Ute Frevert Max Planck Institute, Director Center for History of Emotions

Ute Frevert was an impressive lecturer, who had been Professor German History at Yale Univeresity from 2003-2007.  Her research interests include social and cultural history of modern times, gender history, and political history. Some of her best known work examines the history of womem and gender relations in modern Germany.  She is an honorary professor at the Free University in Berlin and was awarded the prestigious Leibnitz Prize in 1998.  She presented this lecture in the Townsend Center for the Humanities, as pat of the Townsend Working Groups in German History and History of the Emotions.

Trust breeds trust.  Trust secures social cohesion.  An issue of maintaining trust vs. betraying trust.   Trust is voluntary a kind of gift.  Asks for reciprocity.   I trust you as long as you believe and act in terms of my self interest.  Trust is based on some form of knowledge and past experience.  Monarchs who trust people will be trusted.   Hard to earn trust.  Trustworthiness is of course a matter of being reliable, consistent and one who delivers on one's promises.  Trust is both public and private.  Trust must be maintained.  One can betray trust.   The Middle Class liked to see itself as trustworthy and honest and found the old regimes corrupt and deceitful. 

Some of her books in English  include:  Questions of Trust a Modern Obsession.   Man of Honor:  Social and Cultural History of the Duel.  Emotional History:  Lost and Found (based on lectures in Budapest) .

More details about the History of Emotions:

Frevert cites forerunners in history of emotions in Europe and Peter Gay (1923) on Love, Fear and Rage. .  She says that psychology, neurology and physiology all bear on the study of emotions.
Words and gestures give meaning to feelings that might be "vague" otherwise.  Experience can change "emotions".  She reads texts and images carefully for display of and place of emotions. Is an emotion an agency or a product?  She documents how emotions change over time in a syncretic, diachronic perspective.  Context changes perspective, for instance, in the school, the family, the church, the military 

Peter Carol Stern : "Emotionology". Social fields with conflicting self interests; thus,  rules and prescriptions are negotiated and reset.   Love and honor are considered in relationship to crimes of passion.  Changes in time and space are dynamic. 

 Machiavelli relied on cunning; only appearances mattered.   Dr. Martin Luther is wary of trusting others who are very powerful.   We should trust others, as though tomorrow they may be our enemies.  Only those wiling to "improve my lot" on a regular basis could be trusted; those who have regard for others because they fulfill their needs, goals and interests. .   One can put Trust in God.  There is a tendency to not trust others. "Check, and verify before you trust. "  Be sure the person you trust is trustworthy. 

In 1946, God disappears as does trust.  Societies needed to be organized so that people put trust in one another.  Mothers should trust their children so they will in turn trust others.  Next to family, friendship which is freely chosen is important.  Friendship without trust is unthinkable.  The most detrimental act between friends is to make themselves susceptible to "fraud and betrayal".  One must trust the giver and the receiver. Friendship is a commitment through assurances.  Mutual trust.

Frevert cites Hannah Arendt as having strong distrust of Communism and Fascism.  The moral order becomes important A moral economy emerges in societies and organizations.  One is not trusted if one is not a "joiner".  There was a belief that Socialism would create security.  The marketplace becomes a place of conflict and crisis, of distribution and consumption, of exchange, and requires both long and short term cooperation. 

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