Series: German and European Studies

Music was an integral part of statecraft and identity formation in the Third Reich. Structured thematically and semiotically around the Wagnerian tetralogy of the Ring cycle, Hitler’s Twilight of the Gods provides a sonic read of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Alexandra Birch sheds light on the specific type of music promoted under Nazism, linked to larger Teutonic...

In 1949, the year of the Berlin airlift and the founding of the two post-war German states, Elisabeth Kusian (nurse, black marketeer, morphine and methamphetamine addict, and pathological liar) garroted and dismembered two people in a mini crime spree. Her actions both fascinated and terrified the public—how could this woman, a nurse, commit such a violent act? West Berlin detectives...