Christian churches are sometimes perceived as being hostile towards technology due to the supposed incompatibility of the cold, rational world of technology and the warm, humane organization of the church. Even when electronic data processing (EDP) was introduced in German-speaking Protestant churches in Western Europe, a lack of acceptance of technology was repeatedly problematized by church digitization pioneers as a central hurdle in church digitization processes. According to them, the “synchronization” (David Gugerli) of church and computer was therefore to prove particularly prone to conflict. This paper analyzes the discursive function of the recourse to the “technophobic church” (technikfeindliche Kirche) in digitization debates in the Swiss and West German Protestant churches from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. It argues that the portrayal of the church’s pronounced hostility to technology went beyond an empirically verifiable technophobia and served discursive purposes. The “technophobic church” and technophobia in the church were widely and publicly lamented in order to evoke widespread clichés that church digitization pioneers could use to mobilize support from the broader public, both inside and outside the church, for their position in inner-church disputes about power and hierarchy, as well as to conjure scenarios of computer use. These findings therefore suggest that the influence of cultural and technological pessimism in church circles is often overestimated.
In the mid-1950s, Vattenfall, the Swedish State Power Board, faced a severe acceptance crisis. In the postwar years, Vattenfall had become one of the main drivers of Sweden’s technological modernization through electrification and the exploitation of hydropower resources in Northern Sweden. Yet, this postwar hydro boom faced increasingly powerful protests from both civil society and local communities, putting Vattenfall’s construction plans at stake and spurring an intense public relations campaign. This paper examines Vattenfall’s PR materials, and especially the large body of films produced in the context of this acceptance crisis. The first half of the paper offers a close reading of these materials, demonstrating how Vattenfall addressed conflicts around hydropower exploitation as a matter of individual “adaptation” to modernity. With this framing, Vattenfall drew upon a much broader adaptation discourse, analyzed in the second half of the paper. This discourse shaped public and political debates about technological and social modernization in postwar Sweden and corresponded with the social engineering ideals of the “people’s home” (folkhemmet) and Sweden’s welfare state. Social scientists, politicians, managers, trade unionists, and others developed the idea that the challenges of modernization should be met by the adaptation of people’s individual behaviors and emotions to their rapidly changing social and technological environments. Arguing for a history of emotions approach in the study of histories of “technology acceptance,” this paper thus demonstrates how river engineering in postwar Sweden relied on emotional engineering techniques through PR: framing social conflicts over hydropower as individual adaptation processes facilitated the depoliticization of technological choice.
In the mid-1970s, politicians and regulatory experts considered that the West German energy system was at a crossroads. They discussed whether energy saving and renewable energies or nuclear energy should be supported as a long-term technology. The debate on technology acceptance was not only sparked by questions of economic efficiency and the risks of nuclear energy use. It was also shaped by the dispute over regulatory instruments, consumer participation, and the organization of the energy system. The example of energy saving shows how much these scientific and political debates were determined by fears of technological as well as political path dependencies and their repercussions for the state. The paper thus proposes that the acceptance of state regulation be considered, for a better understanding of technology acceptance. The analysis of both the scientific debates and political negotiation processes together with letters from citizens to the federal government show that the criterion of distributive fairness influenced the acceptance of energy saving as a technology. Scientists, politicians, and citizens widely acknowledged that energy saving was compatible with a fair distribution of technical progress, private comfort, and economic growth, which promoted its acceptance. Moreover, their interpretation of distributive fairness also reveals an affirmative attitude towards the state and its ability to implement an acceptable energy system.
Christian churches are sometimes perceived as being hostile towards technology due to the supposed incompatibility of the cold, rational world of technology and the warm, humane organization of the church. Even when electronic data processing (EDP) was introduced in German-speaking Protestant churches in Western Europe, a lack of acceptance of technology was repeatedly problematized by church digitization pioneers as a central hurdle in church digitization processes. According to them, the "synchronization" (David Gugerli) of church and computer was therefore to prove particularly prone to conflict. This paper analyzes the discursive function of the recourse to the "technophobic church" (technikfeindliche Kirche) in digitization debates in the Swiss and West German Protestant churches from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. It argues that the portrayal of the church's pronounced hostility to technology went beyond an empirically verifiable technophobia and served discursive purposes. The "technophobic church" and technophobia in the church were widely and publicly lamented in order to evoke widespread clichés that church digitization pioneers could use to mobilize support from the broader public, both inside and outside the church, for their position in inner-church disputes about power and hierarchy, as well as to conjure scenarios of computer use. These findings therefore suggest that the influence of cultural and technological pessimism in church circles is often overestimated.
