»Pestialischer Gestank« und »penetrante Gerüche«: Geruchsgeschichtliche Annäherungen an das geteilte Deutschland. (German)

»Pestial stench« and »penetrating smells«: olfactory historical approaches to divided Germany. (English)

This article enquires into the conceptual potentials of an olfactory-historical approach to the history of German division. It assumes that the study of »olfactory regimes« and the analysis of similarities and commonalities of olfactory perceptions and olfactory classifications can be used, among other things, to demonstrate processes of inclusion and exclusion, social distinctions, and collective-identitarian attributions of meaning. To that end, this article chooses a threefold approach: First (1), the history of smell is examined on the basis of everyday historical and individual perceptions. In a further step (2), public, mass-media negotiated and staged smells are examined and, derived from this, social and ethnic boundary drawing processes are illuminated. Finally (3), the symbolic-political content of the olfactory is analyzed in order to illustrate the sensory-historical side of intra-German system competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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