socialist editors of the Free Press (FP), who supported more democratic and social reform and inter-party political cooperation, would claim victory by the end of March for the Republic because of the cooperative efforts of the town magistrate, police, military, moderate socialists, railroad and postal workers, middle class Democratic and Catholic leaders. However, they could not control more radical efforts from people on the extreme sides of the political spectrum, who wanted to undermine this cooperation and eliminate their political enemies. That spring, local papers continued to report on political acts of terror in the vicinity from all sides. As for local "everyday" voices, I found a few including a letter from a young engineer asking the local government to explain the excessive use of force by groups acting in its name.

Fear in 1920
Among the periodical highlights on fear in the first half of 1920:

The veiled threat from Erfurt’s civil servants:

In January, the civil servant association (Erfurter Beamten) held a public meeting at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz in front of the cathedrals. They claimed that they could physically feel how much the current government (the Weimar Republic) had troubled them and they demanded “reasonable” measures to deal with Germany’s economic problems. They saw themselves as the group which had saved this republic’s young life and hinted at withdrawing their support if they did not get their way.

Profiteering:

In response to the reports about the activity of “Wucher” in the region the government of Thuringia had passed a new law to combat the problem of profiteering (The Thueringer Allgemeiner Zeitung (TAZ), Nr. 1, 1 January 1920). In the spring articles on the history of “Wucher” in Thuringia would appear in the TAZ

Educating children in the wake of trauma:

In March, a group of teachers wrote into the TAZ (Nr. 63, 3 March 1920) with their concerns about the moral effects of the Great War and the use of force in the home and school on Germany’s children. They believed the Great War had tortured (zerquaelten) and broken the German people. So these teachers asked readers not to hold their children responsible for the past and resort to outdated physical forms of punishment.

The wounded nation and the duty of women:

In March, Dorothea Hartenstein wrote in the TAZ (Nr. 68, 8 March 1920) that it was the first duty of German women to cultivate a national feeling and Germans should focus on binding their own wounds and healing the German people before they should or could deal with the pains of other peoples.

The anarchy and chaos of Independent Socialism and Communism:

The FP (Nr. 59, 10 March 1920) saw the rise of an independent socialist government in Gotha as leading to anarchy rather than Bolshevism. Just the fact that the independent socialist (USPD) government in Gotha had declared war against the German nation demonstrated that the independent socialist leadership either had no qualms or the minds of sparrows. Their forms of politics continued to provoke other segments of the population, especially their declaration on religion. Moreover their elimination of the teachers’ council and its replacement with a directory was an assassination of democracy.

The lack of adequate housing:

The local communist paper, The Kommunist (Nr. 13, 11 March 1920), reported on capitalistic and communist housing politics. This author claimed that the housing crisis in Germany was growing more and more threatening. Millions of people did not have a chance of finding even the most modest roof for over their heads.

Economic Emergency:

In an article entitled, “A Declaration of the Middle Class” (der Mittelstand, the TAZ, Nr. 72, 12 March 1920), a gathering of the specialty trade shops, craft workers and house owners met in the gymnasium at the Catholic citizens’ school (Buergerschule). Senator H. Beythien spoke about Germany’s economic need. He recalled the days of economic prosperity before the war, but he also noted how difficult it was for the middle classes against big business. He described the current national government’s politics as an enemy of middle class interests, which robbed the virtuous and industrious elements in society of every initiative. It was a forced form of economy instead of a free one. The possibility of unfolding all of one’s own personal virtue could make Germany great and strong again. Dr. Seeman, the Syndikus for Erfurt’s Chamber of Craft Workers, described the results of the 9^th of November 1918 as detrimental (unheilvolle); only the interests of the workers were represented, which he reiterated, was a threat to the middle class. The business leader Meydig added that socialization was a danger for property owners.

Anti-Semitism:

In response to the increasing reports of anonymous defaming and threatening letters directed at Jewish Germans in the region the FP (Nr. 62, 13 March 1920; see also FP, Nr. 59, 10 March 1920) carried the writing of Hans von Weher from a publication called Onionfish (Der Zwiebelfisch). According to von Weher, the anonymous actions of Anti-Semites were the signs of their cowardness and underhandedness. Anti-Semites, from Weher’s perspective, were either political ignorant people who were just born that way, or if they understood politics, then they were demagogues who were using Anti-Semitism to conduct business. The FP believed that a recent assassination attempt on a prominent Jewish German in Baden-Baden was a sign that the old All German Union (Alldeutscher Bund) was actively inciting young people to attack Germans of the Jewish religion.

Heat for homes and energy for industry:

Most of the newspapers reported on the rising prices for brown coal and the concerns over home heating in the cold months. The FP (The Free Press, a local moderate socialist newspaper, Nr. 62, 13. March 1920) believed that there were more local roots to the lack of coal such as the distribution problems in Halle, and suggested balanced reporting in response to public accusations, like those of the German Brown Coal Industry Association in Halle pointed at the French Occupation and the Weimar Republic.

The home and family are in danger!

Fliers from the “March Days” of left and rightwing uprisings found in the Erfurt City Archive records of the Freikorps made statements like this: “Mothers, Women, Girls! Foreign elements without a fatherland have succeeded through (?) agitation and foreign phrases to shroud the reason of a part of the German people and distract them from the path of duty. True men of German blood have barely escaped the hell of war and must now take up the war against terror, murder and (Notzucht), against erroneous teachings. These are the Citizens’ Defense Units. Without paying heed to the shameless insults and lies of foreign agitators, voluntary bands are doing their duty, which is doubly difficult because they must defend the German homeland, mothers and children against members of the German people fanaticized by paid agents and spies. Your home, German women, and also your happiness, German girls, are in danger. Therefore, do your part too in the great task of liberation: talk to your man whose name you carry, to the father of your children, your fiancé, whose home you eventually want to guard. Talk to your friends, who would support you in times of danger and need, so that they too do their part and report to the Citizens Defense Units!”

