Academic literature on the topic 'German Prophecies'

PurposeTo provide an informative and stimulating view of some key issues in interdepartmental conflict.Design/methodology/approachBased on the first study in the German‐speaking world, of the impact of interdepartmental conflict, in the period 2002‐2003, 300 enterprises participated. Respondents were at all levels of business hierarchy and all sizes of enterprise and ranged from junior manager to chairman and from the smallest firms to global market leaders.FindingsSeveral conclusions: it is a common illusion that an enterprise is one big happy family. It is a mixture of groups and people with aims, perceptions and preferences which can easily and frequently conflict with one another. This is clearly a major and often underestimated source of stress, demotivation and inefficiency.Practical implicationsDemonstrates ways of using conflict productively. The first step is a self‐critical appraisal of one's own role in terms of interdepartmental cooperation. The next step of self‐reflection entails the reader coming to terms with any possible prejudices he/she may have towards other departments. These stereotypes form and colour behaviour at departmental interfaces and frequently become self‐fulfilling prophecies. A limitation of the study is that small firms with up to ten employees were not included.Originality/valueThe paper offers many new insights through the survey and primary research on which it is based. Also, the German experience is highly relevant to the UK and USA, while at the same time, providing some useful bases for cross‐cultural comparison.

While the histories of chemical and nuclear weapons are often categorically demarcated, this paper presents the transitional history between the development of early chemical weapons and the first atomic bomb in order to reveal both the institutional and imaginary connections between the two. In the wake of World War I, nationalized chemical weapons research provided one blueprint for the kind of large-scale military-industrial-academic complex required to build the atomic bomb. The German chemical weapons laboratories at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical and Electrochemistry (KWI), directed by Fritz Haber, were particularly successful in creating a hierarchical mobilization of people, funds, and materials that the Americans were able to replicate both in their own chemical weapons production and when building the atomic bomb in the early 1940s. Institutional and cultural similarities between these weapons programs were further fertilized by a strikingly similar interwar imagining of both chemical and radiological weapons. These prophecies prefigured certain eye-witness reports from the dropping of the first atomic bombs, where radioactive clouds supposedly spread over the bomb site. In reality, there were important distinctions in both power and method of destruction between chemical weapons and the atomic bomb, but the post–World War II positing of a newly demarcated “Atomic Age” created a conceptual distance between poison gas and nuclear weapons. By pointing to chemistry’s significant contributions (both real and imaginary) to the creation of the atomic bomb, this article reminds readers of the rhetorical similarities and institutional connections between the two weapons with an eye toward broadening our categorical understanding of the atmospheric weapons that still threaten the world today.

The author considers the relevance of the appeal to the Salome image in the realities of the new wave of expressionism at the beginning of the 21st century. The research was carried out with a comprehensive analysis of the dramaturgical, musical, plastic and choreographic, scenography components of the stage incarnations of Jewish princess image in Richard Strauss's opera "Salome". The author determined the methodology of the key aspects of the study: the interpretation of the image of Salome by O. Wilde and Richard Strauss, that provides a basis for conducting a comparative and analytical examinations. The study of musical dramaturgy peculiarities in this opera leads to a genre-stylistic analysis. The most significant stage incarnations of the 21st century relate to interpretive investigation. Two concepts of the justification of the main conflict that led to the death of the Prophet are outlined. The first concept is political, since the Herodians' expectation of a Messiah from their dynasty was hindered by the prophecies of John the Baptist; the second concept is biblical, it is the rejection of Herodias's image of the Prophet for accusing her of incest and vices. The author proved the similarity of the text of Richard Strauss's opera libretto and O. Wilde's play on the theme of Salome, but he found stylistic differences between the two works: O. Wilde's is a drama of a symbolic direction, Richard Strauss's is an expressive and psychological musical poem. As a result of the analysis, the author proves that the dramaturgical structure of the opera is built on the Wagnerian principle of subordinating musical, poetic and scenic elements to the development of the storyline and reinterpreting leitmotif in terms of its individualization. Three versions of the opera performance "Salome" staged by Norwegian, German and Ukrainian directors are described, they are solved in the aesthetics of postmodernism with the extrapolation of the time and place of action to the present, an ironic attitude to the operatic images of the characters, and the synthesis of traditional and innovative means of expression. It was established that the Norwegian version is more characterized by the use of the latest art technologies in the formation of the artistic image of the performance; German production gravitates to the creation of a psychological drama with Freudian undertones; the Ukrainian performance based on Richard Strauss's opera "Salome" has a hi-tech solution. Prospects for further research in the aspect of integration of traditional theater and modern multimedia technologies are outlined.

