Day of DH 2014 One of the uses of Digital Humanities is to enlarge the community of scholars. Building up to a paper at the annual German Studies Association conference in September, I will be researching how the Open Source model of creating software and hardware can be applied to the humanities. Specifically, what does …
Zotero Bibliography for Nazi Tunnels
I’ve been meaning to get this set up for quite a while, and now that I actually have some solid sources (all secondary for now), I am able to put this together. Zotero is a great bibliography tool, and the web version allows anyone to collaborate on a group bibliography. This will be helpful in …
Work at the Porta Labor Camps
Job List Reinhold Blanke-Bohne wrote a completed his dissertation on the Nazi SS labor camps at Porta Westfalica in 1984. There were many different commands that inmates were assigned to; they switched commands often for various reasons. Reinhold Blanke-Bohne has a list of 26 different commands; not all of them were in existence at the …
The Mechanics of Writing a Dissertation
Update from this post: Setting the Pace from January 3, 2013. I’m a nerdy, geeky type of guy, fascinated with technology, so I just had to figure out a way to keep myself on track using a spreadsheet. I chose Google Docs through my Google account as it is safely backed up online and I …
Finding sources
There are many ways and means of finding sources. Even though I should be just in the writing stages by now, I’m still finding sources to add to my collection. I was reading in Pierre Bleton’s book “Das Leben ist schön!” (no relation to the film of the same name, this book came out first), …
Happurg: Week Four
The final tunnel location that I was able to visit was in the small village of Happurg, near Nuremberg. I was unable to contact anybody from the village of Happurg before arriving, but found a hotel close to where I suspected the tunnel location might be. In the evening of my arrival I walked around …
Nordhausen: Week Three
The largest memorial to the underground factories in Germany is near Nordhausen, at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. I was able to visit with Jens-Christian Wagner, the director of the memorial. We had a great discussion on the importance of memorials and the purpose they have in contemporary Germany. We spoke on the many different …
Langenstein: Week Three
I was able to visit three other tunnel locations, besides the tunnels at Porta Westfalica. The first of these former projects is near the small village of Langenstein. From the train station, it is a 5-kilometer walk to the memorial museum. Along the way I found another monument and memorial. It was originally built to …
Neuengamme: Second Week Part 2
South of Hamburg, and just south of the town of Bergedorf, lies the rural area known as Neuengamme. During World War II this area was turned into a large concentration camp, housing mainly political and war prisoners from surrounding countries. During the last few years of the war, many of these prisoners were taken to …
Porta Westfalica: Second Week
My first week in Germany was very lonely. I’m such an introvert, so it’s my own fault, but still. That’s the reality. On Saturday I took the train to Minden. I dropped my things off at the hotel, then took the train further to Nienburg. I served there as a missionary for my church 16 …