Johannes Bähr - La leggenda della «Wohlfühldiktatur»
Götz Aly aroused considerable attention with his thesis that the Germans had supported Hitler because of economic and social benefits. His key argument is the standard of living. According to Aly, the Germans enjoyed an increasing prosperity during the war, based on the looting of Jewish property and the exploitation of the occupied countries. In fact, he ignores the current research findings especially in his economic analysis. There is no doubt that in Germany after 1933the standard of living declined compared with other industrial nations. Shortage of foreign exchange and the whole system of war economy decreased the level of consumption. Aly has no clear evidence for his thesis. He is spreading a legend, which apparently sells well.
Frank Bajohr - La rapina degli ebrei
This article examines Aly’s observations on the «Aryanization» of Jewish property under the Third Reich and criticizes the limited and reductionist use of the term in his last book. Aly equates «Aryanization» with the confiscation of Jewish wealth by the state, ignoring a crucial dimension, namely the transfer of property (businesses, assets, real estate) between «Jews» and «Aryans». By doing this, Aly fails to present «Aryanization» as dynamic interaction between Nazi state and German society, although his main theses focus on society as beneficiary of Nazi rule. Moreover, Aly overstates the significance of material aspects for the persecution of Jews, at the same time isolating them from their ideological context as «rational» or «pragmatic». Such an approach, however, ignores the fact that expropriation was solidly anchored in a nexus of ideological reasoning and rationale: economic anti-Semitism had long been an integral component of anti-Semitic ideology.
Marco Bellabarba - Scrittura e traduzione: dai carteggi amministrativi nel Trentino asburgico del secondo Settecento
The question of national languages is one of the major concerns of the European governments of the 18th century. During the 18th century, the European monarchs put much effort into creating one «official» language in their territories. In the Austrian dominions, this attempt proved to be very difficult. Here in fact verbal communication comprised – next to the dialects of the rural populations – completely distinct court languages, liturgical or administrative languages, language used for teaching and for scientific communication: German, Latin, French, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, and so on. In the 1880s, Emperor Joseph II – feeling the necessity of one language uniting all parts of his empire – emitted a series of decrees aimed at imposing German as the sole administrative language. This paper analyzes the reactions the decrees provoked in the so-called «Welschen Konfinen», which were politically Austrian, but of Italian mother tongue. It tries to reconstruct if and in what manner the rulings were applied, and it goes on to examine what political aspirations beyond linguistic uniformity the decrees might have had.
Robert Büchner - Soziale Dimensionen einer Alpenstraße im 16. Jahrhundert. Die Arlbergsäumer auf ihrem Weg durch das Stanzertal
Around 1600 some 400 Arlbergsäumer – mainly from Vorarlberg and Switzerland, but also from Tyrol – brought lard and other goods to Innsbruck and Hall, and transported salt on their way back. Price increases forced the Säumer to step into the lard/salt trade in the upper Inn valley doubling their profits on each trip. Smuggling, bypassing, or sneaking past customs and toll stations were common practice. Village artisans such as blacksmiths, strap and cord makers, saddlers, and shoemakers welcomed their patronage. Since the Säumer regularly stopped and spent the night at the same Stanzertal Valley inns or with the same farmers – often snowed up for many days – personal contacts developed. Many a Stanzertal Valley girl married a non-resident Säumer. The Säumer were important news conveyers for both foreigners and locals. While Stanzertal Valley farmers lamented the browsing of their meadows by the Säumer’s horses and were afraid of the introduction of epidemics, the Säumer complained about high prices for food and feed. Overall, both sides got along well though.