In March 1959, the small parish of Oldbury-on-Severn in Gloucestershire was singled out to become the site of one of the last reactors in the United Kingdom’s first “generation” of atomic power plants. The initial reception was ambiguous. Local people feared the loss of land, of traditional fishing rights in the nearby River Severn, and radioactive fallout. In unison, the parish council rejected the project, but accepted that the majority of Thornbury Rural District, to which it belonged, welcomed it as something that was in the national interest, was deemed safe by experts, and was a source of pride. In May, an exhibition on nuclear energy was opened in Thornbury to convince local people of the technology’s benefits. It was a first step in a long row of measures taken to argue for the power station and its positive contribution to the area. This paper demonstrates that the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and with it, the British state, as an early adopter of nuclear power, never ceased to fight for the technology’s acceptance, but faced challenges ranging from initial local skepticism to transnational catastrophes such as Chernobyl. In doing so, the CEGB resorted to a variety of measures, from the initial exhibition to large open days, and profited from institutionalized ones, namely public inquiries and a “Local Liaison Committee” functioning as a hinge between the power plant and its neighborhood. The paper thereby uncovers the often mundane practices by which technology acceptance was produced and maintained on the ground.
In the past, historical research concerning the body supply of the Viennese Anatomical Institute during the inter-war period, the Second World War and the early years of the Second Austrian Republic was largely hampered by the fact that the so called "Leichenbücher" or "Leicheneingangsbücher" (documenting every single body, body part, etc. the institute received) of the Anatomical Institute had been deemed lost. A recent find at the Department of Anatomy in Vienna has now provided us with this long missing source material reaching with a short interruption from 1924 all the way into the first decades of the Second Republic.While this gap in source material has presented itself as an in some cases insurmountable issue for researchers, for example regarding the NS-era and the Pernkopf-Atlas during the late 1990ies, this find now provides ample opportunity for inquiries both for this time frame and beyond. This contribution shows the value the newly rediscovered books hold as source material based on a short study regarding the bodies of the nine individuals whose bodies were transferred to the Viennese Anatomical Institute after their execution during the Second Republic between 1945 and 1950. This example illustrates that this find will enable new research in the form of single case studies, serial inquiries and statistical analysis alike which without this discovery would remain impossible.
While the genetically and hormonally controlled prenatal development of male genital organs has been described in increasing detail since the beginning of the 20th century, and several genes involved in ovarian development have now been identified, the hormonal factors involved in female genital differentiation remain largely unexplored to the present day. The physiological model that continues to prevail today follows a binary logic of the presence and absence of hormonal and genetic factors: masculinity appears as the result of active biological processes, while femininity appears as their absence and passive "default pathway". Historically, this model can be traced back primarily to the animal experiments conducted by the French embryologist and endocrinologist Alfred Jost in the 1940s. Feminist criticism of science, some of which comes from the life sciences themselves, has for several decades been problematising the continuing dichotomy of activity and passivity as a reproduction of traditional cultural assumptions about gender, as well as the desideratum of researching prenatal female sex differentiation, which in their view requires explanation. This article takes up this longstanding critique and expands on it with a historical analysis of the material and technical conditions of early embryonic sex development research in the first half of the 20th century. Based on four central experimental systems-(1) the anatomical and morphological studies of Pol Bouin and Paul Ancel around 1900, (2) research on Freemartinism in the 1910s, (3) Eugen Steinach's sex reversal experiments in the 1910s, and (4) Vera Dantschakoff's embryological sex hormone research in the 1930s-it is shown how the binary, masculinity-focused model of embryonic sex development was already taking shape before the 1940s under the influence of specific material and technical research conditions of the early endocrinological experimental systems. The aim is to highlight the role of these material and technical conditions, and in particular of hormones as epistemic, technical and sometimes rebellious things within these systems, and to discuss possible path dependencies up to current experimental configurations in sex development research.
