The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its LegacySara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, Susanne Zantop "Race relations" are a controversial topic in today's Germany. Have Germans learned from the past? How far back must one go to understand the tensions, prejudices, and strategies that have marked race relations in the recently unified nation? The Imperialist Imagination explores the German preoccupation with racial and ethnic differences throughout the past two centuries, in a colonial and "postcolonial" context. Germany's belated national unification in 1870, its short colonial period (1884-1918), and the loss of its colonies as a consequence of World War I, rather than through wars of liberation, generated very different colonial and postcolonial conditions from those in Britain and France. This volume's sixteen essays investigate how, as a consequence of these conditions, Germans imagined their relationship to racial and ethnic others: how they supported and contested colonization during the colonial period, how their colonial fantasies fed into the Nazis' racial and expansionary policies after the loss of German colonies, and how they represent their relationship to German minorities and "foreigners" within and outside Germany today. The contributors include scholars in literature, history, art history, political science, philosophy, ethnography, film, popular culture, photography, and theater. The anthology will appeal not only to Germanists but to all those interested in postcolonial and cultural studies. Sara Friedrichsmeyer is Professor of German, University of Cincinnati. Sara Lennox is Professor of German, University of Massachusetts. Susanne Zantop is Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College. |
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aesthetic African sculpture Afro-German Afro-German children antisemitism Antlitz argued Bachmann's become British Bülow's Carl Peters century colo colonial narrative colonialist context critical critique Cubism cultural discourse domination East economic Einstein Empire essay ethnographic Europe European fantasies female fiction film Förster Franza Frenssen gender German colonial German East Africa German national German Southwest Africa Germany's Gypsies Hein Herero human ideology images imagination imperialism imperialist Jewish Kant Kant's Kara Ben Nemsi Keloglan Krome land Lila literature Maleen May's Mesakin miscegenation modern moral narrator national identity natives Nazi nial Nietzsche Nietzsche's nomadic non-European novel Nuba Nueva Germania Ohm Krüger Orient Ostjude Ottoman Empire perspective Peter Moor political position postcolonial postwar primitive protagonist question race racial racism relationship representation Riefenstahl role sexual Shri Lanka social Southwest Africa space stereotypes studies territory Third Reich tion Western woman women writings Zweig