The Heimat Abroad. The Boundaries of Germanness

Abstract

Studies across the Disciplines O'Donnell, Krista, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin, eds. The Abroad. The Boundaries of Germanness. AnnAibor. University of Michigan Press, 2005.326 pp. $29.95 paperpack. In this thoughtfully arranged and well-edited volume, the contributors examine the complex relationship between Germany and ethnic Germans outside its national borders in a variety of historical contexts. In its attempt to reconceptualize identity in global terms, the volume challenges a restrictive focus on the nation-state and traces the competing racial and cultural criteria delimiting Cermanness within a web of many strains of nationalism in history. In the first of three chapters exploring the ideological and legal context of diasporic nationalism, Howard Sargent's essay tracks the debate over citizenship from the early 19th century to the postwar era, and demonstrates the lack of uniformity that historically has characterized Germanness. He convincingly argues for an approach that acknowledges the conflicting notions of German, which were negotiated between the ethnocultural image of nationhood and opposing state interests as a framework for the historical study of this debate. Beyond legal questions as means of defining Germanness, Christa O'Donnells historical and anthropological case study scrutinizes the complex relationship between citizenship and colonial population policies in the Wilhelmine period. Drawing on Susanne Zantop's, Ann Stoler's and Karen Tranberg Hansen's scholarship, O'Donnell explores the definitional confusion between the terms race and culture, the consequences of which persisted well into the postcolonial era. Methodologically oriented towards a conceptual history in line with Reinhart Koselleck and Melvin Richter, Norbert Gdtz's chapter examines the international discourse about Volksgemeinschaft in relation to Germans abroad. His detailed analysis contextualizes Nazi views of citizenship and identity and traces the many conflicting definitions of the term in the interwar era and World War II. In his opening contribution to a section examining notions of cultural versus racial identity among Germans in the Americas, Jurgen fiuchenau's detailed study on Germans in Mexico City between 1821 and 1975 convincingly challenges existing dichotomous notions of trade diasporas in Latin America. His chapter is indebted to a theory of transnationalism developed by scholars such as Arjun Appadurai and Gabriel Sheffer and examines the complex national identity in the colony. Thomas Brinkmann's research on Jewish immigrants in Chicago aptly demonstrates the problematic usage of the heuristic term German Jews for the historical analysis of Jewish immigrants in the United States before 1880. Parallel to Buchenau's chapter, Thomas Lekan traces the transformation of what he calls Heimat identities on both sides of the Atlantic. …

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