Preliminary Programme

Wed 23 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 24 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 17.30

Fri 25 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 26 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

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Wednesday 23 April 2014 8.30 - 10.30
ZD-1 POL33 International intellectual exchanges and spaces of intervention
Prominentenzimmer
Network: Politics, Citizenship, and Nations Chair: Ann-Christina Knudsen
Organizers: - Discussant: Nils Arne Sørensen
Kasper Braskén : Berlin 1931: Contested spaces and places of international solidarity
The aim of the paper is to analyse spaces and places of international solidarity in Weimar Berlin in 1931. It represented the last year before the coming of the Third Reich when demonstrations and celebrations of international solidarity could be organised on a grand scale in public spaces of Berlin. ... (Show more)
The aim of the paper is to analyse spaces and places of international solidarity in Weimar Berlin in 1931. It represented the last year before the coming of the Third Reich when demonstrations and celebrations of international solidarity could be organised on a grand scale in public spaces of Berlin. The aim is to analyse public political spectacles in the context of the ?International Solidarity Day? and the ?World Congress of Proletarian Solidarity? that were organised by the Workers? International Relief in Berlin in summer 1931. Which places in Berlin were open for such spectacles, and how were public spaces - where expressions of international solidarity were articulated and manifested - contested by other political forces?
The paper will focus on forgotten transnational dimensions and global connections of Berlin?s spaces of international solidarity.
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Cláudia Ninhos : The Search for a Cultural, Scientific and Ideological Hegemony.
The decades of 1930 and 1940 were marked by the rise and fall of fascist regimes all over Europe. In spite of their ultranationalist orientation they did not isolate themselves from the world. The idea that these regimes are characterized by their anti-international nature- opposed to the communist international project- ... (Show more)
The decades of 1930 and 1940 were marked by the rise and fall of fascist regimes all over Europe. In spite of their ultranationalist orientation they did not isolate themselves from the world. The idea that these regimes are characterized by their anti-international nature- opposed to the communist international project- is a common-place idea that does not match the reality of intensely cultivated foreign relations. In fact, when we analyse the communication and interaction beyond the surface of diplomatic and mediatic discourse, we find evidence that there was an intense collaboration in the field of science.
In the context of World War II this colaboration was encouraged and stimulated by the German state. In peripheral countries, like Portugal or Spain, intellectuals and scientists looked at Germany as a country at the forefront of culture and technology. Germany sold arms, received military missions, sent trainers and received students in its universities. This was a relationship that sought to be global, to cover all scientific areas. This network, organized under the direction of Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, was supported by the German institutions based in Portugal. They put the German "science" and "culture" at the service of the National Socialist propaganda.
Adolf Hitler argued strongly that the propaganda abroad should not be directed toward the "people's hearts", but to the intellectual scrutiny of the elite. As he wrote in Mein Kampf, instead of propaganda, Germany should aim at “scientific instruction” (Hitler, 1976, p 134). The Führer believed that if foreign students obtained their degrees in Germany, spending part of their youth there, they would become “friends forever”. this "good policy" (cited in Roper, 2000, p 421), according to Hitler, would help create a network of knowledge. In the case of Portuguese-German relations it ensured the circulation and transfer of knowledge and know-how between both fascist regimes.

In Portugal, German propaganda followed the guidelines issued by the Führer. Those relationships were, undoubtedly, stimulated by the status of Germany, as a country well-known for its excellence in science, philosophy and art. Through the promotion of visits, exhibitions and conferences, Germany sought to demonstrate its scientific and cultural superiority.
If one understands propaganda as «the promotion of a State in foreign countries so that its national creations are recognized and imitated» (Wilhelm Giese 1939/40), what is, then, the influence of ”German Science” and “German Culture” in Portugal? Which connections were forged and how?
This paper will focus on the instrumentalization of the German Culture and Science in order to achieve a political and ideological hegemony abroad. We will address the efficiency of this strategy for the emergence of an intellectual and scientific network between Portugal and Germany.
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Maria Zarifi : Scientific Reconstruction and Socialist Modernism in Post-war Greece
After World War II Greece received substantial relief aid from the United States in 1947, as part of the Marshall Plan. The purpose was to help the country rebuild its economy. Already after 1945, USA and Britain became the most influential players in the Balkan region, and particularly in Greece, ... (Show more)
After World War II Greece received substantial relief aid from the United States in 1947, as part of the Marshall Plan. The purpose was to help the country rebuild its economy. Already after 1945, USA and Britain became the most influential players in the Balkan region, and particularly in Greece, primarily for political reasons, i.e. to prevent the expansion of communism. Nevertheless, the dominance of Greece’s Communist Party, KKE, in the years immediately after WWII, but also the role Britain and the United States played in the civil war, made many Greeks turn to the East, more precisely to the USSR, seeking for a new model of modernity. In the following years Greece became for once more in its history the battlefield of East-West rivalries that had a significant impact in the country’s political, economic and cultural future.
Within this context a group of visionary and deeply political scientists -most of them professors at the Technical University of Greece- created a scientific society called “Science-Reconstruction” [??-??]. They founded the journal “Antaios”, which was used as a debate platform for educational, scientific and economic changes needed to be done in their country, in order the standards of living to be improved for the free people of Greece. Industry, agriculture and technical education were the most urgent issues for those scientists, who belonged to the resistance movement during the war and now they became the protagonists of a ‘transitional’, as they called it, period of future Greece, which was, nevertheless, heading towards a brutal civil war.
The paper will investigate the arguments of “scientific revolution and interdisciplinary co-operation” those scientists envisioned and will explore their political connotations through the lens of modernity. Given the striking similarities to the economic and political challenges European periphery, and particularly Greece, faces today, I will conclude with some reflections in the hope to provoke similar to that period discussion.
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