Marina Cattaruzza - Götz Aly, o delle provocazioni che fanno riflettere
The paper is an attempt to give a comprehensive appraisal of Aly’s work. On the one side, it emphasizes the fruitful and provocative insights, which characterize the entire production of this German scholar. On the other side, it draws attention to the weaknesses in Alys’ opus: the historian tends in fact to privilege purely economic explanations for the crimes of National Socialism and strongly favours explanations based on a single (mostly economic) cause. Despite the broad documentary evidence, such shortcomings also affect the last book of Götz Aly: Hitlers Volksstaat. Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus. The book contains many important observations on the Nazi Welfare State and on the German war economy during World War II. Regardless of such merits, the core thesis of the book is untenable as Aly does not consider the large number of German victims and the massive destructions suffered by Nazi Germany during the war. Consequently, it is not possible to focus only on «Raubkrieg» and on the advantages, which such a criminal war brought to the civil population. The paper also comments on previous works by Aly on National Socialist Germany. Aly’s achievements on this topic are recognized, but caution is suggested in interpreting a widely quoted passage of Werner Conze’s in the abstract written for the World Congress of Sociologists in Bucarest. In conclusion, the paper pleads for a stronger differentiation between the involvement of Theodor Schieder and Conze in the murderous politics of Nazism in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe.
Philippe Chenaux - Il cardinale Pacelli e la questione del nazismo dopo l’enciclica «Mit brennender Sorge» (1937)
One of the major historiographic problems concerning Pope Pius XII regards the continuity (or discontinuity) of the orientations of his pontificate in relationship to that of Pius XI on the central question of the Holy See’s attitude towards Nazism. Can one make out a contrast between the pope and his secretary of state on this issue just before the publication of Mit brennender Sorge? Must one speak of a division of roles (Ratti the prophet, Pacelli the diplomat), or rather of a divergence of strategy, that had gone unnoticed at the moment of the conclave? The documents a historian has on hand today, clearly show that for cardinal Pacelli the doctrinal condemnation of the neopagan foundations of National Socialism did not entail the condemnation of the state and the party professing it and that the search for a modus vivendi of the church with the national socialist regime remained the principle goal of the Vatican’s politics.
Gustavo Corni - Götz Aly, l’opera di uno storico «scomodo»
Götz Aly is a journalist and longstanding radical left activist, who has shown himself to be an audacious and provocative historian from the outset in the 80s. He tackles topics ignored by academic historiography with unusual interpretative approaches and always displays a capacity of appraising little known documents. This essay pursues the major steps of his scientific production and analyzes his most important books including the very successful Hitlers Volkstaat, which was published in 2005 and caused such polemics.
Gerhard Dilcher - La pluralità della tradizione giuridica europea
Today, there is a vivid ongoing discussion about the identity of European or Western civilization – including our legal culture – stimulated by globalization. As identity is grounded in history, legal historians are challenged. According to various authors, the fundaments of Western legal culture are to be seen in Roman law, in canon law after the «papal revolution», or in the formation of a ius commune in the school of Bologna. This article tries to demonstrate that the character of the European legal tradition consists not only in these important factors, but also in changing constellations of a complex plurality of legal principles and orders, which correspond to different structures of society and the problems related to conflict settlement and the establishment of peace. This way, not only private law, but also the development of penal and constitutional law can be included into the picture and the experience of regional and particular laws, of English common law can be integrated. Thus, it would be better to envisage the European legal identity as a plurality of lines interwoven in different ways and at different times, forming a complex texture that as such is typical for the identity of the West.
Emma Fattorini - Pio XI, Mussolini, Hitler e Pacelli (1937-1939)
This essay examines the last years of the pontificate of Pope Pius XI; those of the frank and declared rupture with Nazism and – for many aspects also – Fascism. This reading is corroborated by recently unearthed archival documents: the relations of the German nunciature with the Secretary of State substantiate – enriching many details – a different attitude, less disposed towards diplomatic negotiations than Pacelli and the majority of the German episcopate. Furthermore, the correspondence between Pius XII and cardinal Clemens August von Galen is taken into consideration, which provides evidence for the difference, the divergences, and the actual contradictions between the German episcopate and Pius XII and of the bishops among themselves. This exercise is rarely performed by the growing number of followers of the relationship between Church and National Socialism who prefer verdicts in toto, almost as if the Church were a monolithic, simply pyramidical reality. In reality, this reductive approach reveals an unconfessed fear of see the distinctions. Yet exactly the differences can shed light on those tragic and highly complicated events, which so easily become object of our current projections.
