Year: 2016
On 17 February 2016, Helen Roche and Yvonne Zivkovic hosted Lucy Cavendish College's termly Anna Bidder Research Evening, presenting two talks addressing the theme of 'Difficult Heritage? Exploring German History and Culture in the 21st Century'.Read more...
'Herrschaft durch Schulung: The Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten im Osten and the Third Reich's Germanising mission'in Europa. Ideologie, Machtausbau, Beharrung (Regionen des östlichen Europas im 20. Jahrhundert Bd. 3), ed. Burkhard Olschowsky, Ingo Loose, Berlin (De Gruyter) 2016, pp. 128-51.
From their very inception in 1933, the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (Napolas) were conceived by their founders not only as the principal training schools for the future elite of the Third Reich, but as being of crucial benefit to the Nazi regime’s mission to Germanise the Eastern territories.Read more...
'"Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta oder nach Stalingrad?" Ancient ideals of self-sacrifice and German military propaganda'in Making Sacrifices: Visions of Sacrifice in European and American Cultures
, ed. Nicholas Brooks, Gregor Thuswaldner, Vienna (New Academic Press) 2016, pp. 66-86.
Since antiquity, the heroic fight to the last of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans against the overwhelming might of the Persian Empire has often been considered the ultimate expression of sacrificial patriotism. This article considers the juxtaposition of supposedly ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ notions of patriotic self-sacrifice in German military propaganda during the 20th century.Read more...
'Xenophon and the Nazis: A case study in the politicisation of Greek thought through educational propaganda'Classical Receptions Journal 8 (1), 2016 (special issue on The Legacy of Greek Political Thought, edited by Barbara Goff and Miriam Leonard), pp. 71-89.
During the Third Reich, radical reinterpretations of Classical texts were always on the agenda. The Reich Education Ministry decreed that only those ancient texts which were deemed of value for the Nazi regime’s new ‘national-political’ education should be taught in schools. This sometimes led to the pre-eminence of texts which had previously been considered less worthy – the writings of Xenophon being a case in point.Read more...
New Publication: "Xenophon and the Nazis"
Helen's article 'Xenophon and the Nazis: A case study in the politicisation of Greek thought through educational propaganda' has now been published in the January 2016 issue of Classical Receptions Journal.
The article forms part of a special issue on The Legacy of Greek Political Thought, edited by Barbara Goff and Miriam Leonard.Read more...
Presented at the Anna Bidder Research Evening, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, 17 February 2016.Read more...
Further critical acclaim for 'Sparta's German Children'Helen's first monograph, Sparta's German Children: The ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, 1818-1920, and in National Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933-1945, has received a favourable review in the latest issue of the Journal of Hellenic Studies.
The reviewer, Roel Konijnendijk, praises the work's 'fascinating subject' and its 'overall quality', as well as its 'comprehensive' analysis.Read more...
On 22 January 2016, Ali Jones, Clara Maier, Helen Roche, Damian Valdez and Waseem Yaqoob hosted the first of a series of DAAD-funded workshops on 'Herrschaft and Gewalt from the Kaiserreich to the Berlin Republic'.Read more...
Presented at the Modern European History Research Seminar, University of Cambridge, 26 January 2016.Read more...