ALBERT

Description: This volume looks at the Finnish-German military alliance (1941–1944) as a translation zone – a multilingual network of military, administrative and civilian encounters that was held together by linguistically versed soldiers and civilians acting as interpreters and translators. It focuses on interpreters and liaison officers of the Finnish Liaison Staff in Rovaniemi, who were assigned to the staffs of the German army units with the task of maintaining communication between the two armies and assisting German troops in their daily matters. Furthermore, attention is paid to Finnish civilians, especially women whose language skills made them candidates for a range of mediation tasks in the German units. The reconstruction of military interpreters’ and liaison officers’ tasks and mediation agency between the two military cultures is based on their war-time weekly reports, whereas the civilian interpreters’ experiences are drawn from a variety of autobiographical accounts, including interviews.

Description: Valco (1976–1980) was a state-owned company that manufactured cathode ray tubes for the television industry. The company’s scandalous failure has been widely identified as one of the largest investment errors in Finland’s economic history. This book is the first in-depth study of the roots, events, and consequences of that project. This study analyses Valco from a microhistorical perspective, looking at the numerous factors that led to its failure, from the company’s founding process to investigations after its demise. These events are linked to broader phenomena in economic and business history, such as the changing economic policy of the government and the emergence of global supply chains in the electronics industry. Valco is a significant single case with a concrete impact on Finland’s economic history. First, it changed the general perception of state-owned companies and, because of this, also more general perceptions of the role of the state in the economy. As a result, the initiative to develop the electronics industry was transferred to private companies such as Nokia. Second, Valco’s case revealed the problems of state ownership of companies in a very concrete way. Due to Valco’s failure, the objectives of state ownership were clarified, and the corporate governance system was modernised. In this way, Valco is linked to the modernization of Finnish state capitalism from the 1970s onwards.

Description: The great change in European relations with Russia took place in 1478 when Muscovy replaced the trading Republic of Novgorod as a neighbor of Sweden, Livonia and Lithuania. Western Europe was since that year bordering to a bellicose great power with large resources causing dread. The feelings of dread caused by Russia with Czars like Ivan the Terrible became a standing theme in printed matter as well as politics and the image of Russia became very much similar to the image of Turkey, which threatened Europe from South-East. Various, usually rather negative, stereotype expressions characterized the vocabulary of the 16th century. The Peace of Stolbova in 1617 started a period of successive change. The era of Sweden as a Great Power led to growing knowledge about Russia in almost every respect, but it was still based on the already accepted stereotypes. They started, however, typically to seem more diluted and thin with time. The image of Russia as a threat was to a growing extent replaced by an image of a possibility. The perhaps most remarkable but rather unoriginal printed Swedish description of Russia of the era was Regni Muschovotici Sciographia, published by Petrus Petrejus. At the final stage of Sweden’s era as a great power there was a substantial widening but also polarization of the information on Russia. The Russian reform process during Tsar Peter I also began to influence the minds after the turn of the century in 1700. One of the principal describers of this process was Lars Johan Malm (Ehrenmalm), whose large manuscript about the power of the Russian Empire of that time, Några Anmärkningar Angående det Ryska Rijkets Nuvarande Macht from 1714, never reached the printers due to intervention from censors.

Description: The book explores the discourses of modernism, contemporary art and art history writing as well as their interdisciplinary values and boundaries – and cases that do not fit within these boundaries.The articles explore the meanings of junk and relics, high art, design, and the intimate experience of art and public criticism. The themes explored in the book expand our views on the queer potential of colour, the meaning of detail, and the relationships between visual art and writing. The fourteen peer-reviewed case studies in the volume offer new insights from the fields of visual cultural studies, art history and gender studies. The articles in the anthology do not rely strictly on disciplinary boundaries but also open themselves up to broader fields of culture.

Description: This is the first study to examine Finnish trauma fiction in detail. The book discusses the novels of Katja Kettu, Sofi Oksanen, Elina Hirvonen and Emmi Itäranta, where historical and collective traumas meet stories of personal vulnerability. Traumatic Memory in Contemporary Prose Fiction addresses war traumas and marks left by terrorism, colonialism, domestic violence and sexual violence, and analyses the aspects of ecological trauma and future threats. The study combines the latest discussions on cultural memory studies and trauma theory with critical perspectives offered by feminist criticism and research in transnationalism. It illustrates how cultural narratives, literary conventions and aesthetic strategies regulate and produce traumatic experiences. Traumatic memory is not only a phenomenon dealing with the past, but it involves a wide range of individual, cultural, ecological, political and economic dimensions.

