UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item The Socioeconomic Associations with Women's Partnership Formation and Dissolution in Russia, Germany, and the United States(2021) Zvavitch, Polina; Rendall, Michael S; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three studies that evaluate how women form partnerships, leave partnerships, and the economic outcomes of those partnerships. These demographic transitions and outcomes are evaluated in three country contexts with differing political, welfare regimes, social history. I use longitudinal data from Russia to analyze marital status differences and trends in in poverty risk. Contrary to assumptions that unmarried mothers will have higher risks of poverty over time as welfare policy weakens, unmarried mothers and married mothers’ risks of poverty came close to converging in the late 2000s. Second, I use German data to examine educational assortative mating in East and West Germany. I use the Revealed Preference Model (RPM). First, from bivariate analysis of the SOEP, I find that among the people who are partnering, they are doing so mostly homogamously in the East and the West. Highly educated women in the East are still less likely to partner somebody of a lower education status. The RPM estimated parameters then showed that in West Germany and East Germany alike, educationally hypergamous partnerships were most preferable. Though the availability of higher educated partners in East and West Germany are different, the preference for hypergamy remains. Finally, I move on to the United States to estimate the divorce risk of partners of various education levels. I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation, providing accurate representation of the contemporary U.S. The model estimates divorce risk using women’s own education, men’s own education, and their relative education levels. It reveals several persistent patterns. Women’s divorce risk decreases monotonically as education increases, so highly educated women have the lowest rate of divorce. Men’s education, however, is less of a determinant on the risk of divorce. Relative to hypergamy and homogamy, hypogamous unions (woman marrying a man of a lower education status than herself) were more likely to divorce. This study supports past research that finds the female breadwinner model the most volatile when it comes to likelihood of divorce and continued support for this trend into the 2010’s.Item The Price of Reconciliation: West Germany, France and the Arc of Postwar Justice for the Crimes of Nazi Germany, 1944-1963(2020) Staedtler, Rene; Herf, Jeffrey C; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation links the arc of war crimes justice with the arc of reconciliation in Franco-German relations from 1944 to 1963. I argue that France initially created a retributive justice which aggressively targeted crimes committed by the German occupant from 1940 to 1944. By examining the internal debates within the French government and parliament regarding the legal foundation of Nazi war crimes trials in France, I show that the French polity dispensed with and even violated the French republican tradition in its effort to reckon with the Nazi past. In the second part, I demonstrate that the process of European integration and Franco-German reconciliation offered those in West Germany who resented the retributive justice in France the opportunity to influence, even manipulate the French government by initiating and sustaining a trajectory which bound reconciliation ever more tightly to the retreat from the goals of postwar justice. I contend that once French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman initiated the path towards reconciliation with Adenauer’s West Germany, a broad coalition centrally coordinated from Bonn utilized the desire for rapprochement to undermine French war crimes justice. By attacking French justice as a sign of its unforgiveness and its resolve to continue with the so-called “arch-enmity,” the West German diplomats and government officials argued that the war crimes trials were regarded as a symbol of a period of humiliation and injustice which needed to be eradicated in order to achieve a “veritable reconciliation.” I show how the reconciliation narrative shaped the transition from a French system of justice which was one of the most extensive and consequential ones in Western Europe in the late 1940s to the complete and premature release of all remaining war criminals in French custody. The West German view prevailed and imprinted on the landmark achievement of Franco-German reconciliation the stain of privileging the perpetrators over the victims of Nazi Germany in France.Item "Barbarous Berlin": Narratives of Queerness, Space, Survival, and Memory in a Liminal City(2018) Joyner, Raleigh; Baer, Hester; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The intent of my work is to explore the relationships between history, space, community, and movement in and through the city of Berlin throughout the last century. I trace common threads of liminality, memory, survival, and the relationships between the urban space and the individual over a 100-year period. The three periods that I particularly focus on are the Weimar era (1919-1933), the division of Germany and Berlin (1961-1989), and the reestablishment of Germany as a united country (1990-present).Item Someone Else's Textbooks: German Education 1945-2014(2016) Abney, Ann; Kosicki, Piotr; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the 20th century, German education repeatedly transformed as the occupying Americans, Soviets, and western-dominated reunification governments used their control of the German secondary education system to create new definitions of what it meant to be German. In each case, the dominant political force established the paradigm for a new generation of Germans. The victors altered the German education system to ensure