In der Vergangenheit waren historische Forschungen zur Versorgung des Wiener Anatomischen Instituts mit Leichenmaterial in der Zwischenkriegszeit, während des Zweiten Weltkriegs und den ersten Jahren der Zweiten Republik dadurch erschwert, dass die Leichenbücher beziehungsweise Leicheneingangsbücher des Instituts (sie dienten der Dokumentation der persönlichen Daten Verstorbener) für diese Zeit als verschollen gegolten hatten. Stellte diese Lücke im Quellenbestand etwa bei den Forschungen zur NS-Zeit und dem Pernkopf-Atlas in den späten 1990ern und auch bisher ein großes Hindernis dar, so ermöglicht der dank eines Fundes (wieder) erschlossene Bestand sowohl dafür als auch für andere Forschungsbereiche neue, detaillierte Studien. Der an der Wiener Abteilung für Anatomie archivierte Fund umfasst eine beinahe durchgehende Reihe der Wiener Leichenbücher von 1924 bis in die Zweite Republik. Dieser Beitrag verdeutlicht anhand eines kurzen Fallbeispiels – es widmet sich der Verbringung der Körper jener neun Personen, die während der Zweiten Republik von 1945 bis 1950 hingerichtet und im Anschluss an die Wiener Anatomie geliefert wurden –, die Aussagekraft und den Wert dieses lange verloren geglaubten und großen Quellenkorpus für neue historische Forschungsvorhaben sowohl als Einzelfallstudien als auch in Form serieller oder breit angelegter statistischer Untersuchungen.
Während die genetisch und hormonell gesteuerte pränatale Ausbildung männlicher Geschlechtsorgane seit Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts zunehmend detailliert beschrieben wurde und inzwischen auch für die ovarielle Entwicklung mehrere beteiligte Gene identifiziert sind, bleiben die hormonellen Faktoren der weiblichen Geschlechtsdifferenzierung bis in die Gegenwart weitgehend unerforscht. Das bis heute leitende physiologische Modell folgt einer binären Logik der An- und Abwesenheit hormoneller sowie genetischer Faktoren: Männlichkeit erscheint darin als Resultat aktiver biologischer Prozesse, Weiblichkeit hingegen als deren Ausbleiben und passive „Standardeinstellung“. Historisch wird diese Modellbildung allem voran auf die tierexperimentellen Arbeiten des französischen Embryologen und Endokrinologen Alfred Jost aus den 1940er Jahren zurückgeführt. Feministische Wissenschaftskritik, die teilweise auch aus den Biowissenschaften selbst kommt, problematisiert bereits seit mehreren Jahrzehnten die darin fortwirkende Dichotomie von Aktivität und Passivität als Reproduktion tradierter kultureller Vorannahmen über Geschlecht sowie das aus ihrer Sicht erklärungsbedürftige Desiderat der Erforschung der weiblichen Geschlechtsdifferenzierung. Der vorliegende Beitrag knüpft an diese Kritik an und erweitert sie um eine historische Analyse der materiell-technischen Bedingungen der frühen embryonalen Geschlechtsentwicklungsforschung in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Anhand von vier zentralen Experimentalsystemen – (1) den anatomisch-morphologischen Untersuchungen von Pol Bouin und Paul Ancel um 1900, (2) der Freemartin-Forschung der 1910er Jahre, (3) den Geschlechtsumwandlungsexperimenten von Eugen Steinach in den 1910er Jahren sowie (4) der embryologischen Sexualhormonforschung von Vera Dantschakoff in den 1930er Jahren – wird aufgezeigt, wie sich das binäre, auf Männlichkeit konzentrierte Modell der embryonalen Geschlechtsentwicklung bereits vor den 1940er Jahren unter dem Einfluss spezifischer materieller und technischer Forschungsbedingungen der frühen endokrinologischen Experimentalsysteme herausbildete. Ziel ist es, die Rolle dieser materiell-technischen Bedingungen und insbesondere von Hormonen als epistemische, technische und teils widerspenstige Dinge innerhalb dieser Systeme sichtbar zu machen und mögliche Pfadabhängigkeiten bis in gegenwärtige experimentelle Konfigurationen der Geschlechtsentwicklungsforschung zu diskutieren.