The Call to all Order-loving Men
In another flier: The outrageous Terror of the last few days immediately demands the most aggressive defense, if it should not lead to the complete destruction of the economic life and property of the individual. For the support of the Professional Defenses (Berufswehren) the “Ordnungshilfe” (Order Support) has been created (StVAE, 1-2/120-14, Bl.2)

Copy for Reproduction and Distribution!
The labor unions associated with the German Civil Servants Union declare that they will only support an order of government that is based on the currently binding constitution because of the oath that the civil servants have taken on the basis of the constitution. (Deutschen Beamtenbund) (StVAE, 1-2/120-14, Bl.4)

District Commander's Order from 15 March 1920
As district commander of Erfurt, I am letting it be known that under my command: the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 21 and the Security Police will under all circumstances maintain calm and order regardless an older or newly built government.

The wish of the Fatherland must be that honorable and capable men from the old government and all parties should lead us.

[…] To Point 4a: The ban on gatherings of political parties will be suspended. For this all further gatherings should be officially registered with the Land Councils and the local Police authorities and subject to my authority. Signed Von Selle (StVAE, 1-2/120-14, Bl. 5)

Message to the Reichswehr

Brigade 11 in Cassel, 16 March 1920: The Proletariat strives for control through the call for the Councils Republic, Action Committees or Executive Council, and is trying to remove troops, security and citizens’ defense units. (StVAE, 1-2/120-14, Bl. 14)

Herr Oberbuergermeister!

Yesterday evening at 6:35 it was still daylight. I wanted to make my way from the Schloss Bridge accompanied by a colleague to Schloss Street past the main checkpoint.

[…] I afterwards confirmed: the three men from the Security Police fired without even the slightest grounds to do it. No one stood. Everything went further. No one wanted to in anyway harm the three men, the whole public was well clothed and did not look like Spartakus;, many women were there as well. All persons were far removed from the Security Police, every man immediately followed their command. It was completely unmistakable that this involved harmless people who did not know that the Anger (one of the major Erfurter plazas) was cordoned off. Why then this shooting?

I ask you earnestly, Herr Oberbuergermeister, to do everything in your power to protect your fellow citizens from such infringements. […] Besides this danger for the body and life of innocents there is, however, something else to consider: that the Green Police (Green uniforms were for the State Police *must check) have made themselves more and more unloved so that they are making a name for themselves not only among the politically most radical circles but also already in the whole citizenry as a raw, bloodthirsty Soldateska.

Robert Jacki

Teacher at the Building Trade School.
Prussian Government Building Master, Lieutenant in the Reserves of the 7^th Baden Infantry Regiment.

Member of the Technical Emergency Support (StVAE, 1-2/120-14, Bl. 31)

The threat to democracy and the call for its defense:

At the end of March and in response to voices from the right that democracy in Germany was bankrupt, the FP claimed that moderates across the political spectrum, including the railway and postal worker unions, old socialists and middle class democrats and Catholics had successfully defended the democracy during the “March Days”, but new support was needed to build democracy. Despite the warnings from some that such actions would result in democracy becoming terror and dictatorship, democracy’s proponents could not shy away from removing reactionary and rightwing elements from the military and civil service. (Nr. 64, 26 March 1920).

Terror from the right and left:

Newspapers reported on continuing terror from the right and the left in the region. The FP kept a daily column on the “civil war in Thuringia”. They reported a communist attack on the palace guard in Gotha from nearby Weissenfels and Zeitz (Nr. 65, 27 March 1920). In another article entitled, “The White Terror in Thuringia” (Nr. 67, 30 March 1920) the FP graphically described a middle class self defense force’s extralegal execution of 16 workers in neighboring Soemmerda.

In another article, “What will happen with the Self Defense Force in Soemmerda?” (Nr. 84, 21 April 1920), the FP cited an order from the German national government that the local citizens’ self-defense forces were supposed to disband themselves, but no one was obeying that order in Erfurt. The article’s author reported that the citizens’ defense force in nearby Soemmerda was still armed and holding training exercises. They were also maintaining a watch over local workers’ homes, preventing those workers from returning home. Those workers were afraid to return home because of the reports that the citizens’ defense forces had shot workers whom they claimed had tried to escape. The FP’s author saw as immediate danger for the republic in both left and rightwing paramilitary units and demanded the immediate disarmament of the citizens’ defense units.

Rebirth, Life and Freedom:

In its lead article on Easter the FP (Nr. 70, 3 April 1920), the authors wanted their readers to believe that everything had been rejuvenated. Countless voices, according to the authors, announced daily the joyful message of rejuvenation and life and liberation from the power of winter and bandits.

The end of small farms:

In April, the TAZ (Nr. 101, 21. April 1920) reported that 500 farmers convened in Weimar. The head of the meeting, the mayor of Legefeld, spoke about the sad situation of the fatherland and claimed that as long as the national government was in the hands of socialists, there could be no national rejuvenation. The head of the Thuringian Farmers Union (Landbund) claimed that there was a stark contrast between what the national government promised and what they did. The streets were under the control of the lowest elements of the masses (the Poebel). Meanwhile, the middle classes slept and had learned nothing. The only weapon that the individual had in this situation was the ballot. There was still a major division between large and small farm owners. It looked like most small farm owners would lose possession of their farms within three to four generations given the current and approaching tax laws. Despite their differences, farmers had to mobilize their voters. The speaker told those present that they had to be conscious of themselves. He reminded that that there were 46,000 organized farmers in Thuringia. There were 3.5 million farmers in all of Germany. They commanded over a million votes in and could take 100 seats in the national parliament.

Money and inflation:

The FP reported optimistically at the beginning of April that the value of money appeared to be rising, which would consequently mean lower prices (Nr. 74, 9 April 1920). However, at the end of the month, the FP was explaining the nature of inflation for its readers and demanding the organization of economic production instead of increasing prices as the solution among individual producers (Nr. 88, 26 April 1920).