Description: Historical agreed minimum discharges of river Elbe at the czech-german border profile Hřensko/Schöna Discharges of the river Elbe at the border profile between the Czech Republic and Germany at Hřensko/ Schöna play an essential role for the suitability of the German river section downstream for shipping. A cascade of reservoirs upstream the border profile was mainly built between 1950 and 1964. Since then a significant supplemental low water management at the boarder profile is possible. Although the low wa¬ter control at the German-Czech boarder profile is currently managed by a network of German and Czech institutions the legal basis of this management regime is currently not fully understood. In particular, the question raised weather current management targets for low water supplement can be seen based on still valid German-Czech agreements between the former states German Democratic Republic and Czech Slovakian Socialistic Republic. This report summarizes the chronological follow up of the construction of the Czech reservoir system and the related agreements between the German and Czech site.The authors have assembled the development of the effectively agreed minimum discharges at the border profile ČSSR/GDR at Hřensko/Schöna. The available joint coordination statements between ČSSR and GDR during the period April 1983 and May 1988 were reviewed and compared to the recorded discharges. The capacity for low water supplements at Hřensko/Schöna increased since 1900 from 143,58 Mil. m³ to 2 566,24 Mil. m³ in 2010. The greatest parts of the total storage capacity are located in the Vltava and in the Ohře river basin with storage capacities of 1 894,03 Mil. m³ and 404,35 Mil. m³, respectively. The Vltava cascade is currently managed in a way that a minimum discharge is guaranteed of about 40,0 m³/s at barrage Vrané. This compares to a natural discharge situation with minimum flows between 12,0 to 15,0 m³/s. The barrage system in the Ohře river system can currently ensure minimum discharges of about 8,00 m³/s compared with natural discharges between 1,50 and 2,00 m³/s. The boarder profile at Hřensko/ Schöna is directly affected by the reservoir control in Vltava and Ohře. The GDR made several efforts to agree with the ČSSR on minimum discharge levels for the river Elbe at the border profile at Hřensko/Schöna. After years of negotiations minimum monthly medial discharges (Min MQ month) were defined for a hydrological year starting from November until October. However, these monthly medial values still allowed for shortfalls at the daily scale. Based on the monthly medial values two coordination arrangements were concluded between the ČSSR and the GDR about the supply of minimum discharge at their joint border profile at Hřensko/Schöna. The first started in April, 1983 and was valid till 1990. The agreement was updated and extended in May, 1988 till 2000. The lastly agreed monthly minimum values range between 86,8 m³/s in August and 185,2 m³/s in April. Although an agreement about these values exists, it never had a legally binding character. However, these values are still used as orientation for the control of Czech reservoirs in practise. In the past, the agreed minimum discharges felled only once below the limit. In July 1964, the observed monthly discharge was 89,1 m³/s which is 7.1 m³/s short of the agreed value of 96,2 m³/s. Climate change might lead to a more frequent short fall of the once agreed minimum values. Considering this fact and the informal nature of the current target values for control a new formal framework for the minimum flow regime at the German-Czech boarder might be in the interest of the German water users downstream.

Description: In den 10 Must-Knows aus der Biodiversitätsforschung legen 45 Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler fundiert und allgemein verständlich Fakten zur biologischen Vielfalt dar. Sie analysieren die komplexen Systeme der Erde, indem sie zehn Schlüsselbereiche hervorheben, von denen wiederum jeder untrennbar mit allen anderen verbunden ist. Sie zeigen Wege auf, um einen weiteren Verlust an Artenvielfalt und Ökosystemen zu stoppen und die biologische Vielfalt zu fördern. Ihr Ziel ist, für Politik und Gesellschaft wissenschaftlich gesicherte Bewertungen der aktuellen Erkenntnisse für bessere politische Entscheidungen und Maßnahmen auf lokaler, regionaler, nationaler und globaler Ebene zur Verfügung zu stellen, um die Vielfalt des Lebens – die Biodiversität – zu erhalten. Dies sind die 10MustKnows 2022: 1. Klima- und Biodiversitätsschutz zusammen verwirklichen 2. Planetare Gesundheit stärken 3. Unsichtbare Biodiversität beachten 4. Biokulturelle Lebensräume fördern 5. Wald nachhaltig nutzen 6. Landwirtschaft umbauen 7. Land und Ressourcen schützen 8. Transnationale Infrastrukturen und Bildung für Nachhaltigkeit 9. Zugang und offene Nutzung von Forschungsdaten sichern 10. Biodiversitätsfreundliche Anreize setzen