Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 136, Issue 2, 2023

‘More than ever I feel you as if you were near me’. National unity and proximity in the radio speeches of King George VI and Queen Wilhelmina (1939-1945)

This article focuses on how King George VI of the United Kingdom and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands presented themselves in their radio speeches during World War II. Radio served as a tool for propaganda and a new way for rulers to reach the people directly. This article explores the emergence of the modern media monarchy, founded on proximity and accessibility rather than distance and reverence. The meaning and purpose of monarchy was increasingly defined by its relationship with the people. Monarchs spoke on radio in order to legitimise their power and position in a changing world. Radio speeches consolidated their position in the nation, based on shared characteristics and experiences, shared values in opposition to the enemy, and shared membership of their communities. Their different wartime experiences and physical distance from the people required a new and distinct rhetoric in order to achieve this goal.

The shifted weight of German history. The Historikerstreit 2.0 in the light of changing research, public debate and memory culture since the 1980s

This article places the so-called Catechism Debate or Historikerstreit 2.0 in the wider context of political debates, cultural memory and historical research since the 1980s. On the one hand, it argues that the context of the Historikerstreit of the 1980s differed vastly from the later Historikerstreit 2.0. While the former was a typically West German debate among male historians during the Cold War, the latter is a much more international debate in which both male and female intellectuals participate in the context of a globalized world. On the other hand, this study shows that debates about the uniqueness of the Holocaust have never really ended since the 1980s and continue to this day. The Historikerstreit of the 1980s definitely influenced social debates, memory culture and historical research in the 1990s. In the 2000s, colonial history brought new perspectives to Holocaust and Genocide Studies paving the way for the Catechism Debate in the 2020s. Societal debates, cultural memory and historical research are more interdependent than often presumed.

Er zijn zowel tegen de Canon van Nederland als de onlangs gelanceerde Canon van Vlaanderen bezwaren geopperd. In dit artikel gaan we in op de plaats van een canon in het geschiedenisonderwijs. We laten zien dat critici, waaronder de auteurs van het standpunt van de Vlaamse Koninklijke Academie, de inhoud van de Canon verwarren met de didactische mogelijkheden van een canon. Aan de hand van drie belangrijke kritiekpunten bespreken we de mogelijke didactische functie van een canon. We gaan in op hoe een canon (1) de historische interesse van leerlingen kan stimuleren, (2) het uitbouwen van een historisch referentiekader kan ondersteunen en (3) leerlingen kan helpen om historisch te leren denken en redeneren. We plaatsen een canon tot slot in een breder perspectief van krachtige kennis en laten daarbij zien dat een canon in het onderwijs geen koesteren van het verleden hoeft te zijn, maar juist een impuls kan geven voor dialoog.