The middle classes:

The TAZ (Nr. 106, 27 April 1920) also carried the announcement for the founding of a middle class union. According to the article the middle class had two tasks. One task was to avoid Germany’s political and economic catastrophe and the second task was to defend against the socialist assault, which mobilized workers with the slogan “Against the middle classes”. The author claimed that these were the wishes of all segments of the middle classes: industry, trade, house owners, farmers, civil servants, white collar workers and craftsmen. The Middle Class Union was an organization for the whole middle class and above all parties with the goal of forming a political block against the rising tide of socialism.

Black troops in Germany:

In May the TAZ (Nr. 111, May 1920) reproduced an article from the Syndikalist newspaper with the title, “Black Troops in Elsass”. The author wrote, “that if the government deemed it necessary that we must have foreign troops on German territory, then we would prefer to have French troops rather than half wild soldiers, who come from all other parts of the world and who are incapable of communicating with us. We will no longer accept black troops in our land!”

The Red Danger in the East:

The MZ (Nr. 136, 29 May 1920) carried an article about the “Red Danger in the East”, in which the author expressed the fear that Poland, the last bastion against the spring flood of Bolshevism, would fall. Germany had very little strength to oppose the Red Army and Germany’s enemies had broken the weapons for their own self defense. The German national government continued to look at the whole thing, as it always did, through rose colored glasses.

New rumors of a leftwing uprising:

In that same issue, the MZ reported on the latest rumors of possible uprisings. The author cited reports from Berlin and Munich that the leftwing headquarters were in Halle and Remscheid. Moreover, there was a plan to start small uprisings in cities like Hamburg and Berlin in order to draw the military into a conflict, which in turn would start a rightwing uprising that the communists would use to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The "micro-histories" of fear

Among its file on „Social Democracy“ in the Archive for the Church Province of Saxony is a 1907 article from the Social Democratic newspaper, the Volksblatt, in Halle entitled, “Who terrorizes?” According to their report, Dr. Vogl, had suddenly been removed from his position as pastor in the town of Leislau by Kamburg with one third of his earnings withheld. Directly after the parliamentary elections in February of 1907, Dr. Vogl had held a “family night” at the church on the topic of “The political parties of the Reichstag”. Dr. Vogl claimed that he only wanted to introduce people to the topic in a matter of fact sort of way and not step on anyone’s toes. He also wanted his presentation to help the political parties learn to understand each other so that they could fight with “only the honorable weapons of truth and justice”. At some point in the evening, a local aristocrat (“Rittergutsbesitzer”) named Schlueter stood up and announced that the pastor had to fight Social Democracy above all else. The pastor, according to Schlueter, should also explain how social democracy wanted to do away with Christianity and destroy marriage and the family. Dr. Vogl countered with the remark that there was nothing in the Social Democratic platform about destroying marriage or family. Furthermore, people misunderstood the party platform plank: “religion is a private issue”. Thereafter, Schlueter told Dr. Vogl that he should be ashamed of himself and then left the “family night” with his wife. The reporter noted that Dr. Vogl was widely loved and respected in his community and there was a strong feeling of bitterness among his congregation and beyond. Such an occurrence reminded the reporter of one of the darkest times in the middle ages where people burned those of different faiths. Dr Vogl, accordingly, would realize that contemporary society was the greatest enemy of truth and justice. What, the reporter asked, would the bands of liars have to say about this?

Notes: Source: AKPS, Rep.A, Generalia, Nr. 1529, "Die Sozialdemokratie"; image above is entitled, "The Red Terror" from an 1881 edition of the Viennese satirical paper, the Gluehlichter.

I plan to introduce more of my archival findings in later postings and I want to explore their interpretation and significance for my work. I think this finding from today's archival research is interesting for several reasons. It is an article appearing in a pro-Social Democratic newspaper in Halle. So one has to take its reportage with a grain of salt, but it does articulate a notion of "terror" even as it raises "terror" as a question. From its emergence as a political force in the late 1870s, the working class political movement had articulated a capitalist form of "terror" as part of its way of organizing workers in the face of work-related fears. Opponents often resorted to labeling nascent Social Democracy as a "red" form of terror. In this case, the aristocrat's remarks reflect that trend among conservative circles to paint the emergence of Social Democracy as a form of "terror" that threatened Christianity, the family and marriage. The reporter uses collective memories of persecution to frame the description of the aristocrat's words and actions as an example of the capitalist system's terror. By the turn of the century, parliamentary politics had developed a high level of rhetorical exaggeration in Germany around supposed threats and terrors from both the left and right. I wonder how much objective positions in those platforms played a role in comparison to those calls of "terror" and how the invocation of collective fears affected those communities. In that context, it is interesting to see a pastor try to develop a presentation within the confines of a "family evening" to better inform people as voters. The aristocrat's attempt to publicly shame the pastor, appears to have backfired, but it also reveals one way in which people publicly threatened each other for political purposes at the turn of the century, namely through use of hierarchical forms of status and shaming as a way of then removing that pastor from his congregation. The local Social Democratic paper used this occasion of an apparently non-biased pastor to more effectively make the case. Most Protestant pastors, I would have assumed, would not have veered from their support of the monarchy and attacks on related opposition. Social Democracy was supposed to be the most immediate internal enemy to the Reich. It then strikes me how someone like this aristocrat can "archetype" space (see Teresa Hubbard's presentation of her work on the "home and fear" from the Akademie Schloss Solitude Conference post for this idea) or at least attempt to shape the "family night" to articulate the "terror" of Social Democracy and threaten the pastor and anyone else open to opposing ideas. I think the description of the pastor's actions and the actions of the Social Democratic newspaper also reflect William Reddy's concept of individuals "navigating" social and cultural space that others are attempting to shape for the purpose of control. In the bigger picture, I think these kinds of sources reveal how national politics was already working through the local level before the First World War. More importantly, these local political practices and notions of "terror" would continue to influence German politics in the wake of the First World War, beyond the Kaiser's call for national cooperation (the "Burgfrieden") during the war and the revolution that followed in the wake of Germany's defeat and the end of the monarchy.

