Wolfgang schivelbusch the railway journey pdf excursus
Only some outsiders warned of the horror of a war in an age of technologically advanced killing machinery. Only a few Jewish intellectuals or converts, who nonetheless still bonded with their Jewish heritage, and some socialist Jews were able to resist the suggestive impact of this historical moment.
4 The patriotic feelings were by no means restricted to the established Jewish middle classes - even the Zionist movement and the Orthodox minority became attuned to German jingoism. In August 1914 the majority of German Jews identified with Germany, and a large number signed up voluntarily for military service at the front.
3 In both cases, to come to terms with the implications and meanings of war one needs to take into account the specific features of the very first acts of war by the German army, and that, in turn, means to study the German occupation of Belgium in August and September 1914. “The legendary unity of the Jews seemed destroyed for ever.” 2 Coincidently the First World War was a turning point for both German-Jewish and general German history, marking the beginning of the short 20 th century. The second part then analyzes the coverage of German Jewish newspapers regarding the warfare against Belgium and, finally, the third and last part scrutinizes the commentaries of German Jewish intellectuals and socialist Jews regarding the German war against Belgium.įor European Jewish history, the First World War marked the end of the long tradition of transnational exchange of European Jewry the Great War even implied a “Jewish fratricidal war of the greatest magnitude.” 1 According to Shulamit Volkov, European Jewry during/as a result of the war seemed irrevocably divided into Jews of different nationalities. The first part examines autobiographical sources to reconstruct the experiences and the perception of German Jewish soldiers, German military rabbis, and other German Jewish witnesses to the war. This paper concentrates on the first acts of war conducted by the German military forces during the German occupation of Belgium it examines whether and in what way German-Jewish Intellectuals perceived Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality and the new feature of war as a war against a civilian population. The Jewish population in Germany supported the war not least because it was directed against Russia, the harshest adversary of the Jews. They identified with Germany, and a large number signed up voluntarily for military service at the front. River Steamboat and Canal Packet as Models for the American Railroad Carĩ.In August 1914 the majority of German Jews expressed their patriotic approval of the war and their loyalty to the German state. 目录Įxcursus: The Space of Glass Architecture Now updated with a new preface, The Railway Journey is an invaluable resource for readers interested in nineteenth-century culture and technology and the prehistory of modern media and digitalization. As a history of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city.īelonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. But this was not always the case as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change-the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness-was very much a learned behavior. The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society.