that their versions of history would be the prevailing narrative. In the American Occupation Zones from 1945-1949, this meant democratic initiatives; for the Soviet Zone in those same years, Marxist-Leninist pedagogy; and for the Bundesrepublik after reunification, integrated East and West German narratives. In practice, this meant succeeding generations of German students learned very different versions of history depending on the temporal and geographic space they inhabited, as each new prevailing regime supplanted the previous version of “Germanness” with its own.Item DIGITAL ROOMS OF THEIR OWN: WOMEN'S VOICES ONLINE ABOUT THE POLITICS OF WOMEN, FAMILY AND MATERNITY IN FOUR WESTERN DEMOCRACIES(2014) Eckert, Stine; Steiner, Linda; Chadha, Kalyani; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examined the experiences of 109 women with varying backgrounds who blog or write online about the politics of women, family and maternity in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. This dissertation argues that a broader definition of what counts as political needs to be applied to the voices of women online to capture their political expressions in Western democracies. An analysis of in-depth interviews found that 84 percent of interviewees considered their blogging to be political. A statistically significant relationship was found to exist between women bloggers/writers online who identified as feminist and who considered their blogging to be political. Rather than categorizing the personal styles of women who blog/write online (in and outside my sample) as "just" "personal journaling," the fluidity of topics they address needs to be recognized as a feature of fluid public clusters online, which are tied to their lives offline. This dissertation argues that it is necessary to amend the theories of public spheres to capture the political expressions and experiences of women who use social media to write about their concerns publicly. This dissertation suggests a new theory of fluid public clusters. This new theory expands on the idea of a multitude of publics rather than the often-criticized singularity of the original Habermasian public sphere. It emphasizes that publics are messy, overlapping and changing over time. It also highlights that offline social hierarchies of power and identities migrate online. This dissertation concludes that national contexts shape the expressions of women bloggers/writers online and that these were particularly apparent in the fluid public clusters that were salient in each country. One key finding was that Switzerland differed significantly from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. In the latter three countries women - across a wide variety of backgrounds - have (or at least are not denied) ample opportunities to make their voices heard. In Switzerland, women's voices online have been constrained in number and range of perspectives to center around traditional understandings of motherhood while feminist/progressive views remain rare. While 73 percent of interviewees said they had negative experiences due to blogging/writing online, all 109 interviewees said they had at least one positive experience due to blogging/writing online. These included personal, professional and, in some cases, also commercial benefits. Interviewees cherished having a digital room of their own to write what they want in a space for which they set the rules. Interviewees dealt with negative experiences mostly on a personal level, as police, state and lawmakers have been slow in recognizing and prosecuting online discrimination and abuse leveled against women. Positive experiences are nearly guaranteed but negative interactions remain and are more likely to happen to women who identify as feminists and/or say that their writing is political. This dissertation offers insights into the discourse among women about the democratization of democracies via social media. Seventy-two percent of interviewees remained skeptical about the democratic potential of social media. Most interviewees had concerns about internet access, internet literacy, online harassment and which voices get heard or amplified. Yet, interviewees also shared examples of starting or contributing to (national) public debates over issues of their concern. The democratic potential of social remains haphazard. Finally, this dissertation argues that women, who have been under-represented and misrepresented in (news) media content and production, need to keep blogging, tweeting and writing online. By doing so, women will tap into the haphazard democratic potential of social media. This will make Western democracies more democratic. To encourage women to blog, this dissertation offers recommendations to women on managing blogs/sites (safely).Item Piano and Politics: Walter Gieseking's Career During the Third Reich and Postwar Period(2013) Latino Jr., Frank Raymond; Davis, Shelley G.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the Third Reich, Walter Gieseking (1895-1956) enjoyed an illustrious, international career as its preeminent "indispensable" and, later, "God-gifted" concert pianist. He was increasingly used by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry as a propaganda tool, and throughout World War II, the Ministry ordered him to tour annexed, occupied, and neutral countries such as Finland, France, Romania, and Poland, where he appeared before public audiences as well as German and foreign officials and troops. Hitler named him "Professor" in 1937, decorating him with the War Merit Cross, 2nd Class without Swords, in 1944. By that September, Gieseking was among the highest paid of seventeen pianists allowed by the Propaganda Ministry to continue their profession. Conversely, Gieseking met with Nazi officials in 1936 to protest the ban on the music of his friend, composer Paul Hindemith, and he fought to keep his Jewish manager, Arthur Bernstein, in the 