Akademie Schloss Solitude: Dealing with Fear

Akademie Schloss Solitude

Handeln mit der Angst: Dealing with Fear
What holds societies together
Thursday – Saturday, 18-20 October 2007

This past weekend I attended a conference on dealing with fear at a castle in the hills overlooking Stuttgart. The Akademie Schloss Solitude should also be on many of our radar screens. Founded in 1990, this foundation is looking for new ways to bring creative minds from different disciplines together, whether artists, filmmakers, dancers, musicians, architects, product designers, business managers, geneticists or historians. Dealing with fear is the latest part of this new endeavor. About 100 or more people gathered together to talk about fear through their own work. It is only the first step, but such diversity of minds and projects do not allow for a quick and easy definition of the feeling. It is also interesting how this topic has struck so many different people in the work they choose to pursue. They inspire me to think about my own work, how I live and plan to do.

One example that I find compelling for framing this conference is London after the bombings in 2006. Jens Skibsted described to us how the terrorist bombings actually propelled bikes sales. That effect interested Adam Thorpe. It turns out that many more people feel they need greater mobility in a city known for its automobile congestion. Adam chose to think about the bike and began to find a new set of problems. Despite the possible benefits from switching to bikes, London security experts have tended to view bikes themselves as a threat to the city. That is an interesting effect. Bikes become objects of fear too. From Adam’s point of view, “security” threatens to trump “sustainability” in London. He wants to find ways to question the “Orwellian” scenario and restore a healthy balance to the needs of security and liberty. So Adam’s project examines the fears behind bikes like the threat of theft and their use as terrorist “vectors” for delivering bombs. His team breaks down those fears and looks for potential solutions to counter them. Some of the ideas are very simple but also quite able to change perception, behavior and consumption.

What follows is the basic program schedule as an outline with notes on individual talks and related links that may be of interest to you or others (See the conference blog link too). It is a report in progress. So I will develop it as I find time. I am placing links in one of the sidebars on the right. Please let me know about mistakes. Add information or post a comment.

Thursday, 18 October 2007

8PM

“Since When and Why Do We Fear the Future?”

Prof. Dr. Gumbrecht, Standford University

Notes: Dr. Gumbrecht’s talk opened the weekend’s conference. He would remain an active participant in the panels to follow and his theses on our conception of time, individual consciousness and fear of the future continued to influence our discussions all weekend.

A new concept of time? a new form of subjectivity?

From Dr. Gumbrecht’s perspective, there has been a deep transformation of how we view the future since the Second World War and it is linked to what has happened to our perception of time and our own subjectivity. His main thesis is to “see the condition for our new, increasingly fearful relationship to the future in a transformation of the chronotope (a term he borrows from the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin) of the “construction of time” that surrounds us, within which the future is an unattainable position, different from the position that it used to have in the “historicist” chronotope as it had emerged and institutionalized itself during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.”

The Historicist Chronotope and the Second-order observer

Dr. Gumbrecht traces the construction of this “historicist chronotope” in the response to the historical “emergence of the second-order observer” (what Michel Foucault called “la crise de la representation”), i.e., the insight that every phenomenon of reference in the world, according to the observer’s point of view, is capable of producing an infinity of interpretations/renditions (from the lecture’s handout). This idea has stirred debate for some time and as I think we will see from other panels and our final discussions below, these issues of perspective and representation remain problems.

Simultaneities: unlimited numbers of simultaneously conscious beings, pasts & perceptions

From Dr. Gumbrecht’s perspective, the competing ideologies of Socialism and Capitalism account for the success of the “historicist chronotope”. In his words, “Both Capitalism and Socialism (Communism) rely on our being able to anticipate the future – a possibility that, based on reflection and other intellectual work, the historicist chronotope offers. In this sense, it is significant that Fascist ideologies tried to depart from the historicist chronotope (e.g. the Nazis “Empire of a Thousand Years”)”.

A new form of fear?

From Dr. Gumbrecht’s view, we have not fully worked out the consequences of the Second World War and at the end of his talk he speculated on our transformation and reconstruction of time and the “Cartesian subject”, i.e. of the “rationally choosing” subject (see Descartes' sketch on the right). Gumbrecht observes the emergence of a new “chronotope” characterized by three features: “a past that almost aggressively invades the present (Memoria-culture); an unattainable future that produces fear; and, between this future and that past, an ever-broadening present what he terms Latenz)”. He suggests that the first experience of mass destruction on a new scale has transformed our human self-reference. In his new book project on Latenz, Dr. Gumbrecht explores the notion that we are like “blind passengers” who can no longer predict the future. In his most foreboding assertion, Dr. Gumbrecht sees the loss of the enlightened, caring, rational human being and the emergence of something closer to the “animality”. Moreover, the conscious decision to create weapons of mass destruction makes our actions play an active role in the possibility of our self-extermination.

Friday, 19 October 2007
9.15 – 10.15 AM
"Why Do People Fear What They Fear? The Psychology of Risk"
Ortwin Renn, University of Stuttgart

"From Irrational Fears to Insurable Risks"
David N. Bresch, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Zurich

Notes: I missed the bus that morning and unfortunately missed most of this talk. I caught the end of the discussion though. Dr. Gumbrecht was interested in the historicity of behavior toward fear. He reiterated a point from his work, i.e., that we are living in a time of “unlimited simultaneities of experience”. He suggested that there has been a change in the capability of trusting. Purchasing insurance has become buying a little piece of the future. He wanted to know if the changes in the insurance industry reflect his argument that there has been a change in the “chronotope” of time. The panelists noted that the key in their work is in fact how the insurance industry perceives time. In the past, people could build up the feeling of “trust” over a longer period of time, but now the collective risks are greater and the periods in which people must make decisions much shorter. From their view, individuals are actually living with increasing security in terms of health and well being. Despite their perceptions, more human beings are living closer to paradise (sic!). However, we are collectively living in the possibilities of catastrophe.