Simona Feci - Cause matrimoniali nella documentazione del tribunale della Sacra Romana Rota (secolo XVII)
This essay illustrates the cases of separation and annulment of the bonds of matrimony examined by the court of the Sacred Roman Rota in the 17th century. There are a number of publications, which have present single sentences. Here, we intend to give an organic picture and will consider the court’s jurisdiction, which is the main and last judicial authority of the Roman Curia competent in marital matters, the procedural style, which conditions the way the contention develops and its unfolding is reconstructed, the cases heard, both the Roman ones and those appealing after having been tried in Italian or foreign courts. The research is based on documents at the Vatican Secret Archives and the State Archives in Rome.
Orietta Filippini - Aspetti della costituzione della memoria archivistica pontificia in età moderna. Alcune riflessioni in margine a una ricerca
This paper is an attempt to show how the reconstruction of an archival memory in the early modern period was marked not only by events such as the French Revolution, but also by countless other ruptures, which accompanied the institutional changes in the construction of memory. This becomes clear from an analysis of the pontifical archives and the delineation of certain «systems of traumas», which followed the government reforms during the Ancien Régime before the fracture of the French Revolution (maker of the «past as past»).
Anna Foa - Le due leggende. Riflessioni sulla storiografia su Pio XII e gli ebrei
Two different legends were created about the role played by Pope Pius XII during the Shoah: the white one, exalting his role in saving Jews from Nazis, and the black one, emphasizing his «silence» and showing him as a philo-Nazi. Both legends were created immediately after the war, in close connection with the difficult construction of the awareness, the memory, and the history of the Shoah in post-war society. In this context, at a time when the Church was firmly reiterating the old anti-Judaic tradition, the black legend had an important role in bringing to light the connections between this tradition and modern anti-Semitism as well as in preparing the change of attitude of the Church towards Jews, beginning with the Council and the declaration Nostra Aetate. But today, with the Shoah fully acknowledged as the major event of our past, it is time to give up both legends, the black one and the white one, as reflecting a feeling of defense and closure which does not hold meaning any longer.
Rüdiger Hachtmann - Una «dittatura dei favori» e coscienza di classe?
In his essay, Hachtmann especially criticizes Aly’s assertion that for the German working classes the NS-Regime had been a «welfare-dictatorship» which in contrast had treated the German bourgeoisie restrictively. In fact, since 1933 employees were actually being deprived of their rights in various ways. Hachtmann additionally shows that as late as 1938 the standard of living – especially the real income of German workers – was still lower than the already low level of before the 1929 crisis, whereas the financial circumstances for large parts of the middle classes had considerably improved.
Heinz Hürten - Die Briefe Pius’ XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe zur Kriegszeit. Eine zentrale Quelle für seine Amtsauffassung?
The 124 letters, which Pope Pius’ XII wrote from 1939 to 1944 to German bishops, show him primarily concerned with his more spiritual rather than political obligation of making peace possible. He anxiously strived to remain unbiased. The consequence was his «silence» – «ad maiora mala vitanda». On the other hand, he could not ignore crimes and cruelties at all cost. He thus found himself faced with «antagonistic obligations». Confronting German activities such as «euthanasia», the killing of mentally ill persons, was nevertheless the Church’s duty, not in the hope of stopping these actions, but in order to keep the Catholics’ consciences free of National socialist ideology. Criticized were those bishops who cared more about liturgy than the pureness of the Christian faith endangered by political heresies; appreciated were those who – like Galen – protested against violations of faith and human rights. Pius XII was perhaps more of a shepherd of souls than a man of diplomacy.
Maria Teresa Lo Preiato - Resistenze corporative al riformismo accentratore vescovile. Il caso della città di Trento alla fine del Settecento
This paper investigates the dynamics of the political-juridical conflict between the authority of the prince-bishops of Trent and that of the consular magistrate in the second half of the eighteenth century. Within this institutional framework, the consuls refused to recognize the primal source of the autonomy of Trent in princely sovereignty, and sought to claim those powers of supremacy for the magistrate, which were outlined by the juridical-political term iurisdictio during the long doctrinal tradition of common law. In particular, the essay presents the contents of the consular privileges and the major issues of the constitutional debate: the law reform and the exercise of jurisdiction. These issues were the consequences of irreconcilable ‘visions of the juridical’, which stood proof to the existence of a political and not so much technical-juridical problem. I have also tried to place the matter within the larger historical-doctrinal context by presenting the pertaining literature and illustrating key eighteenth century juridical-political and philosophical topics.
