|
James
Retallack University Professor |
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Sidney Smith Hall Rm 2084, 100 St. George St. |
||
|
|
|
Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3G3 |
|
|
|
Tel. 416-978-3363 (reception) |
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
email:
james.retallack [at] utoronto.ca |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
web: http://retallack.faculty.history.utoronto.ca |
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
News
|
Online Lecture November
2023
In 2022–23 I was privileged
to be a Chancellor Jackman Faculty Research Fellow, when the Jackman
Humanities Institute’s annual theme was “Labour.” Besides co-organizing the
international conference that convened in Toronto in May 2023 on “Work,
Class, and Social Democracy” (see below), I was asked to deliver an online
lecture about my research, which I was happy to do. In this lecture I consider
the challenges of writing the biography of a working-class political
superstar. August Bebel was leader of the world’s largest socialist party
before 1914. The modern medial age had made him into a global celebrity, an
“anti-Kaiser.” His origin story as an impoverished child and humble craftsman
created a public image of mythical proportions. How best to grapple with that
image? Perhaps the biographer should try less to puncture the myth than let
out just enough air to settle the man back to earth. ______________________________________________ Published March 2023
Synopsis: Electoral politics in Imperial
Germany reflected two kinds of democratization. Social democratization could
not be stopped, but political democratization was opposed by many members of
the German bourgeoisie. Frightened by the electoral success of the Social
Democrats after 1871, they battled socialists, liberals, and Jews at election
time, but they also strove to rewrite the electoral rules of the game. Das rote
Sachsen devotes
special attention to various semi-democratic voting systems whereby a general
and equal suffrage (for the Reichstag) was combined with limited and unequal
ones for local and regional parliaments. It also illustrates how bourgeois
and aristocratic Germans grew to fear left-wing “terrorism” in the age of
mass politics. Certainly twists and turns lay ahead, yet that fear made it
easier for Hitler and the Nazis to win elections in the 1920s and to entomb
German democracy in 1933. ______________________________________________ Published Online March 2023
Synopsis: The documents and images in this
Open Access online collection of primary sources – presented on mirror sites
in German and English – allow us to look beneath the
surface calm of Bismarckian Germany. What we see there is a picture shot
through with contradictions, conflicts, and crises. This revised 2nd
edition advances the hypothesis that Imperial Germany’s highly dynamic
economy, society, and culture were embedded within an authoritarian political
system. That system was also dynamic, not sclerotic. Yet, many of its
bourgeois defenders tended to prize stability and prestige over the
principles of equity, inclusiveness, and fairness. If portents of a
calamitous future tempt us to read history backwards, we should pause for a
moment and attune ourselves to the views of Germans at the time, who did not
know how the story would end. These documents and images allow readers to do
just that. (Legacy
site for 1st edition, 2007) ______________________________________________ Published 2022
Synopsis: On the eve of the First World War,
the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest and most powerful socialist
party in the world. This book examines the SPD’s rise using British
diplomatic reports from Saxony, the third-largest federal state in Imperial
Germany and the cradle of the socialist movement in that country. Rather than focusing on the Anglo-German
antagonism leading to the First World War, it peers into the everyday
struggles of German workers to build a political movement and emancipate
themselves from the worst features of a modern capitalist system:
exploitation, poverty, and injustice. The documents raise the question of how
people from one nation view people from another nation. They also illuminate
political systems, election practices, and anti-democratic strategies at the
local and regional levels, allowing readers to test hypotheses derived only
from national-level studies. This collection of primary sources shows why,
despite the inhospitable environment of German authoritarianism, Saxony and
Germany were among the most important incubators of socialism. Advance
Praise here. |
General
Background
After
attending Trent University in Peterborough, I studied at Oxford University as a
Rhodes Scholar and received my D.Phil. in 1983. I joined the University of
Toronto in 1987, and was promoted to the rank of University Professor in 2019.
I served as chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures from
1999 to 2002.