10.15 – 11.15 AM
"Die Another Day: Endangered Bodies, or the Fear of Performing"
Gerald Siegmund, University of Berne with Maren Rieger, Berne University
of the Arts

Notes: Maren and Gerald chose an interesting way to jar a conference panel with a performance piece. With the immediate moment in which the panelists became performers they waited to evoke the feeling of “fear” in the conference room. They also showed a short clip from the Sheffield-based group Forced Entertainment called "Show Time" (1996), in which a man stands on stage with no shirt on and a belt of dynamite strapped around his chest with a ticking clock. In their presentation they explored how the feeling of fear may develop out of the “contract” between audience and performer (in this case, presenters and participating audience) or through "sharing" emotions with the audience. From their view, theater develops out of the fear of the performer and the audience's desire to witness failure. Some like Dr. Gumbrecht raised questions about their assertions of the audience and performers and asked for clarity about the emotional relationships between them. In discussion, there is no one-way street or one to one correlation. Dr. Gumbrecht said he felt anger and embarrassment instead of sharing any anticipatory fears of failure. Gerald suggested that even that anger is an aggressive reaction that avoids the feeling of fear.

11.45 am – 12.45 PM
"Between Fear as a Spectacle and Interiorized Fear" (in French
language)
Bertrand Bacqué, Haute école d'art et de design, Geneva with Ingrid
Wildi, Haute école d'art et de design, Geneva

In the first part of this presentation, Bertrand sketched the spectrum of films from Hollywood aliens and apocalypses to the films of Rossellini, Wenders and Cassavetes that address our fears and also attract us to film through our fears. In the second part of the presentation, Ingrid Wildi explored the new media of “video art” through interviews with her own brother who has been wandering around Europe for years. In Oblique Portrait, shown at the Venice Beinnale in 2005, she asks him questions about his experience as a migrant from Chile, his sense of identity, memories of his family, the feeling of difference, the lack of belonging and depression.

12.45 – 1.45 PM
"Home and Fear"
Beate Söntgen, University of Bochum with Teresa Hubbard, University of
Texas at Austin and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard
College, New York

Beate and Teresa are interested in the historical constructions of interior space and time. They ontextualized this for us through examples from the European painting traditions. Their collaborative projects explore these framings of interior and exterior, public and private. They are interested in the thresholds, voids and holes in their experience and how people “architect” these confrontations with space and time (I mentioned to Teresa afterwards that this in part reminded me of William Reddy’s concept of “navigating” experience with each moment. See William Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling). They showed us a photography project that they developed in Berlin about women between the frames of space and then they showed us excerpts from two of their films, A Single Wide and House with Pool, which play with the structure of the mobius strip. A Single Wide, for example (see still shot above right), is about a US single wide trailer with one wall cut away to expose the interior. The camera revolves around the interior and exterior space of the trailer and a “threshhole” in the life of a woman. In the discussion, Dr. Gumbrecht suggested the idea of "thickness" that Teresa and Beate's films develop through the experience of encountering and confronting the framing of space and time. In response, Teresa mentioned her interest in the "flatness" of space and time and and said she will think about the "thickness" of experience that her work may also express. I highly recommend checking out their work. I am interested in the notion of "architecting" space that I think helps me show what people are doing in the source materials I find in the archives; it may be an interesting other side to William Reddy's suggestion that humans navigate the feeling of their selves in relation to their surrundings, societies, cultures and politics. If you are interested, please see their link: www.hubbardbirchler.net/

2.45 – 3.45 PM
"Genetic Roots of Instinctive and Learned Fear"
Vadim Bolshakov, Harvard Medical School, Boston with Petros
Koumoutsakos, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

Notes: Vadim presented his research on how genetics influences the experience of fear in mice. As Vadim would later tell me, this is perhaps the fastest growing field of research in the world and noted that over 25, 000 researchers attend the US association’s annual conventions. More recently, the work Joe Z. Tsien’s team of researchers on the experience of fear in mice at Boston University has been published in leading journals including Scientific American and this month’s edition of Spektrum der Wissenschaft (the German edition of Scientific American). If you are interested, please see these links:

www.spektrum.de/artikel/903041

www.spektrum.com/gehirn

www.spektrum.com/lernen

This work is pushing the boundaries of our knowledge and representation of how our brains function through neurotransmissions and how the brain “remembers” the experience of fear. Researchers like Vadim take an extreme position that our experiences and behavior are rooted in our genetics. Others would challenge this assertion from the perspective of their various disciplines, but the results of their work continues to challenge us to think about our representations of the human being, consciousness, memory, emotions and behavior.
One of the wilder parts of this work is how these scientists are in some ways creating new “machines”. Tsien’s team, for example, has been using designer mice for their experiments and placing electrodes in the CA1 region of the Hippocampus (see the image on the right from Tatjana Hilbert, 2003). This region focuses on registering the contents of experience in the brain and is involved in short-term and long term memory production. These researchers are using this animal-machine interface to measure and then map the experience of fear through simple experiments of feeling air on their backs, falling in a box and experiencing shaking in a box.
Vadim believes that fear has its own place in the brain and we have the ability to measure it. There are the innate and unconditioned responses to fear that come from the hardwiring of evolutionary development, and there are the acquired and conditioned responses to what Vadim calls “biologically insignificant events” (but probably very significant to the person experiencing fear!). The experience of fear is essentially a memory of the experience, or more accurately, a memory then recalled from a memory of a set of experiences. In the brain, the amygdala region processes the perception of an external stimulus, compares these sensations with stored memories of past experiences and influences our behavioral and somatic responses.
Interestingly, Vadim points out that some researchers now believe that memories are not stable things, a phenomenon that some evolutionary psychologists call memory “reconsolidation”. Memories involve clusters of neurotransmitters that have linked together through the sensation of an experience and they deteriorate over time, especially if not recalled. Recollection of these “memories” helps strengthen the original neurotransmitter clusters, but these clusters are no longer the same. This instability of memory is a point of extreme vulnerability that is open for manipulation – something that some researchers and others with political motives wish to pursue further (sic!). However, Vadim pointed out to me that understanding what exactly is going on with neurotransmitters and the sensation of fear is something that researchers may never understand. That knowledge is at best a long way off. Moreover, at the very best, these scientists can only represent these biological processes. Researchers are developing more precise measuring and mapping instruments for the brain, but their animal-machine interfaces generate “constructions” of those processes that they represent through visual forms of media.
I am interested in what this research tells us about experience, consciousness, sensation, fear, the ability to map and manipulate them. I think it also lends support to William Reddy’s assertions that humans operate with “thought materials” – stored memories of experience, including their own sense of identity and goals, culture, social relations and the consequences of behavior, which they can reconsolidate and consider in their interactions with the world around them. Finally, it raises a methodological question for me about the subjective nature of the sources I am seeking for my history of fear in German politics and what those sources may tell us beyond our constructions of memory and fear. When I mentioned this to Vadim, reminded me that without the presence of actual outside observer, there can be no idea of absolute certainty for any observation.