This article provides a historical analysis of the institutional, legal, and psychological foundations of the study of interrogation in the post-Stalinist GDR. Drawing on archival and published documents, the development of the Criminological Section and Forensic Psychology at Humboldt University from the 1960s to the early 1990s is reconstructed. After giving an overview of the institutional context and the main actors in this field, the analysis highlights the relevance of psychological knowledge from the perspective of GDR criminologists. These aspects include the preparation phase, the initial contact with the defendant, the continuous dissection of statements during the interrogation, and the overarching goal of gaining a complete picture of the suspect’s personality. It is argued that the defining feature of interrogation practice in the GDR was not so much the technical details as the overarching aim of “educating” the suspect, who was to be persuaded by the interrogator not only to confess to the crime, but also to show remorse and find his way back into socialism.
In this case study, I focus on two previously underresearched groups in the history of police interrogation: officers of the Female Criminal Police, established around 1926, and schoolteachers who, beginning in 1924, collaborated with the Leipzig Criminal Office as so-called criminal aides (Kriminalhelfer). Both the Female Criminal Police and the criminal aides of the Leipzig Criminal Office claimed a distinct niche within the domain of interrogation practices. They publicly asserted a superior aptitude for questioning children and adolescents, particularly in cases involving the sexual abuse of minors (then classified as Sittlichkeitsdelikte, that is, “moral offenses”) under §176 of the Imperial Penal Code. The article situates these two groups within a broader discourse about interrogation methods that emerged around 1900, a debate increasingly shaped by new psychological approaches—above all, by the emerging field of the psychology of testimony (Aussagepsychologie). The question of which epistemic persona could most competently interrogate minors reflected, on one level, professional interests—the pursuit of new occupational opportunities for women and for teachers—and, on another, the contested epistemic authority and social recognition tied to particular forms of subjectivity. In the longer run, female police officers succeeded in establishing their legitimacy because they offered a model that could be integrated into existing police structures: a model of psychologically trained, empathetic officers responsible for cases involving children and young people. Teachers, by contrast, were unable to articulate a comparable epistemic or administrative framework, and their involvement in interrogation practices remained highly localized and short-lived.
The article investigates the psychological evaluations (so-called Gemütszustandsuntersuchungen) that were used in legal interdiction proceedings at Berlin's district courts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The evaluations were undertaken in order to help judges decide whether or not individuals-usually, but not always feeble-minded or mentally ill ones-should be placed under legal guardianship. The following themes are addressed: the evolving procedural statutes that governed the exercise of judicial discretion and the presentation of scientific evidence; the collaborative interaction of judges and forensic experts during the interrogations; the instability of written transcripts and recourse to bodily and behavioral attributes in the face of interrogative failure; and the heated political exchanges about the psy-disciplines and their role in the abrogation or abridgment of citizens' rights in Wilhelmine Berlin. The article will first survey the specific statutory context that framed guardianship cases in Berlin's district court (Amtsgericht). It will then summarize contemporary debates about reforms to procedural law and the administrative adjudication of those cases. Against this backdrop, the analysis will then turn to an examination of court transcripts of the interrogations in order to assess the practice and often contested standing of psy-experts in the courtrooms of Wilhelmine Berlin.
In 1904, Max Wertheimer and Julius Klein published a paper that shook the worlds of criminal justice and psychology. They proposed using psychological experiments, particularly word association tests, to assess whether criminal suspects had committed a particular crime. Over the following months and years, almost every German-language journal on psychology or criminal law, as well as many foreign-language journals, published something on this so-called Tatbestandsdiagnostik. Some hailed it as the “criminal investigation of the future.” However, Tatbestandsdiagnostik’s downfall was as swift as its rise to fame. By the advent of World War I, most psychologists and jurists had concluded that the association method was of no use in legal and police practice. This article traces the history of Tatbestandsdiagnostik as a case of how new forms of psychological knowledge circulated, were evaluated, and made an impact. It argues that proponents’ insistence on the method’s objectivity, its ambiguous relationship with psychoanalysis, and the possibility of demonstrating it to students and colleagues facilitated both its rapid rise and its demise.
