[H-verkko] CFP: Global Spaces for Radical Solidarity: Transnational Movements, Social, Cultural and Humanitarian Ideas, Networks and Media of the 20th Century. First International Willi-Münzenberg-Congress

[agricola at utu.fi]

Agricolan artikkelipyyntöihin on lähetetty uusi ilmoitus:
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Global Spaces for Radical Solidarity: Transnational Movements, Social, Cultural
and Humanitarian Ideas, Networks and Media of the 20th Century. First
International Willi-Münzenberg-Congress
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Global Spaces for Radical Solidarity:

Transnational Movements, Social, Cultural and Humanitarian Ideas, Networks and
Media of the 20th Century.

First International Willi-Münzenberg-Congress

 

Place: Berlin, Münzenberg-Saal at Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin

Date: September 17th - 19th 2015

 

Causes célèbres: Münzenberg as a bridge to the 20th century

A collection of keywords: The „Third Front“; Youth International; Zimmerwald
Conference; Founding Congress of the Comintern; Famine Relief for Soviet Russia;
Workers International Relief; Famine in Germany; Proviantkolonne des
Proletariats; Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung; Communist Party of Germany; League
against Imperialism and for National Independence; Against the Horrors in
Syria!; the Flame Sign of Palais Egmont; L’Etoile Nord-Africaine; Der Rote
Aufbau; The Arab National Congress; La Ligue pour la Défense de la Race Nègre;
Mezhrabpom-Film; First International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers;
Kuhle Wampe; Free Sacco and Vanzetti!; Neuer Deutscher Verlag; Hands Off China!;
Eulenspiegel; Liga Antiimperialista de las Américas; Indonesian Revolt; Der Weg
der Frau; Artiste en révolution; World Committee Against War and Fascism; Nehru
and the Nightingale of India; Berlin am Morgen; Welt am Abend; The Red
Millionaire; ¡Viva Sandino!; For the Release of Dimitrov, Thälmann and all
Antifascists; Lutetia Committee; The Pariser Tageblatt and it’s scandals;
Prometheus Film; Writers in exile; Battleship Potemkin; Association of Worker
Photographers; The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror; World
Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism; London Counter-Trial;
Propaganda as weapon; Editions du Carrefour; The International Coordination and
Information Committee of Aid for Republican Spain; The Moscow Show Trials; The
Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy; Die Zukunft,
Organ der Deutsch-Französischen Union; “The traitor, Stalin, are you!”; A
New Germany! A New Europe!; Komitee Menschen in Not; Editions Sebastian Brant;
Freunde der sozialistischen Einheit Deutschlands; French internment camps and
the “Scum of the Earth”; The dream of Hitler’s overthrough.

 

Cooperation/ Partners

Grundstücksgesellschaft Franz-Mehring-Platz 1 (FMP1), Berlin, Germany

Åbo Akademi University, Åbo (Turku), Finland

Arbejdermuseet, Kopenhagen, Denmark

Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Potsdam, Germany

Institute for Social Movements (ISB), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

Linke Medienakademie (LIMA), Berlin, Germany

Maison des Sciences de l’homme, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin, Germany

Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, Zürich, Switzerland

 

Willi Münzenberg and Global Solidarity Initiatives

It is not easy to summarize all aspects of Münzenberg’s outstanding role in
the manifold global solidarity initiatives of the interwar period. He inspired
the International Union of Socialist Youth, the largest anti-war organization
against World War I, and was the organizer of international famine relief for
Soviet Russia. In the early 1920s he formed those efforts into the Workers
International Relief (WIR/IAH). As a film distributor and producer he introduced
modern Russian cinema to a German and European audience. As a political writer
and operator of the most influential left-wing media-empire of the Weimar
Republic, the KPD politician grew to become a serious opponent to Goebbels and
Hugenberg. At the same time he initiated the world’s largest anti-colonialist
network of the interwar period. After 1933, his name stood for a series of
charismatic, anti-fascist public efforts like no other. In French exile he
partook in forging a German Popular Front within the left émigré community
before becoming one of the most exposed critics of Stalinism after the
Stalin-Hitler-Pact. Ousted by the Comintern, he united large parts of the German
and European Anti-Hitler opposition in an attempt to prevent the outbreak of
World War II.

