The politics of ethnic violence attained new dimensions during the First World War. Not only were crimes committed by foreign armies against the "enemy" population, but violence by organs of the state against sections of their own inhabitants also reached unprecedented dimensions and bequeathed to the post-war period the ideal of a purportedly homogenous nationalistic people. During the Balkan wars of 1912-13 it had already come to unilaterally forced as well as negotiated population shifts. During the First World War the Habsburg military took action in the frontline areas of Galicia against its own Ukrainian and in the Balkans against its own Serb populations, which found themselves suspected of disloyalty. In the German Empire thoughts about a Polish border strip were linked to initial deliberations about ethnic cleansing ("völkische Flurbereinigung"). In Russia expulsions and deportations from different territories were aimed especially against the Jewish and Muslim sectors of the population, and in the course of the war against Poles and Ukrainians as well. In the Ottoman Empire the Armenian genocide was embedded in an extensive population policy that affected both the Pontic Greeks and the Kurdish population.

Although the magnitude of radical population politics during the First World War with its precursors in the Balkan wars, the post-war struggles in the Ottoman Empire as well as in Russia appears obvious, there has been very little undertaken to view it from a comparative perspective, which could help to clear up many questions.

Conference Organisers:  Lepsiushaus Potsdam, Universität Potsdam (Lehrstuhl für Militärgeschichte / Kulturgeschichte der Gewalt)

To pre-register for the conference, please email to anmeldung@lepsiushaus-potsdam.de

Conference Venues:  Universität Potsdam, Am Neuen Palais, Haus 9 (Raum 1.12), 14469 Potsdam (29 / 30 September) | Lepsiushaus Potsdam, Große Weinmeisterstr. 45, 14469 Potsdam (1 October)

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Programme:

29 September 2016

16.00  Registration Opens

18.00  Opening Remarks

Sönke Neitzel (Universität Potsdam) | Rolf Hosfeld (Lepsiushaus Potsdam)

Keynote  -  Ronald G. Suny (University of Michigan):  Imperial Choices - Perceiving Threats and the Descent to Genocide

Reception

30 September 2016

09.30  Panel I  -  Border(lands) Becoming Blurred. Austro-Hungarian Warfare, Occupation Policy, and Ethnic Cleansing

Chair:  Sönke Neitzel (Universität Potsdam)

Jonathan Gumz (University of Birmingham):  The Habsburg Army and the War Within - The Self-Destruction of a State

Hannes Leidinger (Universität Wien):  Systematization of Hatred. Dangers of Escalation and Genocidal Violence in Habsburg´s Warfare, 1914-1918

Heiko Brendel (Universität Potsdam):  Between the Ottoman and the Serb Yoke Austro-Hungarian Population Policy in Occupied Montenegro, 1916-1918

Commentary:  Michael Schwartz (Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin)

Discussion

12.00  Lunch

13.00  Panel II  -  Ottoman Borderlands. Social Engineering, Military Crisis and Genocide

Chair:  Roy Knocke (Lepsiushaus Potsdam)

Isa Blumi (University of Stockholm):  The Fine Line between Genocide and Defeat - The Forgotten Roles of Smugglers in the Demographic Regime of World War I - Ottomans, the Arabian and Albanian Fronts

Thomas Schmutz (University of Newcastle, Australia):  Between Empires - Violence, Dynamics and Interaction in the Ottoman-Russian Borderlands

Emre Erol (Sabanci University):  Towards a More Holistic History of Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire - The Unionists, Greeks and Armenians, 1913-1918

Commentary:  Mark Levene (University of Southampton)

Diskussion

15.30  Coffee

16.00  Panel III  -  Paramilitary, Escalation of Violence and Creating a Homeland

Chair:  Bernd Lemke (ZMSBW Potsdam)

Oktay Özel (Bilkent University Ankara):  Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa’s Role in the Armenian Genocide. A Reinterpretation

Hilmar Kaiser:  The Der Zor Massacres

M. Talha Çiçek (University of London):  Immigrating Empire - Djemal Pasha, Unionist Government and the Arab Exiles to Anatolia during the Great War

Commentary:  Nader Sohrabi (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)

Discussion

18.30  End of Day 2

1 October 2016

09.30  Panel IV  -  Russian Empire. Forms of Nationalizing the Borderlands

Chair:  Hülya Adak (Sabancı University Istanbul)

Konrad Zieliński (University of Lublin):  The Jews and the Bolsheviks. The October Revolution and Escalation of Radical Anti-Semitism in the Polish Lands during the WWI and the First Years of Independent Poland

Serhiy Choliy (National Technical University of Ukraine / Kyiv Polytechnic Institute):  War as a Model of Population Displacement in the Modern World - Galicia and its Inhabitants in WWI 

Peter Holquist (University of Pennsylvania):  The Soviet Policy of Decossackization during the Russian Civil War, 1919

Commentary:  Michael A. Reynolds (Princeton University)

Discussion

12.00  Lunch

13.30  Panel V  -  Population Policy. Inspiration and Reception in the Context of War

Chair: Bastian Matteo Scianna (Universität Potsdam)

Arno Barth (Universität Duisburg-Essen):  The Securitization of Minorities in World War I

Petra Svoljšak (University of Nova Gorica):  The Italian Policy and the First World War - The Slovanian Case

Christin Pschichholz (Universität Potsdam):  German Empire - Imperial Aspiration and the Reception of Ethnic Violence

Commentary:  Ulrich Sieg (Universität Marburg)

Discussion

16.00  End of Conference

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Contact:

Dr. Christin Pschichholz

Universität Potsdam / Lepsiushaus Potsdam

(t)   0331 581 645 13

(f)   0331 581 645 19

(@)  pschichholz@lepsiushaus-potsdam.de