This article explores the miracles and ex-votos (votive offerings) associated with the Ta' Pinu shrine on Gozo, Malta's northernmost island. Drawing from ethnographic data, analysis of various personal accounts, and observations of people's interactions with the bricolage of Ta' Pinu ex-votos, I seek to show that Gozitans perform a highly personal yet ritualised form of empathy in the context of miracle worship. The miracles associated with Ta' Pinu are thus seemingly 'contagious' and meaningful, because they elicit existential connections and reflections on the nature of supplication and Gozitan social relations.
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 126–145
Yuliya Komska
Heimat is commonly theorized as an entity both co-extensive with the nation and easily describable in terms of its regional peculiarities (Eigenart). To challenge this view, this article turns to sociolinguistic discussions in the press of Sudeten German expellees in the early 1950s. Rather than speaking as experts on local dialects or folklore, these newcomers resorted to Sprachkritik, a widespread postwar public form of sociolinguistic criticism, to fashion Heimat into a prescriptive, normative authority over the High German standard that they found missing in the Federal Republic. Their attacks on the West German parlance focused on inability of its consumerist diminutives to produce a coherent narrative of the period. By suggesting that Heimat's parameters superseded those of the nation, their interventions countered the widespread cliché of inarticulate, rural expellees at the same time as they put Sprachkritik on the map of West Germany's “miracle years.“
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 47–67
Frans Ciappara
and defend the whole village.” 65 Parishioners venerated saints in return for the patronage they exercised on behalf of their devotees. These “holy bodies,” which performed miracles even before their solemn translation, 66 were deemed essential to
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–17
Ben Lieberman
The history of the Federal Republic of Germany is closely connected with economic achievement. Enjoying a striking economic recovery in the 1950s, the FRG became the home of the “economic miracle.” Maturing into one of the most powerful economies in the world, it became known as the “German model” by the 1970s. Now, however, the chief metaphor for the German economy is “Standort Deutschland,” and therein lies the tale of the new German problem.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2000
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 30–65
Mark E. Spicka
Perhaps the most remarkable development in the Federal Republic
of Germany since World War II has been the creation of its stable
democracy. Already by the second half of the 1950s, political commentators
proclaimed that “Bonn is not Weimar.” Whereas the
Weimar Republic faced the proliferation of splinter parties, the rise
of extremist parties, and the fragmentation of support for liberal and
conservative parties—conditions that led to its ultimate collapse—the
Federal Republic witnessed the blossoming of moderate, broadbased
parties.1 By the end of the 1950s the Christian Democratic
Union/Christian Social Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party
(SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) had formed the basis of a
stable party system that would continue through the 1980s.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2002
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 49–67
Kai Krüger
References to Germany's “economic miracle” and to the introduction of the “social market economy” play an important role in the historical culture of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This self-image is based on the myth that the “social market economy
In Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 105–131
Don Kalb
Nineteen eighty-nine was for me, like for so many other Europeans and in particular Central Europeans, a year of miracles. In mid-November of that year I was traveling through the United States and giving papers on working class culture, anthropology, and history. Whenever I was asked where I came from I always answered “from the continent of the revolutions.” What a joy. But I was sad that I had traveled west rather than east.
Stephen J. Silvia
Since German unification, assessments of the German economy have swung from “sick man of the euro” in the early years to dominant hegemon of late. I argue that the German economy appears strong because of its recent positive performance in two politically salient areas: unemployment and the current account. A deeper assessment reveals, however, that German economic performance cannot be considered a second economic miracle, but is at best a mini miracle. The reduction in unemployment is an important achievement. That said, it was not the product of faster growth, but of sharing the same volume of work among more individuals. Germany’s current account surpluses are as much the result of weak domestic demand as of export prowess. Germany has also logged middling performances in recent years regarding growth, investment, productivity, and compensation. The article also reviews seven challenges Germany has faced since unification: financial transfers from west to east, the global financial crisis, the euro crisis, internal and external migration, demographics, climate change, and upheavals in the automobile industry. German policy-makers managed the first four challenges largely successfully. The latter three will be more difficult to tackle in the future.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 74–94
Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos and Karen Schönwälder
With the passage of a new citizenship law in 1999 and the so-called
Zuwanderungsgesetz (Migration Law) of 2004, contemporary Germany
has gone a long way toward acknowledging its status as an immigration
country (Einwanderungsland). Yet, Germany is still regarded by
many as a “reluctant” land of immigration, different than traditional
immigration countries such as Canada, the United States, and Australia.
It owes this image to the fact that many of today’s “immigrants”
were in fact “guests,” invited to work in the Federal Republic
in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and expected to leave when they were
no longer needed. Migration was meant to be a temporary measure,
to stoke the engine of the Economic Miracle but not fundamentally
alter German society. The question, then, is how did these “guest
workers” become immigrants? Why did the Federal Republic
become an immigration country?
Hanna Schissler, ed. The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968 (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001)
Review by Johannes von Moltke
Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2000)
Review by Andrea Orzoff
Felix Philipp Lutz, Das Geschichtsbewußtsein der Deutschen: Grundlagen der politschen Kultur in Ost und West (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2000)
Review by Eric Langenbacher
Kathleen James-Chakraborty, German Architecture for a Mass Audience (London: Routledge, 2000)
Review by Eric Jarosinski
Thomas Elsaesser, Michael Wedel, eds., The BFI Companion to German Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1999)
Review by Christian Rogowski
Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914. Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Review by Frank Biess