I teach
courses and supervise Ph.D. dissertations in German and European history from
1740 to 1945. My work has been assisted by research grants, fellowships, and
prizes from the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD), the German-American Academic Council Foundation, the
Killam Program at the Canada Council for the Arts, the Connaught Program and
the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto, and the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
In
1993–94 I spent a year with my family at the Free University Berlin as a
Humboldt Research Fellow and Visiting Professor in the Political Science
department. I also held a Visiting Professorship in History at the University
of Göttingen in 2002–03 when I was awarded the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Bessel
Research Prize by the Humboldt Foundation, and I was a Visiting Scholar at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal when my prize was renewed in 2014. I became an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
in 2011. See below for a number of international conferences and workshops
I have organized.
I am
affiliated with the following units at the University of Toronto:
o University Professor, Department of
History and Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
o Senior Fellow, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History
o Senior Associate, Joint Initiative in
German and European Studies (JIGES)
o
Senior
Associate, Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES)
o
Affiliated
Faculty, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
o
Associate Faculty Member, Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish
Studies (CJS)
Current
professional positions (selection):
o
General
Editor, Oxford
Studies in Modern European History, Oxford University Press
o
General
Editor, German
and European Studies, University of Toronto Press
o
Member,
Editorial Board, German History
in Documents and Images, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
o
Member,
Editorial Advisory Board, German
History, journal of the German History Society, UK
Teaching
Interests
· Modern Europe, 1740–1945
· Modern Germany, 1740–1945
·
Imperial Germany, 1871–1918
Courses
· Telling
Lies with Maps (HUM
199Y, SII 199Y)
· Germany
from Frederick the Great to the First World War, 1740–1918
(HIS 330H)
· Telling
Lies about Hitler: Frauds and Famous Feuds among German Historians (HIS 437H)
· Maps
and History (HIS
440H)
· Imperial
Germany, 1871–1918
(HIS 407H, HIS 1275H)
Note: I
am no longer taking on new PhD supervisions.
Current
Research and Writing Interests
My research
interests include German regional history, nationalism, antisemitism,
socialism, electoral politics, biography, and historiography. I am currently
writing a full-scale biography of the German Social Democratic leader August
Bebel:
|
Synopsis: August Bebel (1840-1913) was the
charismatic leader of the largest socialist party in Germany, Europe, and the
world before 1914. But how did workers come to revere a man who began adult
life in the 1860s as an itinerant journeyman turner producing doorknobs and
window-pulls from buffalo horn but by 1900 exercised unassailable authority
within Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD)? This book asks how German
workers found Bebel, embraced him as their emperor (Arbeiterkaiser), and came to put their faith in
Social Democracy’s message. Conversely, it examines middle- and upper-class
Germans who believed instinctively that Bebel and his followers sought the
total overthrow of the existing state and society and hence ascribed them
pariah status within Germany’s political system. It also asks how much
celebrity really mattered in the age of mass politics, mass culture, and the
mass press. (Image: undated photograph, ca.
1880, New York Public Library, Digital Collections, public domain.) On this project, view my November 2023
online lecture: “August
Bebel, Social Democracy, and the Art of Biography.” __________________________________________ |
|
In this essay I explore graphical depictions of the
socialist leader August Bebel in the Social Democratic and middle-class
satirical magazines of his age. Exploring the grammar of visual communication
through satirical caricatures, I ask what, if anything, they might tell us
about Bebel, his party, and the emergence of mass politics, mass culture, and
the mass media in Germany before 1914. In an age of media politicians and
“ocular democracy,” was the “voice of the people” expressed in part through
the “eyes of the people”? By considering the way Bebel’s image was deployed
and understood by artists, writers, and readers of these magazines, and by
his fellow politicians, I follow the lead of Lucy Riall, whose biography of
Giuseppe Garibaldi illustrated how political celebrity can be manufactured
and manipulated—with and without the active participation of the celebrant. (Image:
August Bebel caricatured in the Humoristische
Blätter (Vienna), 1877. Source: Ilse Fischer and Werner
Krause, eds, August Bebel 1840-1913 (Cologne, 1988), 58.) ____________________________________________
A special issue of selected conference papers will
be published as European and Global Perspectives on Social Democracy
and State Violence in the Bulletin of the German Historical
Institute, Washington, DC, Issue 74, Fall 2024, co-edited by Simone
Lässig, James Retallack, and Swen Steinberg. |
Graduate
Supervisions
I
cherish many types of collaboration with MA and PhD students. As well as
supervising research projects and comprehensive field preparations, I have
worked with most of the students and postdoctoral fellows listed below:
organizing workshops, symposia, and conferences, preparing monographs and
co-edited volumes for publication, and conducting field research in German
archives.