4.00 – 5.00 PM
"Mind the Gap"
Henry Urbach, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Jürgen Mayer H., Berlin

Notes: Henry started this panel with a series of reflections on his work as an architect and sees fear as a blind spot. He is interested in the idea of difference and he is looking for ways that architecture can engage fear of the other in different ways through the uncanny, mutant, things that do not belong together, codes, seduction, trust, surprise and the sublime.
Juergen then presented some of his work. He started with the technologies of surveillance like television cameras and infra-read scanners and places of surveillance like web lounges. Juergen began tracing the movement of people around spaces with bar code scanning technologies and used the biometric information for graphic forms of representation and more interactive art between the spectator and place. One of the most graphic examples was his project, “In heat”, in which the person passing through space leaves parts of his or her personal information in the memory of materials they contact. In a second step, Juergen began making the representation of this biometric information transferable to other places. Since then he has developed several architectural projects that celebrate the citizen instead of the administration of citizens. One of the most compelling examples is the town hall of Esslingen, Germany, situated on a former US military barracks. Juergen found this interesting for the bases's association with feelings of fear and security. Part of this project is called “pitter patterns” and uses the acoustics of falling rainwater collected from the roof of the building to draw citizens, especially children, to the building as a way to express the idea of transparency in a government building designed to collect citizens’ personal data. Currently, Juergen is working on the “metropol parasol” redesign of the Plaza de la encarnacion in Sevilla. If you are interested in his work, please see his website: www.jmayerh.com

In the final part, Henry started with a comment on the US architectural market. He notes a boom in commercial architecture but dwindling resources for architectural creativity. It was at this point that I began to think about Dr. Gumbrecht’s assertion that there is no longer a perceived place for “agency” – the ability to act – in a world that seems doomed to an unpredictable future. And yet here were architects, artists and designers making conscious decisions in their work and engaging the problems they perceive in our world. Henry’s website is currently down, but you can see some of his work at the www.sfmoma.org

5.00 – 6.00 PM
"Liberty versus Security: Bikes versus Bombs"
Adam Thorpe, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London
with Jens Martin Skibsted, Skibsted Ideation, Copenhagen

Notes: If you recall up top, Adam is looking at the bike and our associated fears. He is concerned about the high level of surveillance in the United Kingdom and he is also concerned about things like 1600 deaths per year in London related to poor air quality. Adam’s response to irrational responses to real problems is, “don’t panic”, look at the problem and “research”. What he has found is that people are afraid to ride bikes. So Adam became interested in the second major reason why people will not ride: theft. He started thinking about ways to counter these irrational fears and began with the small things like how do thieves steal bikes? It turns out there are many ways to steal bikes (I personally like “lifting” where two men lift a bike up over a sign post) and many people do not properly lock their bikes. Adam designed an informational sticker describing good locking practices, which people can place on the bike’s crossbar. Then he design public parking stands (like the “m” forms I have even seen in State College, PA) that help bikers more properly secure their bikes. Then Adam took a step further and began asking questions about public security experts perceived fears of bikes. It turns out security experts see bikes as “vectors” and it turns out that the three known uses of bikes as terrorist bombs in the UK either did not work properly or were stored in an attached bag; not in the bike itself. His suggestion: maybe no bags in secured spaces, but that does not necessarily have to mean no bikes. Adam also showed us another group’s project to deal with perceived bike parking fears in Barcelona, Spain called the “Biciberg”. If you are interested in his work, please check out: www.bikeoff.org

Jens started off his talk by telling us that he does believe in fear, but he is interested in fear as a puzzle. As he put it, that “snake” may just be a stick and there are many sticks that are not snakes. His project starts with the idea that “the car is king”, but by that phrase, he also means cars make have the biggest impact: traffic congestion, air pollution and environmental impact on a global scale. He believes that cars have nothing to offer to cities and he is looking at ways to make bikes more appealing for a culture that places such high value on the class, sex, speed and power appeals of the car. Jens points out that bicycle vehicles allow humans to efficiently make energy and move like nobody’s business and he designs bikes right down to very interesting driveshaft component (instead of the chain) and overall designs. For him, it is about finding unity in the object of his crafts, and several others gathered here at the conference have linked up with him to push this further. If you are interested, please check out this link: www.biomega.dk/biomega.aspx

6.00 – 7.00 PM
"Sounds of Fear"
Isabel Mundry, Zurich School of Music, Drama and Dance

Note: this presentation did not take place due to illness and the Akademie plans a new performance of Isabel’s work at another time and place.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Note: the second day highlighted the projects of current or upcoming Akademie fellows.

9.00 – 10.00 am
I. Section: Design

Björn Franke
"Manufactured Fears"

Matthias Aron Megyeri
"Sweet Dreams Security™ Est. 2003 – Notes from an Orwellian City"

Notes: Both Bjoern and Matthias see their work as ways to question that they see as the “Orwellian scenario” in Great Britain.

