'Zusammenwirken' oder 'Wettstreit der Nationen'

Autor: Kärin Nickelsen, Liza Soutschek
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin. 27:229-263
ISSN: 1420-9144
0036-6978
Popis: Around 1900, one of the last major challenges in the exploration of the Earth was to map the largely untouched continent of Antarctica. Many nations participated in this endeavour, including the German Empire, which launched two expeditions before World War One: Erich von Drygalski led the first German expedition to Antarctica between 1901 and 1903 and Wilhelm Filchner led the second in 1911 through 1912. Recent literature has, for the most part, described the relationship between the expeditions of the different nations as having been focused on either cooperation or rivalry. This paper argues, however, that a strained simultaneity of international cooperation and rivalry characterized the German Antarctic expeditions. From the outset of their expeditions, the historical actors employed both modes of interaction. In their rhetoric, they referred to them as argumentative resources, and they chose their course of action following the logic of cooperation or competition, depending on the particular circumstances. The actors took pains, however, to keep a balance between the two modes of interaction in order to be able to benefit from advantages arising both from competition and cooperation. They also ensured that the rules of competition were loosely enough defined to allow them some leeway. When it came to a retrospective evaluation of the expeditions by the German public, it became clear, though, that their strategy had not been successful: neither the actors' praise for the cooperation between nations, nor the emphasis they placed on their scientific achievements was able to change the public's perception in imperial Germany that these two expeditions had been failures in the struggle to reach latitudes as southern as possible.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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