Any historical period called “late” is headed for interpretive trouble, and one called “late medieval” is probably doomed. Periodization is an artifice, as we know, yet also an art. Historians have entirely reconceived “late antiquity” over the past generation, transforming Roman decadence into an imperial and Christian culture three centuries long embracing the whole Mediterranean world, creative in its culture and foundational for societies that followed. But what of “late medieval”? In most textbooks the term comes paired still with “decline.” Humanists and Reformers first created the artifice of a “middle time,” a dismissive gesture toward the thousand years that separated them from the golden ages of antiquity and/or the early church. Nineteenth-century scientific historians introduced art into this artifice by dividing that amorphous millennium into semi-coherent sub-periods: “early” (400–1000), “high” (1000–1300), and a rump called “late” (1300–1500). Church history entered importantly into the characterizations, with the “late” period traditionally told as a series of catastrophes beginning with destructive confrontations between Pope Boniface VIII (d. 1303) and King Philip the Fair. The storyline for the two centuries that followed, whether treated as deepening darkness (traditional) or as an overripe autumn (Huizinga), depended on what came before and after. Early in the twentieth century, church historians introduced ecumenical and even ironic reversals: Catholic scholars, looking to their own reforms, conceded late medieval deviance and the need sometimes for reform; Protestant scholars, looking to a reform born of strength rather than decline, found a late Middle Ages full of flourishing religiosity and even modernizing initiatives. Others, skeptical of the Reformation as marking any decisive turn toward modernity (vs. Hegel), delighted in finding all manner of cults, relics, prophecies, and zealots still among these new Protestants. Oberman and McGinn by contrast have reconceived the fields of theology and mysticism, Huizinga's autumnal evanescence becoming a golden harvest. All the same—and this only a bit overstated—many Reformation histories still essentially start the world anew in the 1520s, now speaking German, and too many medieval histories still close their story with fourteenth-century “decline,” an apocalyptic onslaught of plague, revolt, schism, and war.

The compilation known as the Extract of Various Prophecies (Auszug etlicher Practica und Prophezeiungen) was the most popular prophetic pamphlet in Germany in the decade between 1516 and 1525. While the Extract was known to contain excerpts from the Prognosticatio of Johannes Lichtenberger and the Speculum of Johannes Grünpeck, this article identifies the sources of the introduction (Simon Eyssenmann’s annual prognostication for 1514) and the concluding verse (an annual prognostication for 1508) and clarifies the process of compilation. In contrast to earlier views that see it as a clumsy and illogical collection of excerpts, this article finds in the Extract a coherent near-term apocalypse. Hans Stainberger, a bookseller from Zwickau, played a decisive role in the pamphlet’s early dissemination, while its later circulation provides a case study in the circulation of apocalyptic ideas and the interaction between prophetic texts and prophetic preaching at the time of the Reformation. La compilation connue comme Extraits de diverses prophéties (Auszug etlicher Practica und Prophezeiungen) consiste en un libelle prophétique, qui fut des plus populaires en Allemagne durant la décennie 1516–1525. Alors que l’on sait déjà que l’Extrait contient des extraits de la Prognosticatio de Johannes Lichtenberger et du Speculum de Johannes Grünpeck, cet article identifie les sources de son introduction — Prognostications de 1514 de Simon Eyssenmann —, ainsi que de ses versets de conclusion — Prognostications de 1508 —, et contribue ainsi à clarifier le travail de compilation. Contrairement aux jugements considérant cet ouvrage comme une collection maladroite et illogique d’extraits, notre analyse y perçoit l’annonce cohérente d’une prochaine apocalypse. Hans Stainberger, un libraire de Zwickau, a joué un rôle central dans les débuts de la diffusion du pamphlet, alors que sa diffusion ultérieure représente plutôt un cas de figure pour saisir la circulation des discours apocalyptiques et l’interaction entre les textes et la prédication prophétique à l’époque de la Réforme.