Bjoern’s work is a series of what he calls “design experiments” that deal with the imagination of fear and the psychology of social relationships. A US survey piqued his interest for its findings that about 70% of women and 90% of men think about jealousy. So the first project he showed us plays with objects used to induce jealousy in partners, including photographs of objects he designed like a vacuum pump that leaves a “hicky” on the skin or others that leave scratches, bruises, bite marks or instant kisses. His second project was “panic boxes” which create controlled spaces in which humans have to deal with the machine and the feeling of powerlessness. Bjoern’s third project is a set of “affective sensory extensions” with names like “sunburn” and “cramped” that he designed to place around the arm. They monitor behavior, and generate feedback to modify behavior. His fourth project is called “violent machines for troubled times” (see image above left). These design experiments aim to measure the level of the US terror alert through the body’s activity and represent that level in the respective color. If you are interested in Bjorn’s work, please check out his site: www.bjornfranke.com

Matthias’ work started with the “feeling of security” and the kitsch of “cute” that he finds in such an extreme juxtaposition in London. His photography documents a whole range of security objects like fences, locks, alarm boxes, television cameras, shutters, and curtains, and objects of “cuteness” like numerous stars, flowers, butterflies, smiling apples, etc. As a side note, it was a bit disturbing to realize that marketers design eyes on products to attract children’s attention and “follow” them along the shopping aisle. So Matthias decided that he wanted to use this stark juxtaposition in a way to intervene in London’s home security market. He wants to offer a thought through his product and raise a question for discussion. Some people see the business side of his projects, which have quickly drawn the attention of major architects and security experts, but I think there is something to his decision to choose consumer security products like fences or curtains and combine them with popular cute objects. His projects have names like “R. Bunnit, Peter Pin and Didoo” (see image above right), “Mr. Smich and Madam Buttly”, “Billy B” padlocks, “Mrs. Welcome” and “Mr. Welcome”. As an extra note, the travels resulting from the popularity of his designs and exhibits has brought him into interesting comparisons between places like the UK, US, Japan, Brazil and Israel on the objects of security and cute. If you are interested in his work, please check out the link: www.sweetdreamssecurity.com

10.00 – 11.00 am
II. Section: Architecture

Iassen Markov, Stephan Trüby
"5 Codes: Space of Conflict – The Temple of Janus Revisited"

Gabi Schillig
"The Politics of Lines – on Architecture/War/Boundaries and the
Production of Space"

11.30 am – 12.30 pm
III. Section: Performing Arts, Video

Susanne M. Winterling
"Dealing with Fear: an Inside and an Outside Perspective"

Helene Sommer
"High over the Borders – Stories of Hummingbirds, Crying Wolves and the
Bird’s Eye View"

12.30 – 1.30 pm
IV. Section: Daily Life Between Social and Politics

Damaso Reyes
"Fear and Photography"

Damaso Reyes is from New York City and he is traveling Europe for the next few years. Damaso was supposed to present his work in a stand alone panel on Saturday about daily life between society and politics, entitled, “Fear and Photography”, but at the last minute Damaso had the chance to photograph a rabbi from Berlin who services a small Russian Jewish community in the German town of Hameln. If you are interested in his photographic work (he still uses a black room; see photo on the left) documenting the changing lives of Europeans, please check out this page: www.theeuropeans.net

Jasmeen Patheja
"Blank Noise: Exploring Fear as Experienced by Women in Their Cities, Everyday"

Notes: This was an interesting panel and represents many projects under way under the title of “Blank Noise”. I like how their work raises the question of gender and it helps me view the world through her photographs and stories of women who have been groped, fondled, stared at, humiliated, terrorized and despite all of that willing to fight back with their sandles and anything else within reach. Jasmeen has turned the experience of groping into a public scene on places like buses that make the audience spectators. She started photographing the men, some growing more ashamed, apologetic and pleading; some just remaining as a blurry image running away; some not deterred. She finds a high level of public denial and a lack of political interest in the problem. She hears the old excuses: it is her fault, but this has not deterred her from looking for ways to deal with sexual harassment. Jasmeen has set up most of these projects in places like Bangalore, but they have a very good blog that I suggest checking out with ongoing projects inviting men and women to participate. Some of the projects include the collection of testimonies, online event blogging, “Y R U Looking at Me?”, roadside sign actions, group building, staring back events, T-shirts with lines like “I never asked for it” and written reports of sexual harassment crimes that the apply to the sidewalk surface. If you are interested, please check out their site: www.blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com

2.30 – 3.30 pm
V. Section: From the Lab to Politics and Globalization

Margarete Vöhringer
"No Fear in the Laboratory. Art and Science in the Early Soviet Union"

Paula Diehl
"Ambivalence of Power in National Socialism. The SS Mise en Scène of
Fear and Identification"

Yi Shin Tang
"Dealing with the Fear of Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights in a
Globalized Economy"

3.30 pm
Final Discussion :
In this part, participants formed a large circle and talked about what they took away as important from this conference, what was missing and what needs addressing in future conferences. People brought up the lacunae in the panels like the lack of politicians, media producers, psychologists and religious leaders. The issue of temporality, the problems of violence and war, all still remain on the table for discussion. What of the more interesting points seems to have formed around the actual objects of fear and the psychology of dealing with fear. This pushed further questions such as how are fears created, who articulates the “feeling” of fear, and how is fear expressed and experienced. How do different cultures deal with fear? Can we identify peoples and places that face immediate and real fears with shorter event horizons as points for further conference work? Moreover, what can other disciplines tell us? How would a cultural anthropologist illuminate the notions, rites and symbols of death? How could psychologists help us understand how different groups deal with fear differently, especially through religion (here I am thinking of Kate Fiori and the research at Long Island University in New York and religious voices)? What about the perspective of children and developmental psychology? This seemed to be a formative place in most participants eyes. What about the politics, power and hierarchies of feeling and dealing with fear?
One of the other major points of this discussion also focused around what we are learning about the neuroscience of memory and what other disciplines suggest about what influence the feeling of fear beyond our genetics and mind, i.e. social relations, cultural notions, gender, etc. The geneticist takes the hard line view of genetics determines the whole thing and others pleaded for the complexity and unpredictability of human experience and behavior. Among the last observations, Philip mentioned a book worth considering, Traveling Concepts in the Humanities. Petros noted the way each different discipline chooses a different point of reference in their studies, e.g. the gene or the social, which then influences their view and understanding. This is something for us to keep in mind, as we explore this in an interdisciplinary manner.

