The years from 1928 to 1930 witnessed a bitter struggle for the control of the German National People's Party (DNVP), the bastion of German conservatism in the Weimar Republic. One of the principal protagonists in this conflict was Count Kuno von Westarp, chairman of the DNVP from 1926 to 1928 and of the DNVP delegation to the Reichstag from 1924 to 1929. Westarp struggle with great determination to preserve the unity of the party in the face of a concerted effort from the radical Pan-German nationalists around the newly elected party chairman, film and press magnate Alfred Hugenberg. But Westarp's efforts on behalf of party unity ultimately failed as the moderates who stood on the DNVP's left wing abandoned the party in two secessions, the first in December 1929 and the second in July 1930. In the second of these Westarp himself left the party. In the meantime the DNVP had been transformed from a conservative Sammelpartei into an instrument of the radical right.

This article explores why slow and indirect media were regarded as particularly appropriate means in the US public diplomacy efforts towards Norway in the period 1950–65. The article traces how these strategies were carried out in practice by using as examples exchange programmes and the setting up of American Studies in Norway. The Norwegian case is seen in relation to similar efforts elsewhere, and the article discusses whether this case should be seen as a singular one or as a local variation of more general US public diplomacy strategies. In conclusion, it is suggested that the Norwegian case appears to be an almost ideal-typical example of how ‘culturalist’ public diplomacy approaches were mobilised for political purposes.

This article investigates the origins of modern citizenship in Portugal through the example of the historical construction of housing as a social right. It argues this process owes much to the centralisation and strengthening of the state undertaken by Salazar's ‘New State’ (1933–74), whose transformative project changed the nature of the relationship between the governing and the governed, making political claims based on social rights plausible. The ensuing political dynamic changed the nature of the social contract in Portugal, tying the legitimacy of the state to the provision of social rights, a factor which eventually contributed to the dictatorship's demise.

This article focuses on the remembrance of the deportations of Silesians to the Soviet Union in 1945, undertaken in Upper Silesia, Poland, after the collapse of communism. It explores the relationship between local elite-sponsored official remembrance of the deportations and the formation of regional identity in the context of the Upper Silesia's borderland locality and the post-war population movement. The article also investigates the role of public commemorations of the Silesian past in the construction of a Silesian national identity undertaken by the Silesian separatist movement that gained in popularity against the backdrop of the post-1989 de-industrialisation of the region, Poland's most important centre for coal mining industry.