Giovanni Miccoli - Santa Sede, guerra e Shoah: una proposta di discussione
This essay is divided into three parts. The first part examines the attitude of the Holy See and the German episcopate towards Nazi anti-Semitism and the persecution of German Jews during the 1930s. In view of the risk of becoming itself object of persecution, the German Church took on a passive stance. This was also induced by the fact that in the past acts of anti-Hebrew discrimination had also been suggested by authoritative members of the Catholic Church and that its opinion of the influence of Jews on German society was generally negative. The Holy See was pleased by Hitler’s interest in concluding a Concordat valid for the entire Reich and later limited itself to defending priests and catholic believers from slowly advancing persecution, sending scores of protests about the infractions of the Concordat. The «Jewish questions» was considered an internal German affair not open to interference. This attitude seemed to shift towards the end of the pontificate of Pius XI: the second part of this paper is dedicated to this generally underrated aspect. Faced with heightened tensions in the relations with the «Third Reich» and the perspective of racial laws also being introduced in Italy the old and ill Pope took certain measures to face the question of the persecution of the Jews head on. His death on February 10, 1939 abruptly put an end to these attempts, but there are clear signs that major parts of the pontifical diplomacy and the German episcopate itself did not welcome a break with the «Third Reich». The third part deals with the many problems connected to the attitude of the Holy See and the German Catholic Church regarding the deportation and extermination of the European Jews during the war.
Matteo Luigi Napolitano - I documenti diplomatici come fonte per il dibattito storiografico su Pio XII
This essay focuses on diplomatic documents regarding Pius XII and his «foreign policy» during the World War II. The documentary approach demonstrates that it is not possible to see Vatican neutrality as a proof of impartiality. The Vatican was seen by the Allies (and also by Hitler and Mussolini) as very close to the anti-Axis coalition. This fact allows wiping out a number of legends about «Hitler’s Pope» – as he has been labeled. Based on primary sources, the essay reconsiders an array of general topics and investigates new research perspective as well.
Michele Nicoletti - Religione e sfera pubblica
Jürgen Habermas’s most recent thoughts on the relationship between religion and the public sphere deal with the latest developments in liberal political theory on the one hand – especially John Rawls, and the positions of theology, as demonstrated by the dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger on the other. With respect to Rawls, Habermas does not only allow for the existence of references to religious concepts or values by believing citizens in the public sphere but also for the potential prosperity of these traditions, whenever they harbor universal human values and accept the fundamental principles of pluralism and religious freedom. His proposal of a dialectic of «complementary learning» between secular reason and religious wisdom therefore reveals itself highly stimulating, even if it brings up certain questions regarding its universability outside a western context.
Armin Nolzen - Una nuova interpretazione del rapporto tra il regime nazionalsocialista e la popolazione?
Götz Aly’s new book Hitler’s Volksstaat that was featured broadly in the German media, deals with Nazi financial policy during the Second World War. Based on new archival findings, Aly evaluates the different ways «ordinary Germans» profited from the discrimination of the European Jewry put forward by Nazi bureaucrats. He claims that Nazi social policy, for example the opportunity to get rich on Jewish and alien property, assured 95% of Germans the possibility of improving their own social status and thus made them act loyally towards Hitler and the Nazi regime. By concentrating on the fiscal factor, Aly’s argument tends to be monocausal. He almost totally neglects the effects Hitler’s charismatic leadership, Nazi ideology, terror, and propaganda had on social integration. As a result, Aly’s claims that his study offers a new perspective on interpreting the Nazi state remain unfulfilled.