в статье рассматриваются концепция позднего О. Шпенглера в ракурсе социологии культуры и политики, изучаемая в период публикации второго тома «Заката Европы» и его политического завещания «Годы решений». Анализ социально-политических и социокультурных идей и озарений мыслителя опирался на такие методы, как сравнительно-исторический и компаративистский, структурно-функциональный и системный, культур-социологический и историко-социологический методы. Речь в статье идет о финальном развитии Шпенглера как социального мыслителя в социально-политическом и социокультурных аспектах, нередко дополняющих и определяющих друг друга, о рассмотрении России, русских как не-белой расы, за счет которой должно выстроиться будущее германской расы как сердцевины фаустовской цивилизации, об опасности троцкистско-ленинской технологии экспорта революции как эффективного распространения левых идей в мире, о биологизаторстве, его схемах как инструменте формирования государства, о феодально-патриархальной консервативной утопии и социально-политическом идеале Шпенглера, о новой терминологии автора второго тома «Заката Европы» на основе национализма, воинствующего консерватизма и экспансионизма, о социолого-исторической концепции прохождения в мир истории через растительный, животный и человеческий мир как цикличности, о предыстории, истории и послеистории, о социальном расслоении как отрыве от традиций и почвы, и преодолении его последствий в модели прусского госсоциализма, об избыточном потенциале привилегированных сословий, о четвертом сословии люмпенской массы, о денатурализации человека и его жизни в социуме параллельно с процессом извечной вражды космического масштаба как сути развития истории во множестве сражений любви и ненависти между странами, обществами, социальными группами и людьми, о семени войны в личности в рамках социологии любви и войны, о войне как творце общества и политики, о бессистемности структур и расовом единстве, об оправдании расизма в рамках биологизма и натурализма, о 1930-х как Рубиконе выбора между социальной деградацией и пруссачеством в германском обществе, о ницшеанско-языческой трактовке Шпенглером традиционных ценностей немецкого общества, о игре в кости как схватке цветной и белой революций, о либеральных и социалистических ценностях общества как иллюзиях против реалий традиционного иерархического общества, об армии как консервативном институте социума, о социальных пророчествах Шпенглера. Выявлено – идеи позднего О. Шпенглера творчески развили представления Ф. Ницше и В. Дильтея, в ультраправом духе преодолели пессимизм в рассмотрения будущего фаустовской культуры, выявленный в первом томе «Заката Европы». Интербеллум в условиях роста левого и правого революционного радикализма, привел мыслителя к отрицательному отношению к России вкупе с развитием натурализированного дарвинизма и эволюционизма с упрощенными биологизаторскими схемами, построением консервативной утопии, неоязыческим пониманием ценностей и морали, апологетике абсолютизма, воли к власти и войны, позитивному восприятию реванша белой революции как расовой и ультраконсервативной, предсказанию деструктивности и отчуждению личности в современном социуме, а также краха либерализма и его идей и возникновения военных хунт неоконсервативного толка у власти, что ставит Шпенглера в ряд мыслителей, стоявших у истоков концепции антропологического перехода, объединяет его с идеями Г. Гегеля, Ф. Фукуямы, Г. Лебона, З. Фрейда и неофрейдистов, социологов Франкфурсткой школы, и даже некоторых идей К. Маркса (концепция отчуждения). the article examines the concept of late O. Spengler in the context of sociology of culture and politics, studied during the publication period of the second volume of "The Decline of the West" and his political testament "Years of Decision". The analysis of the social-political and socio-cultural ideas and insights of the thinker was based on methods such as comparative-historical and comparative, structural-functional and systemic, cultural-sociological and historical-sociological methods. The article discusses the final development of Spengler as a social thinker in social-political and socio-cultural aspects, often complementing and determining each other, on the consideration of Russia and the Russians as a non-white race, on which the future of the German race as the core of Faustian civilization should be built, on the danger of Trotskyist-Leninist technology of revolution export as an effective dissemination of leftist ideas in the world, on biologism, its schemes as a tool for state formation, on the feudal-patriarchal conservative utopia and Spengler's social-political ideal, on the new terminology introduced by the author in the second volume of "The Decline of the West" based on nationalism, militant conservatism, and expansionism, on the socio-historical concept of passing through the vegetal, animal, and human worlds as cyclicality, on prehistory, history, and post-history, on social stratification as a detachment from traditions and soil, and overcoming its consequences in the model of Prussian state socialism, on the surplus potential of privileged estates, on the fourth estate of lumpen masses, on the denaturalization of man and his life in society parallel to the process of eternal cosmic enmity as the essence of historical development in multiple battles of love and hatred between countries, societies, social groups, and individuals, on the seed of war within the individual within the framework of the sociology of love and war, on war as a creator of society and politics, on the lack of system in structures and racial unity, on the justification of racism within the framework of biologism and naturalism, on the 1930s as the Rubicon of choice between social degradation and Prussianism in German society, on Spengler's Nietzschean-linguistic interpretation of traditional values of German society, on the game of dice as a clash of colored and white revolutions, on the liberal and socialist values of society as illusions against the realities of traditional hierarchical society, on the army as a conservative institution of society, on Spengler's social prophecies. It has been revealed that the ideas of late O. Spengler creatively developed the views of F. Nietzsche and W. Dilthey, in an ultraright spirit went beyond the pessimism in the consideration of the future of Faustian culture, identified in the first volume of "The Decline of the West". The interwar period, under the conditions of the growth of left and right revolutionary radicalism, led the thinker to a negative attitude towards Russia, together with the development of naturalized Darwinism and evolutionism with simplified biologistic schemes, the construction of a conservative utopia, neo-pagan understanding of values and morality, absolutism apologetics, will to power and war, positive perception of the revenge of the white revolution as racial and ultra-conservative, the prediction of the destructiveness and alienation of personality in modern society, as well as the collapse of liberalism and its ideas, and the emergence of military juntas of the neoconservative nature in power, which puts Spengler among the thinkers who stood at the origins of the concept of anthropological transition, and aligns him with the ideas of G. Hegel, F. Fukuyama, G. Le Bon, S. Freud and neo-Freudians, sociologists of the Frankfurt School, and even some ideas of K. Marx (the concept of alienation).

