Returning from a four-month tour in America, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940) stopped for a few days in Switzerland, on his way home. On May 7, 1930, he gave a lecture in Bern on medieval peasants and their struggle for freedom in the 14th century. Peasants against feudal armies inspired memories from America. However, Iorga, who was at the time preoccupied with questions of world history and comparative research, did not simply associate the War of Independence with the victory of the Swiss “peasants” at Sempach against Duke Leopold III of Tyrol. He drew a parallel between the military success of the Eidgenossen of 1386 and the defeat inflicted 56 years earlier upon the king of Hungary, Charles I, by Romanian peasants. The battle, on the 600th anniversary of which Iorga delivered his lecture, was illustrated in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle. The Romanian historian was convinced that the illustrator had been an eyewitness or, at least, somebody informed by a participant. There is no mention of peasants in the text of the Chronicle, but on the basis of the last illuminations in the manuscript, Iorga thought he could recognize the dress of the Romanian peasants of his own time: the woolen hat (căciulă, a sort of Phrygian cap); the long, braided hair; the leather jacket doubled with wool; the leggings; and the leather sandals (opinci). The Romanians fought like peasants as well: they cut trees in the forest, which they then pushed over King Charles and his heavy cavalry. Iorga did not find this detail either in the text or in the illuminations of the Hungarian Chronicle. He got it from the Chronicle of the Prussian Land by Peter of Dusburg, although that source is not mentioned in the lecture.

Between 1817 and 1831, four German scientists – Karl von Martius, Georg Langsdorff, Ludwig Riedel, and Friedrich Sello – undertook expeditions in Brazil with the goal of collecting natural specimens, particularly focusing on Brazilian cinchona plants. Renowned for their medicinal properties, especially in the treatment of fever diseases, cinchona specimens were extensively utilized by local Brazilian communities. The widespread use of cinchona raises important questions regarding how German scientists acquired knowledge of the therapeutic properties of plants, previously unknown within German pharmacology. This paper argues that the German understanding of Brazil's cinchona trees was situated within an imperialist endeavor that not only appropriated indigenous knowledge but also involved conducting experiments on these plants and their effects on local populations. This hybridization of knowledge about cinchona was characterized by an asymmetrical dominance of German pharmacological experimentation, which sought to enhance organic life and establish utopian, “healthy” German societies, in both German territories and Brazil. Consequently, German chemical experiments with Brazilian cinchona specimens intersected with biopolitical practices, aimed at manipulating both plant and human life through therapeutic interventions.

This article analyzes the affective economy of West Germany's postwar society. After delineating the intellectual history of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research's “Gruppenexperiment,” which consisted of 137 group interviews with different segments of West German society, my article focuses on one transcript of a 1950 group discussion of young fashion-designer apprentices. Based on a close reading, I study how the younger generation in West Germany constructed a passive and privatist self-image in which they could both articulate their emotional dissociation from National Socialism while clinging to antidemocratic, racist, and antisemitic feelings in metamorphosed form. The micrological focus of the analysis of the group's emotions is balanced by a rereading of both Helmut Schelsky's study about the “skeptical generation” and texts by researchers associated with the Institute for Social Research who came to markedly different conclusions about the West German youth.

This article considers the political theory and political theology of Arnold Ruge during the years he edited the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbücher, paying special attention to his relationship with a variety of “liberalisms” circulating at the time. It argues that Ruge's central and consistent commitment was to the “absolute state,” which he described as “an end in itself.” Such a state, Ruge believed, would constitute a space in which citizens could realize their public freedom. I show how Ruge constructed this approach through critical engagements with three forms of liberalism: the Romantic nationalist liberalism of Ernst Moritz Arndt; the ethical pluralist liberalism of Franz von Flourencourt; and the pragmatic economic liberalism of Karl Biedermann. I conclude with reflections on Ruge's 1843 “Eine Selbstkritik des Liberalismus.”

By tracing the history of abortion politics in Hungary since World War I, this article covers a century of conflict with particular attention to gynecologists’ self-serving professional jockeying and lobbying under very different political regimes. It suggests that nationalism has been a pivotal element of the abortion debates that both government actors and gynecologists have shaped over the last hundred years and argues that abortion rights were differently recognized in eastern and western Europe during the Cold War because of the legacy of mass wartime rapes committed by the Soviet troops in Hungary, among other countries, which determined those countries’ postwar legislation on abortion and reproductive rights. The article introduces the rarely researched contribution of the gynecologist lobby to the debates by examining how they could represent their own interests independently of political regime. Today, Hungary's illiberal regime questions the legitimacy of abortion by normalizing US fundamentalist-Christian discourse because anti-abortion policy fits into its nation-building course.

This article details the influence of Russian psychologist Sergei Chakhotin on the propaganda of the Iron Front, an antifascist organization that resisted the rise of the Nazis in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. Notably the creator of the Three Arrows symbol, Chakhotin espoused theories and methods that used Ivan Pavlov's notion of the conditioned reflex and Fredrick Taylor's theory of scientific management to transform socialist propaganda to better combat the rise of fascism. By scrutinizing Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) periodicals and Iron Front propaganda, I argue that Chakhotin's ideas played a crucial role in catalyzing changes in the form and content of street campaigning throughout 1932. Chakhotin provided a scientific lens through which his allies in the SPD could view and understand the mass appeal of the Nazis, as well as the necessary changes in party tactics that were required in the age of mass media, popular spectacle, and emotional struggle.