American cinema and the construction of masculinity in film in the Federal Republic after 1945.

Since 1945, film in the Federal Republic has maintained an ambivalent relationship to American cinema and its embedded ideologies and nowhere is this more evident than in (West) German film's representations of masculinity. This article focuses on three historical moments when political and social shifts resulted in a problematising of male identities in the Federal Republic: the mid-1950s, the early 1970s and the late 1990s. Cinema responded to a perceived destabilisation of gender norms by exploring constructions of German masculinity in relation to the ambivalently received models of male identity offered by American cinema. With a detailed analysis of three specific examples ­ Georg Tressler's Die Halbstarken (1956), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Der amerikanische Soldat (1970) and Fatih Akin's Kurz und schmerzlos (1998) ­ this article investigates the manner in which German cinema engages with these competing conceptions of masculinity and demonstrates the ways in which divergent understandings of gender identity can impact on representations of national and ethnic identity.

When East meets West: a longitudinal examination of the relationship between group relative deprivation and intergroup contact in reunified Germany.

Intergroup contact and group relative deprivation have both been shown to play a key role in the understanding of intergroup relations. Nevertheless, we know little about their causal relationship. In order to shed some light on the directionality and causality of the relationship between intergroup contact and group relative deprivation, we analysed responses by East and West Germans from k= 97 different cities, collected 6 (N(T)(1) = 1,001), 8 (N(T)(2) = 747), and 10 years (N(T)(3) = 565) after reunification. Multi-level cross-lagged analyses showed that group relative deprivation at T1 led to more (rather than less) intergroup contact between East and West Germans 2 years as well as 4 years later. We found no evidence for the reverse causal relationship, or moderation by group membership. Furthermore, admiration mediated the positive effect of relative deprivation on intergroup contact for both East and West Germans. This intriguing finding suggests that intergroup contact may be used as a proactive identity management strategy by members of both minority and majority groups.

Has East Germany overtaken West Germany? Recent trends in order-specific fertility.

Some 20 years after reunification, the contrast between East and West Germany offers a natural experiment for studying the degree of persistence of Communist-era family patterns, the effects of economic change, and fertility postponement. After reunification, period fertility rates plummeted in the former East Germany to record low levels. Since the mid-1990s, however, period fertility rates have been rising in East Germany, in contrast to the nearly constant rates seen in the West. By 2008, the TFR of East Germany had overtaken that of the West. We explore why fertility in East Germany is higher than in West Germany, despite unfavorable economic circumstances in the East. We address this and related questions by (a) presenting an account of the persisting East/West differences in attitudes toward and constraints on childbearing, (b) conducting an order-specific fertility analysis of recent fertility trends, and (c) projecting completed fertility for the recent East and west German cohorts. In addition to using the Human Fertility Database, perinatal statistics allow us to calculate a tempo-corrected TFR for East and West Germany.

Strange old worlds: socio-critical reports about old-age experiences in West German print media (1970s-1990s).

This article examines West German images of old age and the elderly in a period when this increasingly became a topical issue. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the elderly were the subject of socio-critical reports in leading political magazines like Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and Stern. In these specific journalistic formats, the media entered unfamiliar places like old people's homes, the elderly's private apartments or tea dances for senior citizens. By analysing the language used in such media reports, this article shows continuity and change in attitudes towards the elderly, explores the impact of the new old-age model 'the young at heart', and the relevance of gender and generational ascriptions. In doing so, this article uncovers the recent historical context of current social debates about old age.

"Agricultural Statecraft" in the Cold War: a case study of Poland and the West from 1945 to 1957.

This paper examines how the rise and fall of Polish agriculture affected the larger political and economic relationship among Poland and three key members of the western alliance - the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Federal Republic of Germany - in the first decade of the Cold War. This period is revealing precisely because the reversal of fortunes in the Polish agricultural economy required the Polish government and some western counterparts to maneuver through periods of both agricultural advantage and disadvantage. Agricultural strategies as means and ends motivated the Polish, British, West German, and American governments to actions that bent, stretched, and limited some well-established practices in Cold War relations across divided Europe. By explicating the political consequences of changing flows of agricultural exports and imports in one specific context, this essay serves as case study of the role of agriculture in the global context of the Cold War.