In this dissertation, I consider the role of prophets and prophecy in German drama and dramatic discourse of the Romantic period. Against the backdrop of the upheaval wrought by the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, such discourse exhibits a conspicuous fascination with political and social crisis in general as well as a preoccupation with imagining how the crises of the present could provide an opportunity for national or civilizational renewal. One prominent manifestation of this focus is a pronounced interest in charismatic leaders of the legendary or historical past—among them prophets like Moses, Muhammad and Joan of Arc—who succeeded in uniting their respective societies around a novel vision of collective destiny. In order to better understand the appeal of such figures during this period, I examine works of drama and prose fiction that feature prophets as their protagonists and that center on scenarios of political or religious founding. Reading texts by major authors like Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Achim von Arnim alongside those by the lesser-known writers such as Karoline von Günderrode, August Klingemann and Joseph von Hammer, I analyze the various ways these scenarios are staged and situate them within their specific political, intellectual and literary contexts. In so doing, I show that the figure of the prophet—a figure whose authority is based not on their own wisdom, talent, or cunning, but rather on their claim to speak for a higher, superhuman power—offers authors a paradigm of political and cultural innovation that radically displaces the agency of the rational subject in favor of non-rational factors like language, performance, history, myth and the emotions. Moreover, I argue that this figure reveals an important connection between the history of drama in this period and an emergent, post-Enlightenment political discourse concerned with the origin and nature of sovereignty.

Text in German
Prophetie und Evangelisation sind zentrale Themen der Bibel und wichtige Instrumente Gottes. Biblische Berichte zeigen, dass Mission und Evangelisation oft erst durch ein prophetisches Wort moglich wurde. Das erste Kapitel widmet sich diesen Themen. Es ist das Anliegen dieser Studie, die in den Jahren 1980-2000 uber Berlin ausgesprochenen Prophetien zu analysieren. Die Prophetien werden mit biblischen Aussagen verglichen, gegeneinander ins Verhaltnis gesetzt und auf ihre missionstheoiogische Relevanz hin untersucht. Eine Befragung einiger Berliner Leber chainsmatisch-gepragter Gemeinden liefert den praktischen Anteil dieser Studie. Die theoretischen Grundlagen werden im zweiten und die Ergebnisse im dritten Kapitel behandelt. Es ist zu betonen, dass sich die untersuchten Prophetien jeglicher objektiver Beurteilung entziehen. Alle Angaben sind zeitlich nicht gebunden und sehr allgemein gehalten. Allen gemeinsam ist jedoch ein geistlicher Quantensprang, der von einer flachendeckenden Ausgiessung des Geistes Gottes uber Berlin handelt. Dieser Sachverhalt wird im vierten Kapitel dargestellt und diskutiert.
Prophecy and evangelisation are central topics of the Bible and instruments of God, Biblical reports show, that mission and evangelisation were mostly possible by a prophetic word (Chapter one). The concern of this study is to analyse the prophecies spoken out for Berlin between the years 1980 to 2000. The prophecies were compared with biblical statements, were proportionate to one another and were analysed regarding their mission-theologicai relevance. A questioning of few leaders of charismatic-embossed churches of Berlin gives the practical part of the study (the theoretical part see chapter two, the results see chapter three). It has to be articulated, that there is no objective judgement for the analysed prophecies. All indications are not bound by time and were given in general sense. All prophecies deal with a spiritual quantum leap, who speaks of an out-pouring of the Spirit of God over Berlin covering the whole area (Chapter four).
Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology
M.Th. (Missiology)