Pier Paolo Portinaro - Politica e giurisdizione costituzionale. Riflessioni in margine a un dibattito tedesco
The Bonn Republic was the most advanced – and overall best – instance of a constitutional democracy after World War II. Thus, both the high level of the theoretical debate on the role of the constitutional courts in a democracy and the high level of acceptation and of legitimacy, which the Bundesverfassungsgericht enjoys in the German political system and has enjoyed, are comprehensible. The article thus reconstructs the discussion on constitutional justice between Weimar and Bonn, and points out how it articulated itself around two concepts of democracy – Schmitt’s plebiscitary and Kelsen’s pluralistic version –, which in turn presuppose opposite concepts of politics such as domination and integration. The courts exercise a particular power, that of interpretation (Deutungsmacht), which in the context of democratic-pluralistic constitutions has taken on special importance. However, the jeopardizing of the classic division of powers and the reconstruction of the dualism between gubernaculum and iurisdictio in the contemporary constitutional systems and especially in the supranational organizations such as the European Union –, raises questions about the risks of a growing politicization of the courts, who assume a surrogate function with respect to a sovereignty, which seems to have dissolved.
Gian Enrico Rusconi - I presupposti normativi dello Stato laico
This essay examines the dialogue between Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the German philosopher Jürgen Habermans that took place in 2004. It has the noteworthy title «The pre-political moral foundations of the liberal State». Despite serious reciprocal attention, there is no true understanding between the two. Habermas develops the problem of «public reason» with an eye for the «potentials of truth» contained in religious discourse. Ratzinger on the other side remains unyielding in his critique of enlightened western rationalism without noticing the novelty of his interlocutor’s thoughts. The only convergence between the two is the critical distance from what they consider the excessive pretenses of science and the connected naturalistic theories. This attitude leads Habermas to a sort of «soft naturalism» and Ratzinger to certain concessions to evolutionism, beginning with the important admission that the traditional concept of nature is in crisis. In the end though, the new questionability of the nexus nature-reason allows the cardinal to assert the concept of creation, which is understood as the authentic foundation of the human rights. Habermas the layman disagrees on this point. In the end, the two interlocutors hold irreconcilable positions: both affirm the supremacy of reason, but in two incompatible formulations: secularized communicative reason vs. reason creatress incarnate in belief.
Winfried Süß - Uno Stato sociale nazionalsocialista? Osservazioni su un tentativo fallito di interpretazione
This essay subjects some of Aly’s main theses regarding the history of Nazi social politics to an empirical review. The paper argues that Aly’s characterization of the «Third Reich» as a welfare state is quintessentially amiss, firstly because Aly does not sufficiently distinguish between promised welfare and actual chances for welfare and secondly because he does not adequately bring into account that many presumed socio-political «improvements» simply compensated cuts from the times of the Great Depression. The mirage of a Nazi social state completely shatters, when one includes the destructive potential of Nazi social politics – left out by Aly – into the whole picture.
Hans Vorländer - Macht und Ansehen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts
The question addressed in this article is whether constitutional courts have power. Contrary to assumptions of political theory and history of political thought, it is argued that constitutional courts have power, which can best be understood as a specific power of interpretation and judgment with regard to the fundamental rules of the political order. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, established in 1951, has become over time a policymaker in German political life. Its influential position is only partly due to its competences. Far more important is the high level of trust – both general and specific – conferred on the Federal Constitutional Court by both political actors and the people. The recent opinion poll supports the hypothesis that the high level of trust can be seen as a main power resource of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.
Hubert Wolf - Pius XII. als Nuntius in Deutschland. Pacellis Schlußrelation vom November 1929
For twelve years, Eugenio Pacelli served as Papal Nuncio in Munich and Berlin. The nunciature documents and the corresponding material of the Secretariat of State in Rome were made accessible in the spring of 2003. These now permit new insights into Pacelli’s diplomatic activities and the execution of his pastoral duties. The Papal Nuncio always made the cura animarum a top priority and his final report – dated November 18, 1929 – is particularly revealing: Pacelli consistently judged the German reality by the requirements of the Codex Iuris Canonici and mistrusted the peculiarities of German Catholicism. He favored a close relationship between lay Catholicism and the clergy as well as a priest education free from any state influence. Thus, he endeavored to promote the Catholic Action and to influence the filling of vacant university chairs. Moreover, Pacelli welcomed the fact that the Zentrum Party was becoming increasingly clerical and he supported bishops who had studied at Jesuit universities and were loyal to Rome. Pacelli’s way of reasoning and acting, as revealed in these documents, is of particular interest with respect to his position during World War II.