Final notes:

I met Rolf Spinnler at the opening lecture. He is a journalist for the local Stuttgarter newspaper and he was charged with writing about Dr. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s talk on the origins of our fear of the future (the article is online and entitled, "Abschied von Fortschrittsglauben" (The Departure from the Belief in Progress). In talking with him afterwards, Rolf believed that Dr. Gumbrecht was in a way still shaped if not trapped by the historical philosophical tradition which he says has collapsed. He also disagrees with Dr. Gumbrecht about the turn towards an "animality" in our consciousness. When he thinks of something like Nazism, Rolf goes back to Horkheimer and Adorno and sees the perfection of the Enlightened consciousness emphasis on rationalism in genocide and war.

In the first coffee break, I met Antigone from Greece and Ekariko Nana Obot from Ghana. Both live in the area and were active participants in the conference discussions. Antigone has trained a physicist, but works in upper level information technology management. She gets to use her analytical skills but she comes to the Akademie conferences to feed her mind. She appreciated one of their past themes which brought business managers together around the question of "what managers see."

Ekariko has been working on many things. He used to work for the Americans in their interests in Nigeria but found himself on the outside with regime change in Nigeria. He has wandered from job to job,and started his own import-export company, but Ekariko also pursues questions about Africa, its history and identity. He showed us his articles in African newspapers about the perceptions of dictators like Mugabe in Zimbabwe. From his view, Europeans have made Africans into monsters both in terms of their image and the way that dictators like Mugabe are both perceived and act. When he looks at the European artistic traditions, he believes that we have also tortured our own history and other conceptions of the Oriental, the Muslim, the women, the black, the brown, the red and on and on. He also questions our notions of “culture” and believes that when we get down to it, what person does not desire the same things: food, shelter, warmth and love. To Ekariko, this is “culture”; this is our humanity. Everything else is constructed and tortured, he suggests, through our relations of power and politics.

Ritta Baddoura from Lebanon
Like many of her peer fellows at the Akademie (names I never learned), Rita had many thoughtful ideas to add to the various discussions. He is a link to her poetry in French: http://rittabaddouraparmilesbombes.chezblog.com/

Malaka Dewapriya from Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has been making films about his home country and wants to know more about Germany's history as he plans his next project. If you are interested in his work, please check out this link: www.studentfilmmakers.org (currently not linking)

Literature 1: Notes on the new cultural history of politics and need to pay attention to the expression of feelings.

See Wolfgang Hardtwig (ed.), Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918-1939, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005.

For starters, Hardtwig (b. 1944) asks us to look toward cultural anthropology for new ways to historically examine political cultures. This is not a new idea by any means. Hardtwig draws from a wide interdisciplinary body of scholarship, but I think he brings together an interesting set of questions for my work and the upcoming graduate student conference in the Penn State Department of History and Religious Studies. Hardtwig makes a distinction between what he calls the old approaches of political culture history and cultural anthropology and the new ones, which he believes can further illuminate politics through the subjective experience of individuals. Hardtwig reminds us to go beyond "high culture", static models of political behavior, structural frames or anthropological meanings and suggests that historians need to look more for the affective and cognitive markers in the records of individual people. For a new cultural history of politics Hardtwig poses a set of questions, familiar to some historians, regarding the subjective experience of space, time, body, emotion, knowledge, work, communication and finally, the political, social, religious and intellectual order. Hardtwig hopes to thereby integrate the historical analysis of political culture with anthropological categories and develop the theoretical basis for the historical analysis of political cultures.

Hardtwig elaborates on some of these anthropological categories better than others, but it his discussion of the feeling of pain that I find interesting for the moment. It suggests that feelings offer a key way for viewing the relationship of the individual and his world and thereby explain how these relationships change. From Hardtwig’s view, a feeling such as pain displays an incomparable world of experience. On the one hand, pain involves cognition, but it is not completely pre-formed through culture either; on the other hand, physical feelings push the boundaries of our representative systems and even require the self-fashioning of symbols and the transformation of their representation for expression. The expression of pain in the “materials” available to the historian can possibly show a new way to think about political culture, how politics operates through the links of the individual and his or her body with forms of expression and the world around them, and thereby see how and why politics changes with the perception of space, time, society, culture and ethics.

Sidenote: this is one place I think it is worth while engaging the upcoming graduate student conference in the History Department at Penn State and their theme: “voices of violence”. From this reading of Hardtwig, topics such as violence and terror could be served by the application of such questions and source analysis. What are the voices? What are the sources? What can other approaches illuminate? How do our perceptions of space, time, gender, etc. shape feelings such as fear and how does the physical sensation of fear shape its expression and even transform its representation? What happens to individuals, communities and nations through the presence of fear or pain? Certainly gender, the construction/expression of men and women, and the influence of masculinity and femininity on individuals and societies must play a role. How does violence look from this view? How does any of this look through the eyes of our ancient, medieval, early modern and modern historians in training and our faculty? What can some of our current graduate seminars, students and faculty bring to this discussion on fear and violence? I am thinking of Dr. Landes for example and her work on early modern conceptions of the human, the body and feelings or Dr. Jenkins on religion, fear and terror in our contemporary world or Dr. Eghigian on the modern imagination, politics and science of criminal deviance in Germany.