Prophetie und Evangelisation sind zentrale Themen der Bibel und wichtige Instrumente Gottes. Bib'lische Berichte zeigen, dass Mission und Evangelisation oft erst durch ein prophetisches Wort miiglich wurde. Das erste Kapitel widmet sich diesen Themen. Es ist das Anliegen dieser Studie, die in den Jahren 1980-2000 iiber Berlin ausgesprochenen Prophetien zu analysieren. Die Prophetien werden mit biblischen Aussagen verglichen, gegeneinander ins Verhliltnis gesetzt und auf ihre missionstheologische Relevanz hin untersucht. Eine Befragung einiger Berliner Leiter charismatisch-geprligter Gemeinden liefert den praktischen Anteil dieser Studie. Die theoretischen Grundlagen werden im zweiten und die Ergebnisse im dritten Kapitel behandelt. Es ist zu betonen, Prophecy and evangelisation are central topics of the Bible and instruments of God. Biblical reports show, that mission and evangelisation were mostly possible by a prophetic word (Chapter one). The concern of this study is to analyse the prophecies spoken out for Berlin between the years 1980 to 2000. The prophecies were compared with biblical statements, were proportionate to one another and were analysed regarding their mission-theological relevance. A questioning of few leaders of charismatic-embossed churches of Berlin gives the practical part of the study (the theoretical part see chapter two, the results see chapter three). It has to be articulated, that there is no objective judgement for the analysed prophecies. All indications are not bound by time and were given in general sense. All prophecies deal with a spiritual quantum leap, who speaks of an out-pouring of the Spirit of God over Berlin covering the whole area (Chapter four).
Text in German
Titles in German and English
Keywords in German and English
M. Th. (Missiology)

The Hegelian logos should not be contingent upon the particular language in which it is articulated; translation should therefore be no real concern for Hegel. Yet surprisingly, Hegel describes his Phenomenology of Spirit in a letter to Johann Heinrich Voss as an attempt akin to Voss’s and Martin Luther’s monumental translations of Homer and the Bible. Differently than his predecessors, however, Hegel does not seek to translate a canonical text, but a philosophical language that was never spoken or written before. Taking this letter as a point of departure, the chapter shows how Hegel’s Phenomenology is a translation project, and an oracular one at that. For in the section Hegel devotes to oracular language, the oracle prefigures the absolute language of philosophy that he seeks to translate, while its foreignness renders translation imperative, both at the structural level of Hegel’s argumentation and at the level of his own writing, which is fraught with traces of the Hebrew Bible, Spinoza, and Homeric epic. Because Hegel’s remarks on the oracle can be understood only in tracing his German back through these texts and tongues, however, the oracle also implies an irreducible foreignness that even the most rigorous dialectic cannot sublate.

This chapter describes how the reading of secular poets like Homer and Vergil came to chime with an ongoing debate about the possibility of double senses—and therefore ambiguity—in Old Testament prophecy. It centres on the mid-eighteenth-century figures William Warburton and George Benson. According to earlier Protestant scholars, every passage in the Bible must have one and only one literal sense—that intended by the writer—and some Hebrew prophecies referred literally to Jesus. However, others had a literal fulfilment in the prophet's own era, as well as a mystical sense ratified by a citation in the New Testament. Whereas Catholic scholars in the tradition of Nicholas of Lyra described both meanings of such passages as ‘literal’, most Protestants maintained that the prophetic one was mystical or spiritual. In any event, it was precisely such additional mystical senses that set Scripture apart from other kinds of text. The chapter then considers how, in the 1760s, German scholars—keen readers of Benson and other English theologians—began to reach a rationalist consensus on the unitary sense of prophecy.