The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness

337 Pages·2010·0.94 MB·English

Social History, PopularCulture, and Politics in Germany
Geoff Eley, Series Editor
Series Editorial Board
Kathleen Canning, University of Michigan
David F. Crew, University of Texas, Austin
Atina Grossmann, The Cooper Union
Alf Lüdtke, Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen, Germany
Andrei S. Markovits, University of Michigan
Justice Imperiled: The Anti-Nazi Lawyer Max Hirschberg in Weimar Germany,
Douglas G. Morris
The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness,edited by Krista O’Donnell,
Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin
Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London: Resistance and
Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere,Keith Holz
The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Germany,Michael B. Gross
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the Third Reich,Tina M. Campt
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Ulrike Strasser
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Projecting History: German Nonfiction Cinema, 1967–2000,Nora M. Alter
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Adelheid von Saldern
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Christhard Hoffman, Werner Bergmann, and Helmut Walser Smith, editors
Languages of Labor and Gender:Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850–1914,
Kathleen Canning
That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification and the “New” Germany,
Leonie Naughton
Anna Seghers:The Mythic Dimension, Helen Fehervary
Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic
Germany, 1813–1916,Jean H. Quataert
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Eley, editor
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Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933,
James Retallack, editor
Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic
Practices,Peter Becker and William Clark, editors
Social History, PopularCulture, and Politics in Germany
Geoff Eley, Series Editor
(Continued)
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1870–1914,Madeleine Hurd
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Entitlement State in Germany, Greg Eghigian
The German Problem Transformed: Institutions, Politics, and Foreign Policy,
1945–1995,Thomas Banchoff
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German Democratic Republic, 1945–1989,Alan L. Nothnagle
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Brigitte Young
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Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, editors
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Party in South Germany, Oded Heilbronner
AUser’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, Scott Denham, Irene Kacandes, and
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Heimat
The Abroad
The Boundaries of Germanness
Edited by Krista O’Donnell, Renate Bridenthal,
and Nancy Reagin
The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2005
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
cPrinted on acid-free paper
2008 2007 2006 2005 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Heimat abroad : the boundaries of Germanness / edited by Krista
O’Donnell, Nancy Reagin, and Renate Bridenthal.
p. cm. — (Social history, popular culture, and politics in
Germany)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-472-11491-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn0-472-03067-1
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Germans—Foreign countries. 2. Germany—Emigration and
immigration. 3. Jews, German—Foreign countries. 4. Population
transfers—Germans. I. O’Donnell, Krista, 1967– II. Reagin, Nancy
Ruth, 1960– III. Bridenthal, Renate. IV. Series.
dd68.h45 2005
305.83'1—dc22 2004025472
ISBN13 978-0-472-11491-7 (cloth)
ISBN13 978-0-472-03067-5 (paper)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02512-1 (electronic)
Acknowledgments
The editors owe thanks to many people who midwifed this project
along the way from its beginnings as a panel at the American Histori-
cal Association to this more comprehensive volume. Foremost among
these is Dr. Hanna Schissler, currently at the George Eckert Institute
for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany.
During her visiting professorship at New York University in 1998–99,
she organized a conference that brought together our ‹rst round of
contributors along with trenchant commentators. Among those who
enabled us to develop greater coherence for this project in its earliest
stages are Volker Berghahn, Alon Con‹no, John R. Davis, Hasia
Diner, Karen Eng, Benjamin Lapp, Daniel Levy, Robert Moeller,
Molly Nolan, Martin Schain, and Frank Stern.
In addition, we owe many insights to our German Women’s History
Group, which, in addition to its much valued sisterly camaraderie, pro-
vided forthright suggestions that immeasurably improved work in
progress. Ever rejuvenating itself, the group now consists of the fol-
lowing members: Bonnie Anderson, Dolores Augustine, Marion
Berghahn, Rebecca Boehling, Jana Bruns, Jane Caplan, Belinda
Davis, Lynne Fallwell, Atina Grossmann, Amy Hackett, Deborah
Hertz, Maria Hoehn, Young Sun Hong, Marion Kaplan, Jan Lam-
bertz, Molly Nolan, Katherine Pence, and Julia Sneeringer.
We are grateful to Geoff Eley for recognizing the signi‹cance of this
work for the ‹eld of German history and for his wise suggestions and
un›agging faith in its ultimate merit. We would also like to recognize our
respective institutions for their support of this project: for Krista O’Don-
nell, the Provost’s Assigned Released Time program at William Pater-
son University; for Nancy Reagin, Pace University, particularly the
Dyson Dean’s Of‹ce, for providing the course reductions that helped to
complete the work. We also thank the helpful staff at the University of
Michigan Press. We greatly appreciate the thoughtful detailed com-
ments of the two anonymous readers, who compelled us to rethink some
of our ideas. Any ›aws that remain are due to our own stubbornness.

Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
PART1. The Legal and Ideological Context of
Diasporic Nationalism 15
Chapter 1. Diasporic Citizens: Germans Abroad
in the Framing of German
Citizenship Law Howard Sargent 17
Chapter 2. Home, Nation, Empire: Domestic Germanness
and Colonial Citizenship Krista O’Donnell 40
Chapter 3. German-Speaking People and German Heritage:
Nazi Germany and the Problem
of Volksgemeinschaft Norbert Götz 58
PART2. Bonds of Trade and Culture 83
Chapter 4. Blond and Blue-Eyed in Mexico City, 1821
to 1975 Jürgen Buchenau 85
Chapter 5. Jews, Germans, or Americans? German-Jewish
Immigrants in the Nineteenth-Century
United States Tobias Brinkmann 111
Chapter 6. German Landscape: Local Promotion of
the HeimatAbroad Thomas Lekan 141
Chapter 7. In Search of Home Abroad: German Jews
in Brazil, 1933–45 Jeffrey Lesser 167
viii Contents
PART3. Islands of Germanness 185
Chapter 8. Germans from Russia: The Political Network of
a Double Diaspora Renate Bridenthal 187
Chapter 9. When Is a Diaspora Not a Diaspora? Rethinking
Nation-Centered Narratives about Germans in
Habsburg East Central Europe Pieter Judson 219
Chapter 10. German Brigadoon? Domesticity and
Metropolitan Germans’ Perceptions of
Auslandsdeutschenin Southwest Africa
and Eastern Europe Nancy R. Reagin 248
Chapter 11. Tenuousness and Tenacity: The Volksdeutschen
of Eastern Europe, World War II, and
the Holocaust Doris L. Bergen 267
Chapter 12. The Politics of Homeland: Irredentism and
Reconciliation in the Policies of German
Federal Governments and Expellee
Organizations toward Ethnic German
Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe,
1949–99 Stefan Wolff 287
List of Contributors 313
Index 317
Abbreviations
AA Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Of‹ce)
ADV Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League)
AHSGR American Historical Society of Germans from Russia
ALR Allgemeines Landrecht [of Prussia] (General Prussian
Legal Code)
BdV Bund der Vertriebenen—Vereinigte Landsmannschaften
und Landesverbände (Union of Expellees—United
Regional-Cultural Associations and State Organizations)
BHE Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten (Union of
Expellees and Disenfranchised) (later Gesamtdeutscher
Block-Bund vertriebener Deutscher)
BvD Bund vertriebener Deutscher (Union of Expelled Germans)
CDU Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic
Union)
CSU Christlich Soziale Union (Christian Social Union)
DAI Deutsches Ausland-Institut(German Foreign Institute)
DFP Dakota Freie Presse (Dakota Free Press)
DKG Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society)
DNP Departamento Nacional de Povoamento (National
Population Department)
DOD Deutscher Ostdienst(German Eastern Service)
DPO Deutsche Post aus dem Osten(German Post from the East)
DVM Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft in Mexiko(German
Volksgemeinschaft in Mexico)
EU European Union
FDP Freie Demokratische Parte: (Free Democratic Party)
FstR Forschungsstelle des Russlanddeutschtums im Deutschen
Ausland-Institut (Research Of‹ce of the Russian
Germandom of the DAI)
GDP Gesamtdeutsche Partei (All-German Party)
GSWA German Southwest Africa (now Namibia)
JCA Jewish Colonization Association