Current
Ph.D. Dissertation Supervisions (primary supervisions only)
1.
Lief Dubin, “Becoming German: The
Development of Nationalism and National Identity in Württemberg, 1859–1871”
(entered PhD program 2019, ABD)
Postdoctoral
Mentorships
1.
William Wilson (Peterborough),
Postdoctoral Fellow (SSHRC, 1994–95)
2.
Thomas Adam (University of Leipzig),
Feodor-Lynen Research Fellow (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 1999–2001)
3.
Stefan Grüner (University of Augsburg),
Feodor-Lynen Research Fellow (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 2003–2005)
Completed PhD Dissertations Supervised (sole supervisor)
1.
Eriks Bredovskis, “Columbia’s Shadow: The
Pacific Northwest and the German Imagination, 1880–1914.” PhD diss. 2023
(Currently: Independent scholar, Toronto).
2. Michael Weaver, “Political
Friendship: Liberal Notables, Networks, and the Pursuit of the German Nation–State,
1848–1866,” PhD diss. 2022, forthcoming as Political
Friendship: Liberal Notables, Networks, and the Pursuit of the German Nation–State, 1848–1866 (New York: Berghahn
Books, 2024). (Currently: Quality review editor, Control Risks, Washington, DC).
3. Gavin J. Wiens, “In the Service of Kaiser
and King: State Sovereignty, Nation-Building, and the Imperial German Army,
1866-1918.” PhD diss. 2019, published as The
Imperial German Army between Kaiser and King: Monarchy, Nation-Building, and
War, 1866-1918 (Cham, CH: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). (Currently:
Independent scholar, Toronto).
4. Anthony Cantor, “Our Conservatories? Music Education, Social Identities
and Cultural Politics in Germany and Austria, 1840-1933.” PhD diss. 2015 (Currently: Producer/Director, Efran Films,
Toronto).
5. Geoffrey Hamm, “British Intelligence
and Turkish Arabia: Strategy, Diplomacy, and Empire, 1898-1918.” PhD diss.
2012. (Currently: Scientific Publications Coordinator, Lawrence Berkeley Lab,
Berkeley, CA).”
6.
Deborah
J. Neill, “Transnationalism in the Colonies: Cooperation,
Rivalry, and Race in German and French Tropical Medicine, 1880-1930,” PhD Diss. 2005, published as Networks
in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical
Specialty, 1890-1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). (Currently: Associate Professor of History, York University,
Toronto).
7. Lisa M. Todd, “Sexual
Treason: State Surveillance of Infidelity and Immorality in World War I
Germany,” PhD Diss. 2005, published as Sexual
Treason in Germany During the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan,
2017). (Currently: Professor of History and Chair, Department of History and Department of Classics &
Ancient History, University of New Brunswick,
Fredericton, NB.)
8.
Erwin
D. Fink, “Region and Nation in Early Imperial Germany: Transformations of
Popular Allegiances and Political Culture in the Period of Nation Building,” PhD Diss.
2004. (Currently: owner/operator, TransMedia Translations, Freiburg i. Br.)
9.
Richard
Steigmann-Gall, “The Holy Reich: Religious Dimensions of Nazi Ideology,
1919-1945,” PhD Diss. 1999, published as The
Holy Reich. Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 19191945 (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). (Currently: Associate Professor of
History, Kent State University, OH.)
10. Marline Otte, “Jewish
Identities in German Popular Entertainment, 1890-1930,” PhD Diss.
1999, published as Jewish
Identities in German Popular Entertainment, 1890-1933 (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). (Currently: Associate Professor of
History, Tulane University, LA.)
11. Marven H. Krug, “Civil Liberties in
Imperial Germany,” PhD Diss. 1995. (Currently: Senior Product
Manager, Spryker, Berlin.)
12. Thomas M. Bredohl, “Parishioners,
Priests and Politicians: The Centre Party in the Rhineland, 1890-1914,” PhD Diss.
1995, published as: Class
and Religious Identity: The Rhenish Center Party in Wilhelmine Germany (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 2000). (Currently: Professor Emeritus of History, University
of Regina, SK.)