In the summer of 1940 he fled a French internment camp. Months later his corpse
was found, but none of the theses (either suicide or assassination by the Nazis
or the Stalin regime) could ultimately be verified to this day.

 

Goals of the Congress

One of the results of the First European Willi-Münzenberg-Workshop (2012) on
“Internationalism, Transnational Solidarity Networks, Anti-Fascism and
Anti-Stalinism in the 1920s and 1930s” was the creation of a web-portal,
offering a platform to a loose network of scholarly project groups, political
and cultural institutions and media enterprises for further investigations of
Münzenberg’s life-time achievements as well as the research of international
solidarity movements (the beta-version can be accessed via
http://www.münzenbergforum.de).The First International
Willi-Münzenberg-Congress aims at the presentation and analysis of the
transnational solidarity networks, their sponsors, key players and ideas in the
light of the social, cultural and humanitarian movements of the 20th century in
a global perspective.

- Münzenberg himself, his collaborators and his contact persons from the
political and cultural sector are to be brought into focus by
(collective-)biographical contributions, as well as the specific form and social
practices of their world-spanning networks. Alongside with a critical overview
of the international research, the focus will be on the world as a space for
propaganda and the arena for transnational solidarity, from Latin America to
Africa, from the Middle East to East Asia, but also the Weimar Republic and the
Anti-Hitler-exile as concrete places, from which networks were created and
global solidarity and propaganda were imagined and organized.

- Moreover, the focus will lie on the diverse movements, stemming from the
labour movement and at the same time transcending its boundaries, which
characterized Münzenberg’s initiatives and their role in facilitating
transcultural exchange. Political scripts such as anti-colonialism, antifascism,
anti-racism, revolutionary internationalism, left-wing anti-Stalinism and the
cultural avant-garde will be paid attention to. A special focus lies upon the
forms of political and cultural transfer. Who were its protagonists and which
media did they employ? How did the local and the global intertwine? What role
should be given to the intellectual history of modernity and critical theory?
How did the mediatization ensue? Did these networks constitute a cross-party
internationalist world of its own? Or were they merely façades or Potemkin
villages to cover up the reality of the Soviet Union?

- In further contributions, the history of (dis-)continuities and influences of
Münzenberg and his initiatives up to the beginning of the 21st century with its
caesuras and continuities will be focused on. What mechanisms lead to the
transformation, subversion and liquidation of the international solidarity
movements and which role did Stalinism play in it? Which concepts about
socialism beyond European social democracy and Stalinism did Münzenberg develop
from the devastating defeats of the workers movement?

- A quarter of a century after the beginning of the “archive revolution”, it
is time to evaluate the fragmented heritage and the historiography in the East
and the West.

 

The full version of the Call for Paper contains a first, extensive collection of
ideas for the subject areas of the Congress. It will be available on the
web-portal (http://www.münzenbergforum.de) starting December 2014.

 

Paper Proposals

The deadline for proposals is February 15th, 2015. The languages of the
conference are German and English. The duration of the individual presentations
is 20 minutes. We kindly ask for proposals including the presentation’s title,
a short abstract (maximum 400 words - about one page), and a brief C.V.
including the most important (maximum five) publications.

Please direct your proposals to the Organizing Committee of the Congress
muenzenbergcongress at muenzenbergforum.de

The members are:

- Dr. habil. Bernhard H. Bayerlein, Institut für soziale Bewegungen (ISB),
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany

- Dr. des. Uwe Sonnenberg, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF),
Potsdam, Germany

- Dr. Kasper Braskén, Åbo Akademi University, Åbo (Turku), Finland

- Matthias Nehls, Grundstücksgesellschaft Franz-Mehring-Platz 1 (FMP1), Berlin,
Germany

 

Financial Matters

In case of a proposal’s acception, the costs of the stay and the hotel will be
covered. We kindly ask to use own funds for the travel costs. Only in case this
should not be possible, coverage of the travel costs can be held in prospect. 

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Ilmoituksen lähetti: Kasper Brasken <kasper.brasken at abo.fi>
Ilmoitus vanhentuu: 16.2.2015
Lisätietoja WWW-osoitteesta: http://www.münzenbergforum.de