The popularization of science and technology is more in demand today than ever before, as we live in a world that is undergoing rapid transformation at a breathtaking pace due to the spread of new technologies, above all digitalization. Terms such as Industry 4.0, social media, e-commerce, and cybercrime point to new patterns that go beyond the industrial age with its typical forms of social life, communication, and consumption. At the same time, many of the ideas that once influenced the popularization of knowledge during the “first” scientific age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are experiencing a revival. At that time, new discoveries in physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and biology had a profound impact on people’s thinking and, when translated into technologies and goods such as railroads, telegraphs, and telephones; artificial fertilizers and dyes; light bulbs; and automobiles, they became deeply embedded in people’s everyday lives. Popular science literature contributed to this process by helping people better understand these potentially alien innovations and thus more quickly integrate them into familiar aspects of their own lives. The popularization of the natural sciences thus fulfilled the function, during the transition to modernity, of unveiling and explaining mysteries; it served as a key to a world of unimagined possibilities. This was the prevailing theme of a veritable flood of publications in the Western world that presented science and technology in an accessible way to an interested readership from all walks of life. This study examines this phenomenon in the British and German contexts through a detailed analysis of popular science literature, which simultaneously fostered a specific sense of historical consciousness.

When Charles Darwin published his theory of the evolution of species through natural selection in 1859, he already foresaw a major debate, though he did not anticipate its far-reaching impact and longevity. The Darwin Year 2009 provided a good opportunity to reflect on this debate—which has remained highly controversial and multifaceted for over 150 years—as well as its theses and its course, a debate that has been waged in ever-changing contexts—with both familiar and new arguments—not only in the natural sciences but also, for a long time now, in politics, society, and culture. The debate, in its historical and contemporary forms, was the subject of interdisciplinary scholarly discussion at a major conference in September 2009. The results of the conference were incorporated into a comprehensive book project, which was published in October 2017 under the title *Streitfall Evolution. A Cultural History. The 40 contributions in the volume are aimed equally at researchers and an interested lay audience, and present the scientific and popular debates surrounding the topic of evolution across seven thematic areas. In addition to the implications for the sciences, belief in God, and moral concepts, the book addresses reflections on society, politics, international relations, and interventions down to the level of the individual and their genetic material—their genes—as well as questions regarding a supposed decline of humanity. Today, these controversies are even more diverse, involve far more people than they did in the late 19th century, and have far more serious consequences.

One could write the history of the United States as a history of a quest—a quest for national identity. At certain times and under certain conditions, this quest crystallized into an intense and controversial—even polemical—debate, the outcome of which was framed as a decision regarding the nation’s survival or its demise. The perception of one’s own national present as being in crisis and the feeling of uncertainty regarding the possible outcome of that crisis therefore constitute a recurring theme in U.S. history that continues to this day. This fundamental debate need not necessarily revolve around constitutional issues or the political form of the community; rather, it can just as easily center on rights and social norms, or even the significance of the natural sciences and their theories. This project examines the debate in the United States over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as a conflict over modernity—a struggle between opposing forces in American society over interpretive authority and, ultimately, over the character of the community and the nation’s identity. The two presidential election campaigns of 1980 and 2008 mark the beginning and end of this period, between which discussions about Darwin’s scientific legacy unfolded in the context of court cases and legislative initiatives. The most important source material for analyzing this multifaceted public debate consisted of articles in print newspapers and online magazines.

People who were sick or disabled were among those persecuted by the Nazis. During the era of the “Third Reich,” they were stigmatized as a burden on the German “national community” that had to be eliminated. As a result, as early as 1934, up to 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, and during the war years, more than 200,000 people were murdered in hospitals and nursing homes. This took place within German society itself, carried out by professionals in psychiatry, neurology, pediatrics, and other disciplines, with the involvement of administrative staff and nursing personnel. An exhibition held in the buildings of the University of Siegen was dedicated to this topic, taking the question of the value of life as its guiding principle. It told the story of exclusion, forced sterilizations, and mass murder; examined the victims, perpetrators, those complicit in the crimes, and opponents; and ultimately explored how these events have been addressed from 1945 to the present. The traveling exhibition, prepared by the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics, and Neurology with exemplary biographies from Germany, was supplemented for its presentation in Siegen by students from the university’s Department of History with life stories of victims from the South Westphalia region. All of these accounts document a shocking disregard for life on the part of members of professions whose very mission was to ensure the unconditional protection of life.