Genital and nongenital nonmelanoma skin cancer: more epidemiological studies are needed.

Although black men in the United States have a lower mortality of nongenital nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) than white men, they have a higher mortality of genital NMSC than white men. Mortality of NMSC has declined over time. Ethnicity-specific incidence and survival analyses of NMSC can be used to determine to what degree earlier detection and/or more efficient therapies have contributed to these observations.

How robust is the IAT? Measuring and manipulating implicit attitudes of East- and West-Germans.

We investigated consequences of priming East-West-German related self-knowledge for the strength of implicit, ingroup-directed positive evaluations among East- and West-Germans. Based on previous studies we predicted opposite effects of self-knowledge priming for East- and West-Germans. Since in general the East-German stereotype is regarded as more negative than the West-German one, bringing to mind East-West-related self-knowledge (relative to neutral priming) was expected to attenuate ingroup favoritism for East-Germans, but to increase it for West-Germans. After having fulfilled the priming tasks, participants worked on an IAT-version in which the to be classified stimuli were East- or West-German city names (dimension 1) and positive or negative adjectives (dimension 2). Results of Experiment 1 showed (a) that East- and West-German students implicitly evaluated their ingroups as more positive than the outgroups and (b) confirmed the predictions of the priming influence. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with more representative samples from East- and West-Germany. The results are discussed with regard to underlying processes of implicit attitudes in intergroup contexts.

The personal-group discrepancy: Is there a common information basis for personal and group judgment?

In contrast to motivational accounts of the personal-group discrepancy, results from this article suggest that the discrepancy is explained by aggregating different sets of comparison outcomes for either personal or group ratings. Results from a longitudinal study with East German (the minority group) and West German (the majority group) samples confirm the personal-group discrepancy and support our approach. First, social comparisons influenced evaluations of economic situation at both group and personal levels. Second, ratings of group versus personal economic situation were based on different sets of comparisons. Third, the mean structure of both sets of comparison outcomes mirrored the personal-group discrepancy. Fourth, an interaction between personal-group discrepancy and group status supported the authors' suggestions-concerning the direction of the discrepancy.

The daily life of elderly Germans: activity patterns, personal control, and functional health.

Aging processes are often described as an interacting system of personal and environmental conditions. It is surprising, therefore, to find an almost complete lack of reliable data describing the everyday lives of the elderly in terms of external components such as type of activities, locations, and companionship. The present study is an attempt to remedy this lack of information and thereby provide a basis for a better understanding of aging processes. Forty-nine mobile and independently living elderly people (mean age = 72.7) recorded their daily activities over a period of 6 months. During a randomly selected week per month they kept a prestructured diary about what activities they engaged in, where, when, and with whom. In addition, functional health and personal control beliefs were assessed. The diaries were coded along 37 activity categories (inter-rater reliability estimated via Cohen's Kappa: M = .93), 5 categories for location and 6 categories for companionship. The major findings can be summarized as follows: The typical activity profile is characterized, in terms of highest frequency, by obligatory activities. In terms of time, however, they make up but little more than half of the day, predominantly the mornings. Afternoons and evenings, were mostly spent with leisure activities. The paths of daily lives of the elderly were marked by two geographic domains. The first and foremost is the home, followed by public places. With regard to the relationship between activities and personal control, we find a close relationship particularly when functional health is low.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

[Dengue fever with hemorrhagic manifestations after a stay in Thailand]. / Denguefieber mit hämorrhagischen Manifestationen nach Thailandaufenthalt.

On returning from a 24-day long stay in Thailand a 30-year-old German woman fell ill with high fever and head and limb aches. Soon after a confluent petechial exanthem was noted, as well as conjunctival and gastrointestinal bleedings. Biochemical findings (fall in haemoglobin concentration and haematocrit, leucopenia and thrombocytopenia, rise in lactate dehydrogenase) and a rise in Dengue antibody titre to 1 : 320 (on the 13th day of illness) confirmed the diagnosis of Dengue fever with haemorrhagic manifestations. This mosquito-transmitted viral disease, while so far only rarely reported in tourists, should be considered in the differential diagnosis of fever of undetermined origin in travellers to the tropics.