In the 1860s, rural disasters on Prussia's eastern and western peripheries forced lawmakers to wrestle with the definition of the term emergency (Notstand), as well as with its temporal and spatial boundaries. The article first explores the legislative decision by Berlin politicians to limit state aid to East Prussia in 1868, even as other hunger crises devastated remote regions in the northwestern state of Hanover. The article then turns to the political conflicts over the 1868 law, including the disputes after unification over how to determine eligibility for state funds; the jostling among representatives of poor regions for attention; the creation of permanent relief funds; and politicians’ use of new understandings of moor science to strengthen and link Prussia's eastern and western peripheries. The article also considers the larger political context, emphasizing that the dismay over Prussian “backwardness” and inner-Prussian competition for disaster aid unfolded against the backdrop of the state's successful leadership during German unification.

Social meaning-based approaches to linguistic variation treat variation as a semiotic system, in which sociolinguistic signs—indexical links between linguistic forms and social meanings—serve as interactional resources that individuals use to project personae. This article explores the perceptual nature of the links between social personae and linguistic forms, examining how information about a speaker's persona can influence a listener's linguistic perceptions of a continuous phonetic feature. Using a phoneme categorization task, this study examines associations between gradient phonetic manifestations on a continuum from /æ/ to /ɑ/ and three social personae. Findings illustrate that the social persona made relevant for a listener influences the ways in which points on this phonetic continuum are categorized phonemically as either trap or lot. Overall, this shows that the social constructs of personae influence phonetically detailed perceptions of linguistic material. (Sociolinguistic perception, personae, indexicality, sociophonetics, sociolinguistic signs)*

Between them, the chancellorships of the “two Helmuts” span nearly a quarter-century of German history. Helmut Schmidt led the country from 1974 to 1982; his successor, Helmut Kohl, served until 1998. But the verdict on their respective tenures has been very different. Kohl was seen as a bumbling provincial when he came to office in 1982 but, by the end of his second term, he had won a place in the history books as the “Chancellor of Unity” (Einheitskanzler). By the time he lost the election for what would have been his fifth term, he was hailed as the “master-builder” (Baumeister) of Europe for his decisive role in furthering the European Community's political and economic integration through the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the Euro. Schmidt, by contrast, came to office with a reputation for high administrative competence and intellectual prowess, but left the chancellery under a cloud. Der Spiegel spoke for many commentators when it dismissed him as a “good chancellor with a bad record”; few features of his period in office stood out as “proof of success.” Schmidt, it was said, had been a mere crisis manager and “problem-solver” (Macher) who lacked broader vision, so that “little endured of historical significance.” This has also been the verdict of many historians.

Since the turn of the millennium, major political figures around the world have been routinely compared to Adolf Hitler. These comparisons have increasingly been investigated by scholars, who have sought to explain their origins and assess their legitimacy. This article sheds light on this ongoing debate by examining an earlier, but strikingly similar, discussion that transpired during the Nazi era itself. Whereas commentators today argue about whether Hitler should be used as a historical analogy, observers in the 1930s and 1940s debated which historical analogies should be used to explain Hitler. During this period, Anglophone and German writers identified a diverse group of historical villains who, they believed, explained the Nazi threat. The figures spanned a wide range of tyrants, revolutionaries, and conquerors. But, by the end of World War II, the revelation of the Nazis' unprecedented crimes exposed these analogies as insufficient and led many commentators to flee from secular history to religious mythology. In the process, they identified Hitler as Western civilization's new archetype of evil and turned him into a hegemonic analogy for the postwar period. By explaining how earlier analogies struggled to make sense of Hitler, we can better understand whether Hitler analogies today are helping or hindering our effort to understand contemporary political challenges.

Rabbinical courts in Israel serve as official courts of the state, and state law provides that a Jewish couple can obtain a divorce only in these courts, and only strictly according to Jewish law. By contrast, in the Western world, especially the United States, which has the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel, the Jewish halakha is not a matter of state law, and rabbinical courts have no official status. This article examines critically the common argument that for a Jew committed to the halakha, and in particular for a Jewish woman who wants to divorce her husband, a state-sponsored halakhic system is preferable to a voluntary one. This argument is considered in light of the main tool that has been proven to help American Jewish women who wish to obtain a halakhic divorce from husbands refusing to grant it: the prenuptial agreement. Many Jewish couples in the United States sign such an agreement, but only a few couples in Israel do so, primarily because of the opposition of the rabbinical courts in Israel to these agreements. The article examines the causes of this resistance, and offers reasons for the distinction that exists between the United States and Israel. It turns out that social and legal reality affect halakhic considerations, to the point where rabbis claim that what the halakha allows in the United States it prohibits in Israel. The last part of the article uses examples from the past to examine the possibility that social change in Israel will affect the rulings of rabbinical courts on this issue.

Mock white girl (MWG) performances parody a linguistic and embodied style associated with contemporary middle class white girls in the United States. The article identifies bundles of semiotic resources in the stylization of the white girl persona—for example, creaky voice, uptalk, blondeness, and Starbucks—in three genres of MWG: Savior, Shit white girls say, and Teenage girl problems. While semiotic variables used to index the white girl persona are consistent across performances, there is significant variation in performers’ ideological stances relative to the mocked figure of personhood: white girls in the US are not ‘heard’ in any one way by all social actors. Contextualizing MWG performances through analysis of stance reveals critical variation in how the white girl is interpreted, evaluated, and produced as a meaningful social entity by diverse segments of the population. (Gender, mock, race, parody, persona, stance, style)*

Scientific and medical contraceptive standards are commonly believed to have begun with the advent of the oral contraceptive pill in the late 1950s. This article explains that in Britain contraceptive standards were imagined and implemented at least two decades earlier by the Family Planning Association, which sought to legitimize contraceptive methods, practice and provision through the foundation of the field of contraceptive science. This article charts the origins of the field, investigating the three methods the association devised and employed to achieve its goal of effecting contraceptive regulation. This was through the development of standardized methods to assess spermicidal efficacy; the establishment of quality, strength and manufacturing standards for rubber prophylactics; and the institution of animal trials to ensure the safety of specific contraceptives. The association publicized the results of its scientific testing on proprietary contraceptives in its annual Approved List of contraceptives. This provided doctors and chemists with a definitive register of safe and effective methods to prescribe.

Veneration of Westphalian stigmatic and visionary Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774–1824) reached new heights during the Weimar Republic. German Catholics engaged in promoting her beatification cause organized a multipronged, multimedia campaign. Priests and laypersons, as well as the popular press and theological journals, all encouraged the veneration of Emmerick as “a crucified saint for a crucified Volk.” Memories of Napoleonic French aggression, secularization, and waning religious belief provided revanchist Weimar German Catholics with a readymade narrative of victimization. Moreover, as a poster child of the Westphalian Heimat, her pilgrimage sites offered a spiritual antidote to the “godless” modern city. Meanwhile, everyday Catholics continued a century-old, locally-based tradition of veneration that did not strictly conform to the new “official” line. Emmerick's Weimar cult, and the modern saint-making process more generally, thus provide a window onto the push and pull between clergy and laity, men and women, institutional and popular forces, in shaping lived German Catholicism in the 1920s.