Ah, Christmas memories from childhood… Playing elf to my pediatrician father’s Santa at the Children’s Hospital party. Honoring my Swedish heritage by choking down one bite of lutefisk every Christmas Eve. Getting a pile of Reader’s Digest books about topics like natural disasters and true crime from Grandpa Gehrz the next morning… Good times. And … More A Very Nazi Christmas!
At the turn of the 20th century, the catchphrase of many German nationalists was that their nation deserved its “place in the sun,” its turn in world history to take on a leading role. For example, defending his government’s attempts to expand Germany’s presence in East Asia in 1897, chancellor Bernhard von Bülow vowed that … More Germany’s Place in the Sun
I don’t think my wife reads this blog all that often. But once we get past some self-analysis and a quick review of a terrible chapter in history, know that this post is ultimately a tribute to her and others like her who work with children with developmental delays. I cry pretty easily. At funerals, … More There’s No Crying in History: Teaching the Holocaust
With twelve nominees for world’s best national anthem having fallen by the wayside, we’re finally up on the medal platform and ready to reveal our 3rd best anthem. (See earlier posts for a full explanation of methodology. The brief version: the first round used objective rankings for longevity, singability, and inspiration to narrow the list … More The Best National Anthems: Germany
Fifty years ago today, the government of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR, or simply East Germany) cut off its own citizens’ ability to move to the west. Before August 13, 1961, such a journey simply required crossing into West Berlin, then an enclave of the western Federal Republic, surrounded by the Communist GDR and Warsaw … More The Berlin Wall, Fifty Years Later
In the first preview of chapters from our new book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, I made much of our volume’s affinity for expansive definitions of the “Pietist impulse,” by implication rejecting the “strict constructionist” take that Pietism properly construed was a certain segment of German Lutheranism in the early modern period. So it’s only … More The Pietist Impulse: Germans
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Thursday, January 24, 2013 – Dachau Tomorrow we’ll hop a plane back to the States, but as a last experience of post-WWI Europe, we’re … More Pretending
This week I’m launching a new series previewing the chapters in our newly released book, The Pietist Impulse in Christianity. Where better to start than with the deceptively simple question, “What is Pietism?” As we point out rather obviously in our editors’ introduction, that question “is not easily answered” (xxi). Some scholars prefer a “strict … More The Pietist Impulse: Definitions
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Wednesday, January 23, 2013 – Munich One must know Munich if one would know Germany… That certainly is true of the post-1918 era of … More “The Capital of the Movement”
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Tuesday, January 22, 2013 – Munich I’m less certain of this course’s ending than of its beginning or middle. Where does our journey finish? … More Now Where?
The Pietist Schoolman 