Data

Vladimir Peninsky was a Russian refugee, spy, collaborator and composer in Luxembourg. His unknown and notable biography is the focus of the article.

Although the voice of migrants and minorities has increasingly being heard in migration research, studies of past narratives of migration remain comparatively rare. The reason for this lies in the fact that accessing historical records of migrants’ personal accounts is technically difficult. Voicing the experiences and ‘inner life’ of migrants, the immigrant press represents a suitable compromise.

Stefan Krebs uses the case of Germany to investigate maintenance and repair as a central part of automobility. The chapter will look at two sides of car repair as the need to maintain the mobility function and the practice of a hobbyist consumer activity that promised status, community and identity. It highlights four aspects that framed repair as a necessary part of car consumption: the (un-)reliability of automobile technology; the emergence of a car repair infrastructure; repair costs, which determined to a large extent whether one could afford to drive a car; and DIY repair practices.

Gerson Aronov came from Smolensk in western Russia and was sent as a soldier to France in 1914, where he was taken prisoner by the Germans. After World War I, he worked in the steel industry in Lorraine and in Esch/Alzette. Together with his Luxembourgian wife Sophie Herz from Medernach, he opened a confectionery store in Differdange in 1937. Under German occupation, Aronow was forced to work for Paul Wurth and their business was confiscated.

Belgian historical research concerning the repression of collaboration after the Second World War, has mostly overlooked the East Cantons. This mostly German-speaking region only became a part of Belgium in 1920, as a consequence of the treaty of Versailles. The integration of these populations turned out to be a very complicated process. In 1940, Nazi-Germany did not only occupy the East Cantons like the rest of Belgium, but annexed them back into the Third Reich.

The future of historiography seems to belong to Public History Thomas Cauvin author of the path breaking book Public History A Textbook of Practice, even argues that we should all become public historians. In his book and as a public historian he explored fields as different as brewing and food history digital public history controversies over monuments public history as empowerment and the possibility of an international public history.

The automated enrichment of mass-digitised document collections using techniques such as text mining is becoming increasingly popular. Enriched collections offer new opportunities for interface design to allow data-driven and visualisation-based search, exploration and interpretation. Most such interfaces integrate close and distant reading and represent semantic, spatial, social or temporal relations, but often lack contrastive views.