Dear H-German members,

As H-German has undergone some major organizational changes in the past
year, the new editors felt it appropriate to reflect briefly on the
list, its past, and its mission.  In the coming weeks and months, we
will occasionally direct to you some thoughts about our visions for the
future.  We look forward to your commentary, assessments, and critiques.


H-German: the first eight years

Remember Gopher? Remember having an email account on a mainframe
computer that limited the number of messages you sent?  Remember writing
messages on a terminal that had a "reset" key at the bottom right for
when you typed too quickly for the computer to keep up? Remember having
to get a letter from your supervisor endorsing your application for an
email account on that mainframe? Remember, for those of you who began
your email usage with home computing, the 14.4kbaud modem? Its
development (from its 300, 600, 1800 baud predecessors, which were in
turn the heirs of a tool developed in the 1950s for North American air
defense) coincided roughly with the early days of H-Net, and H-German.
Assuming the role of list and book review editors, and being historians,
naturally made us all think about the beginnings of the list in those
heady days when everyone was just learning how to use email, in the days
when some of us just couldn't seem to stop writing email. Remember those
days, not so long ago, when you couldn't wait to open your email to see
what was in it?

H-German was founded by Dan Rogers (U Southern Alabama) and Norm Goda
(then at the University of Southern Maine) in March, 1994, and it
quickly became one of the most quickly growing of the H-Net lists. In
those days of light bureaucracy, Dan managed to get the list idea
approved, recruit Norm and set up an editorial board, all in about a
month! In numerous conversations with H-Net veterans like Jim Niessen,
we've learned about the important role that H-German and its first
moderators played in filtering out subscribers who weren't interested in
academic debate and defining the standard for that debate, the etiquette
for writing a query, the ways of shaping debate usefully. Their
decisions, contributions and experiences shaped the path not only of
H-German, but the growth of H-Net as an institution and the genealogy of
so-called "netiquette" in general. The origins of H-German discussions,
like many of the initial steps of the virtual intellectual world, appear
to have disintegrated; the first logged discussions date from the move
of the H-Net server from University of Illinois at Chicago to Michigan
State in November, 1994. Norm and Dan presided over discussions on
postmodernism and the work of Goldhagen that were so vociferous that
they eventually had to be curtailed, and which are still logged on our
home page. Along with these path-breaking intellectual moments, the
first moderators dealt with exercised subscribers and people who
mistakenly sent private messages to the list. They, like their
successors, learned never to press "send" on a mail without looking at
whose address was listed in the "to" box, to put an emoticon ( :) )
after anything intended jokingly, wryly or sarcastically, and to take
criticism of all kinds cheerfully -- lessons that are still important.
Editing, as exciting as it could be, was not without its pitfalls:
defending the list against "agendas" sensed or furthered by some readers
and accepting that the form of the list meant that subscribers could
write back immediately with their complaints were lessons all of the
editors had to learn quickly. Maintaining the specifically scholarly
tone of the list was and is hard work.

As interesting as editing was at the beginning, it took a lot of time
and energy, and as Dan and Norm finished books, moved toward tenure and
changed jobs, they recruited successors to build upon what they had
established. Jay Lockenour of Temple University was added to the team in
1997, and Steve Remy (who was recruited by Norm after moving to Ohio
University, and was still a grad student) became a list editor in 1999
after doing background support work for several years before that. Jay
in particular developed a weighty internet "presence" independently from
H-German, particularly in his informal role as an involuntary appraiser
and resource for assessments of Nazi memorabilia :). After two years, as
Norm moved on professionally, Jay and Steve found that list traffic and
function had expanded enough that a third editor was required, so Julia
Sneeringer, who had originally served on the H-German board, was
recruited.  She was not only the first woman list editor; her interests
in women, class, citizenship and gender helped to make the content of
the list as up to date as its means of distribution :). The continuing
transfer of list editing became an important component of the job,
which, true to the list's location in the virtual world, thrives on new
ideas and approaches, and benefited from the energy of novices.
Together, Jay, Steve and Julia formed a second generation of H-German
editing, sharing with Norm and Dan the positive feedback of many people
who recognized them at conferences and thanked them for their service to
the field.  As they all discovered, having your name show up regularly
in the profession's mailboxes means never having to stand alone in a
corner at a conference (Some were even congratulated on their recent
books years before they had been written.). All the former editors have
remarked that serving the profession as an H-German editor did more than
just expand their contacts but also increased their awareness of
evolving possibilities that the field presents.

By the time of this writing, H-German, with approximately 1900
subscribers, has become _the_ forum for the quickest possible
announcements and questions about German history in the English-speaking
world. It is the first H-Net list to move into a completely new third
"generation" of editors, so that it can legitimately considered not just
a personal project of its founders, but a valuable scholarly resource in
its own right. It is among the first intellectual forums to connect
scholars at all kinds of institutions, from Carnegie I Research campuses
to community colleges, on an equal footing. It serves as a tool for
initiating grad students into networks of inquiry and professional
activity and keeping people on the periphery of the academic world in
dialogue with its center. In fact, all of the new editors count their
subscription to H-German as an important tool in providing not only an
initiation to the profession for them, but as an important tool for
creating and maintaining the same professional and scholarly contacts
the network has become known for. The new editors of the "third
generation" would like to thank their predecessors for their hard work
in building up this now vital resource, and hope that their efforts to
build on this heritage will be as successful and vital as the first
decision to construct the network, now almost nine years in the past. We
pledge to keep working to make the job of opening your email just as
exciting as it was in 1994.

Susan Boettcher
David Imhoof
Paul Steege

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

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