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Daniel Joseph Walther, Creating Germans Abroad: Cultural Policies and National Identity in Namibia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2005

Extract

Creating Germans Abroad is clearly inspired by the work of Benedict Anderson (1983) and written in the spirit of the work of Ann Stoler (1995; 2002). In this work, Walther suggests the idealization of the possibility of a German homeland outside of the European territory in colonial Southwest Africa. The emphasis on agriculture, climate, and landscape countered the increasing push towards industrialization in the Fatherland. Here, there was not just a nostalgic longing for an imagined German past that is pastoral as opposed to industrial (a longing used and manipulated by Nazi ideologues), but an actual place where the idealized Heimat (homeland) could be realized in practice. The problem, however, became the presence of so many non-Germans, in this case not only “Black” Africans, but also “White” Afrikaners. In this sense, an appropriate title for the book might also be “Creating Germany Abroad.”

Type
CSSH Discussion
Copyright
© 2005 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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References

Anderson Benedict 1983 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism London Verso
Foucault Michel 1978 The History of Sexuality New York Pantheon Books
Mosse George 1985 Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe New York H. Fertig
Stoler Ann 1995 Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things Durham, N.C. Duke University Press
Stoler Ann 2002 Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule Berkeley University of California Press