Paths Out of the Apocalypse

Paths out of the Apocalypse fundamentally rethinks some key debates in the scholarship on early 20th-century Central Europe, the First World War, violence, nationalism and modern European comparative social and cultural history, considering the population of the hinterland as an active subject that decisively shaped the outcomes of the war.

Ota Konrád is an Associate Professor of Modern History and Director of Modern History PhD Program at Charles University in Prague. He has worked on topics dealing with the history of the humanities, history of the foreign policy, history of WWI in Central Europe, the cultural history of violence, and contemporary Austrian history. He is the author of Geisteswissenschaften im Umbruch: Die Fächer Geschichte, Germanistik und Slawistik an der Deutschen Universität in Prag 1918-1945 (2020). Currently, he is working on a project supported by the Humboldt foundation about collective violence as a tool for reshaping national identities at the end of WWII in Europe, mainly in Czechoslovakia. Rudolf Kucera is Director of the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Associate Professor of Modern History at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University in Prague. He was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna and is currently a permanent visiting professor at the University of Konstanz. He is the author of Rationed Life: Science, Everyday Life, and Working-Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914-1918 (2016).

- Introduction - Part I - 1: Uncle Rudolf - 2: Degenerates - 3: Seeking the truth - 4: Mental illness in court - 5: Poverty in court - 6: Improvising in court - 7: Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes - 8: Cannibals, poachers, and deserters - 9: Crime or politics - 10: That the president may long govern - 11: Ominous eagles - PART II - 12: Youths outside the house - 13: Prostitutes and workers - 14: Appeasement in the public square - 15: Fat ones, rich ones, Jews, and gendarmes - 16: The Russian hunter - 17: Disintegrating societies - 18: The wild west or a new republic? - 19: The victors and the vanquished - 20: A slapped factory owner - 21: Gallows and committess - 22: The wild east - 23: Blackshirts - Conclusion