New ideas?

Since my return from Leiden, I have been mulling over different rural projects. I have been doing bibliographic research on two topics that I left long ago: the Deutscher Bauernbund and the Landvolkbewegung. I’ve found that there hasn’t been a lot of work published since I last looked at these topics, which all pre-dated my GIS work. I was particularly interested to learn that the newspaper of the Bauernbund post-1918 is extant at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and at the Nationalbibliothek in Dresden. Amazing! Since I had completed my Bauernbund research before the Wende, I am not surprised. It would be really interesting to examine the conflict over the reintroduction of German tariffs freedom in 1925 and then the disintegration of the organization in 1927. Both would fit into my continued interest in Theodor Tantzen.

Theodor Tantzen, ESSHA and Leiden

Moving backward in time from 1893 was an enormous challenge but VERY fruitful. It did mean reading extensively in Oldenburg history. This has been extremely worthwhile.

[On a side technical note, I discovered that I could use the camera function of my i-Phone to scan text into a GoogleDoc that I could then clean up. Reading through the document a third time, I could create already typed notes, which I then printed. Reading through 4 times really fastened the material in my mind!]

Rethinking my work on Theodor Tantzen and north German rural politics within the context of the Vormärz and the needs of the conference panel helped me the appreciate the social and economic locus of progressism in Oldenburg. Going forward, I will want to see how this worked out in the Prussian districts of Aurich and Stade.

The ESSHA conference as always was incredibly exciting. Our session commentator, Niels Grüne made a set of inclusive and useful coments that I will address on this site at Projects/Theodor Tantzen, along with PDFs of my original and revised abstracts, the complete paper, and the3 read version. Our panel organizer, Joanna Innis, was very interested in drawing connection between the Landvolkbewegung in Schleswig-Holstein and Oldenburg. Upon reflection it sees to e that I should be able draw some interesting comparisons. Let’s see if I’m given enough time!

Leiden was a most amazing place. I will not be attending the 2027 conference in Lyon, but look forward to their venue for 2029.

A HUGE Detour

My milieu work took longer tban expected. When about completed, I received notification that my paper proposal for ESSHA had been accepted. It was, however, one of two accepted papers that the organizers had placed within an already-prepared prepared pair of sessions created by a team working on progressive politics in the first half of the 19th century. I was contacted by the panel organizers and asked if I could make my paper fit with these. I thought about it a week and decided that I could make adjustments. I underestimated the extent of these.

I based my decision on the expectation that I could make a quick return to Oldenburg in the fall. The tickets were purchased, files were ordered up. Come August, my left knee began regularly collapsing when I walked. When questioned about whether it would hold up in Germany, I decided that perhaps it would not and cancelled my tickets. I felt confident that I could make good the archival deficit. Ten weeks on, I am not confident that i can achieve what I set out to do.

I began my reoriented paper trying out a series of hypotheses. Sadly, they do not seem to have worked out. I will discuss these in my next post.