1930s, before helping him escape with his wife to the U.S. in 1939. Gieseking's story is that of an elite German artist who controversially remained a Reich citizen, despite his conflicted feelings toward the regime and the career struggles he faced as the conditions for him became progressively more dangerous and difficult. After WWII, he met with fierce public opposition as he resumed his career abroad, particularly in the U.S., where the government involved itself, but also in South American nations, Australia, the Territory of Hawaii, and Canada. He became the single most protested German musician of his time. Based largely on copious unpublished and previously unstudied archival documents, including those from his privately maintained Nachlass, my dissertation illuminates almost entirely unexamined phases of Gieseking's life. I show how the Nazi regime influenced, and ultimately controlled, his career. I explore the political challenges that he encountered within Germany and abroad, before, during, and after the war, providing new perspectives on the uneasy relationship between this prominent German musician and a ruthless dictatorship, as well as on the postwar Allied-led denazification procedures and intense anti-Nazi opposition he endured. Integrated are relevant aspects of his activity as a composer, essayist, recording artist, and teacher.Item Culture Wars and Contested Identities: Social Policy and German Nationalisms in Interwar Slovenia, 1918-1941(2013) Reul, Nathaniel; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis analyzes the nature of ethnic Germans' self-identities and nationalisms in interwar Slovenia. Slovenia's German minorities' reactions to domestic social policies and world events that impacted them are examined primarily through locally-based German-language newspapers. Germans in Slovenia had had multiple identities and nationalisms, and these were shaped by social policies and domestic and foreign events, especially after the National Socialists' seizure of power in Germany in 1933. Pan-German nationalism was strong and widespread, and viewed Slovene minority policies as being purposeful attempts to eradicate the very existence of Germandom. This type of nationalism competed with other types of German nationalisms and identities which sought to integrate into and contribute to Slovene society without compromising their uniquely Germanic culture. National Socialism's appeal was so strong because it promised a reunion of Slovenia's Germandom with the wider Volk and a restoration of the minorities' societal dominance in the region.Item The Sound of Smoke; A Look Back(2013) Horan, Nicholas Robert; Ashizawa, Izumi; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Sound of Smoke is a visually stunning one-man theatrical event, which uses projections and text to challenge the audience's conception of sexuality, truth, and identity in the modern world. It features dance movement, music, and imagery to illuminate a dark period in our history that in many ways mirrors our world today. Set in 1930's Germany, the audience witnesses an environment of glorious decay right on the edge of collapse as they follow a transsexual who loves too hard and loses it all in the search for her identity at the end of the world.Item "Founding a Heavenly Empire": Protestant Missionaries and German Colonialism, 1860-1919(2012) Best, Jeremy; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the relationship between German Protestant missionaries and secular leaders of colonial politics and culture in the German colonial empire during the nineteenth century. In particular, it examines how missionaries defined their collective identity as an international one against pressures that encouraged mission societies to adopt and promote policies that favored the German colonial state and German colonial economic actors. Protestant missionaries in Germany created an alternative ideology to govern Germans' and Germany's relationships with the wider world. The dissertation examines the formation of an internationalist missionary methodology and ideology by German missionary intellectuals from 1870 and the shift to traditional Protestant nationalism during World War I. It then examines the application by missionaries of this ideology to the major issues of Protestant mission work in German East Africa: territorial rivalries with German Catholic mission orders, mission school policy, fundraising in the German metropole, and international missionary cooperation. In so doing, it revises conventional interpretations about the relationship between Protestantism and nationalism in Germany during this period.Item German Radio Propaganda in the Soviet Union: A War of Words(2012) Butsavage, Christopher James; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The focus of this study is the content of Nazi radio propaganda to and concerning the Soviet Union. The radio was a new and innovative means for the Nazi regime to directly communicate with the masses of illiterate civilians in the Soviet Union on a daily basis. This study finds that as the war in the east progressed, there was an increasingly stark dichotomy between the positive messages found within German radio propaganda and the harsh reality of the Nazi occupation. It seems almost as though there was a morbid inverse correlation between the amount of violence the Germans inflicted upon civilians (including forcibly sending them to work in Germany) and the amount of radio propaganda exhorting these same civilian populations to join the Nazi cause. It is also important to note that every German radio broadcast to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was not propaganda. In fact, by 1943, a great deal of news items broadcast on German radio in occupied territory were administrative in nature. Announcements such as local curfews, blackouts, conscription and mobilization decrees, and warnings were frequently broadcast.