CWRU Law School Faculty Authors

The role of the middle class in national development has always been of interest to historians concerned with the "peculiarities" of German history. Recently, the professional sector of the German middle class has come under historical scrutiny as part of a re-examination of those features ofGerman society common to Western industrializing nations. This work provides comprehensive coverage of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany from the point of view of this new field. The contributors discuss the formation and development of such diverse professions as law, medicine, teaching,engineering, social work, and psychology, as well as the special cases of the bureaucracy and the military. They examine such questions as the role of the state in the creation and regulation of professions, the social and political role of various professional groups during the turbulent Weimarand Nazi periods, and the remarkable and troubling institutional continuity of certain professions through the Third Reich and into the postwar republics.

A powerful collection of commentary on the Holocaust by international writers from nine disciplines. The volume forms a response to the Holocaust's demands on memory and on thought, and is an occasion to encounter the Holocaust both as history and as possibility. Contributors provided essays on art, politics, law, and education. The 38 contributors include: Stephen Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Carol Ann Reed, Director, Holocaust Education and Memorial Centre of Toronto; Sid Chafetz, artist and professor of art; Henry Friedlander, professor of history, Brooklyn College; David M. Crowe, professor of history, Elon College; Mark Osiel, professor of law, University of Iowa; James E. Young, professor of English and Judaic studies, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Sybil Milton, Vice-President, Independent Experts: Switzerland-World War II; and Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor of sociology, University of Leeds. The book has won several awards, including the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence, Second Place, to copyeditor Carol Berger.

Contending with Hitler is a distillation of recent scholarship on Germany's domestic resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. Comprising twelve original essays by leading German and American scholars, it sets forth the issues that specialists and laymen alike must keep in mind as they try to understand the nature and significance of this complex problem. Unlike most histories of the German resistance, this volume does not restrict its focus to well-known opposition factions like the Kreisau Circle and the Twentieth of July conspiracy; rather, it includes investigations of resistance efforts by Jews, women, workers, and young people. The Socialist opposition is illuminated by the personal observations of former West German chancellor, Willy Brandt.

The history of German lawyers in private practice from 1878 to 1933 helps answer questions about the inability of German liberalism to withstand National Socialism in 1933. Lawyers connect the procedural focus of legal thinking with procedural notions of individual liberties. In Germany they won free entry and self-government for their profession in 1878, thinking that these changes would lead to civic leadership and expanded liberty, but the forces that were unleashed revealed internal tensions and the limits of professional influence. Exaggerated expectations for the legal profession in public life exposed the limitations of procedural liberalism, with tragic consequences for Germany.